Being in Peru for my 25th birthday was already a pretty rad situation, but we didn't actually have anything particularly great planned ahead for it because after Machu Picchu and before Rainbow Mountain our plans were pretty open for flailing. In theory we could have planned to do Rainbow Mountain on the day but we did Machu/Huayna Picchu on the 14th (my bday is the 16th) and we were still pretty sore from bombing up, down, and around the two mountains and wanted more rest before tackling the next.
After some internet searching and transportation consideration, we settled on heading back into the Sacred Valley for a Chinchero textiles, Maras, and Moray adventure. We opted to pay for a private taxi for the day because regular taxis are sketchy and uber is not a thing in Cusco like it was in Lima unfortunately (for private taxis in Peru we used taxidatum.com , 10/10 would recommend).
The driver picked us up at our favourite little coffee shop, I wish I could remember the name of it so I could say if you're ever in Cusco to go there but I have no clue sorry. All I know for sure was that they had a lemon tart that I would happily eat for breakfast lunch and dinner the rest of my life, which is basically what I did in Cusco #noragrets. I had a tattoo appointment for 6pm so we wanted to be back by 5pm at the latest so we could grab a snack and bomb over to the tattoo shop across the plaza from where we were staying.
The driver picked us up around 10am and he honestly looked like maybe we should have been dropping him off at school because he looked about 11. And its a good thing when we booked the taxi we had included where we wanted to go, because like we had found about most people in Peru, he didn't speak a lick of english. Off we went with a stomach full of lemon tart and backpack full of snacks because as usual, we didn't know what we were getting ourselves in to.
Turns out. Car sickness. That's what I was getting myself in to. It had really been a theme of the trip, even if I was only in a cab for 2 minutes, I was sick. Trusty travel buddy/only responsible adult, Jas had wrangled me some pepto a few days before, thank god, because I really don't think our child driver was equipped for me to be spewing lemon tart through the back window of his car before the day had even started. The thing about Peru is that your map will tell you one thing, but the actual fact is much different. So google maps told us it was about 26km to our destination, its a highway, theres not really towns in between so we figure should be quick, no more than a half hour at most. Going with the theme of the internet lying to us, we arrived a casual hour later at the textiles center in Chinchero, thank god for pepto.
CHINCHERO
We were promised textiles, guinea pigs, and llamas at this location, and they delivered. Not only was there a giant guinea pig house (I say house because it had 4 levels with little rooms, hallways and railings) and a llama hut where we got to feed them, but the very nice Peruvian ladies there also sat us down on weird little stools, gave us tea and taught us all the very strange ins and outs of making and selling textiles in Peru.
We got to watch as the young girl (who may have been the same age as our child driver) took totally raw alpaca wool, washed it on a rock with natural soapberries, spun it into yarn in 2 seconds, and proceeded to show us all the varieties of dyes that the Inca people use to colour their clothes.
This was by far the most interesting part, she showed us the different plants and substances used to make all the colours of the rainbow and the different ways they could be used. Grossest of which was what they use to make red. They use these nasty little bugs called 'cochineal' that are found on the prickly pear cactus native to the cusco region. They're dried, smushed and then boiled to make a deep red colour and this is used to dye a variety of items, from scarves to tablecloths to our hostess's lips which she proceeded to do right then and there. She smushed a couple fresh beetles into her palm, rubbed the guts on her lips and let us know that 'it lasts 24 hours or 100 kisses', wild times I'm telling you.
We bought a lot of our Christmas presents for family back home here, largely because these ladies are fricken working, it takes up to 6 months, working 8 hours a day to make a single table runner out of alpaca. That's insane and I'm all for supporting hard working ladies, especially ones with bug guts on their lips.
MARAS
Maras from overhead is one of the craziest things you'll see. There are thousands of salt pans in a messy grid spanning the hillside, they themselves are man made but the salt water comes from a natural underground spring near Maras, the salt here has been farmed exclusively by the locals for over 500 years. We arrived midday and the mines were fairly empty so we got to flail around essentially alone, although I did see one guy stick his finger in the salt stream and lick it, so that was fairly disgusting. I feel like you're probably not allowed to do that but there was no one around and I think the look on his face afterwards made it clear his own stupidity was punishment enough.
We bombed around the mines for a half hour or so on the super sketchy thin trails between the salt pans, I'm a klutz so its pretty impressive I didn't fall right in, you could see some foot/hand prints in some pans where you could see where people had.
There's only trail through the top two rows of salt pans, but you could see all the way down to the bottom of the valley where there's workers 'mining' and carrying the bags of salt up by hand to the market. How they managed to carry huge bags of salt on those tiny trails is beyond me. Not to mention the wind was insane here, I was basically flossing my teeth with my own dirty pink hair in every photo, so thats delightful.
After exploring the mine we headed up to the market to buy salty goodies, because you can never have enough snacks and my lemon tart was a few hours ago at this point.
Im embarrassed at the amount of time we spent taste testing salt (yes we ate many kinds of salt by itself, judge us). They had basically every type of salt and salted good you could ever imagine, ranging from salted chocolate and caramel to candy and of course, bath salts. We each bought several types of salted chocolate (because, why not) and each different types of cooking salt, which they swabbed for contraband at the Dallas airport coming home, pretty sure they thought Jas was smuggling drugs in a salt grinder (brilliant).
MORAY
Moray is fricken cool. Its one of those places that photos just do not do justice. What you can't see in photos (of moray, machu picchu or any Peruvian ruins) is how giant the "steps" are.
When we were there we weren't allowed down on the terraces, but each level was at least 6ft tall and they had long flat stones placed in the walls for a stair system. The terraces are amazing in themselves, the whole thing is about 100 feet deep and each level has its own "micro climate" dependent on the soil, sun and earth. From top to bottom of the entire round structure theres a 15 degree difference in temperature, scientists aren't 100% sure what the purpose for this is, but it's believed to have been used by the Incas for agricultural research purposes.
Peru has a crazy rainy season (overnight monsoons am I right) but even with all the precipitation, the Moray ruins never flood, this is thought to be due to an underground drainage system dating back to the Incas, although this hasn't been proven (this place is just bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S, thanks Gwen). We were able to walk all the way around the circle and take photos above it, we just had to watch out for the murderous grass along the top that tried to reach out and stab us when we weren't looking. Of course theres warning signs about not falling into the ruins, but no one says anything about the guard grass, figures.
Our baby driver got us safe and sound back to Cusco, probably just in time for his bedtime, although every time we got out to explore, he would take a nap in the front seat and we'd have to wake him up to let us back in so he was probably well rested. His mom can thank us later.
As far as birthdays go, this one was definitely a different one for me. As usual, almost puking was on the agenda but this time from lemon tarts and motion sickness instead of alcohol. Basically every birthday since I turned 15 has been coupled with large amounts of drinking (sorry mom) and probably a decent amount of shenanigans (sorry again mom) but I'm happy to report that 25 ended with only a single beer. Granted it was a litre, because thats basically the only option in Peru, but it was still just one okay, get off my back... and I enjoyed it responsibly while watching a Peruvian street festival from a bar balcony. Salt, llamas, ruins and bug-gut lipstick all in a days adventure to kick off my 25th year, can't get much better than that, can't wait to see what's next (hopefully more lemon tart and less motion sickness, a girl can dream).
For more Peru and other weird stuff check out @pcolemaan
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