Salt & ruins: Moray & salinas

Brandon had a stroke of genius yesterday afternoon. The reason we couldn't get money out from the bank was because we got money out at an atm on monday at the airport and it was still the same day in Australia, and so we couldn't get out money because it was adding to more than the thousand dollar a day limit. So after going to the bank last night we now have money, horay!

Included in our tourist ticket was some kind on native dress production so we thought, since we've paid for it we might as well go. It was pretty good, mainly just lots of skirt flapping and lifting, and stomping. The band was the best part. They had no music and they all just started playing at once. There was this one guy playing what looked like a 10 string ukulele. We left a bit early because we were so tired we were just about falling asleep in our seats.

This morning we finally got motivated to walk to the bus to go see some ruins and a salt mine near Moray. It went a lot more smoothly than yesterday. The bus was almost full when we got on and we had our tourist tickets with us! However,  no one tells the bus driver to stop at certain places you have to ask. So as we flew past a sign for Maras I started thinking. Don't do this. As soon as you see the sign for where you want to go yell out to stop. By the time I had said "Perdon Maras" and the other passengers had corrected me on the pronunciation and told me it was back there, and I finally spoke loud enough for the driver to hear me "I want Maras" (I have poor manners in Spanish), we had a bit of a walk back. And what was Brandon doing? Well he had kicked me as we drove past the sign for Maras and told me later that the driver wouldn't have heard him... ha.
Anyway, at the turn off to Maras we haggled a little with a taxi driver to take us to both sites. Then I saw a couple get off a bus so I went to ask if they wanted to share a taxi. But they were going to try to get horses and ride between the two sites. Luckily, this time wasting caused the cost to drop his original price by 10 soles. Which is not much. I don't know what happened to that couple. It would have been a long hot ride though.
Moray is meant to be where they tested growing conditions for crops. It looked a lot like an amphitheater to us. Concentric rings of retaining walls. What the Internet doesn't mention about this area is the fantastic backdrop. Ice capped mountains make an imposing backdrop to your photos if you take them in the right direction.

There was heaps of salt!

Next it was on to salinas, the salt mines. They're pretty big and rather cool to walk through. Hopefully the photos will do it justice. They were also packed with tourists and it was really hard to get the photos I wanted because everyone I waited patiently for someone to get out of the way another person was there ready to walk right in... There is also a lot of stairs to climb to get back out. Slow,  hungry stairs. Full of seemingly very unfit teen girls... We were starving (it was lunch time) and bought 3 empanadas and an inka cola (much the same as yellow creaming soda). So overpriced, we bought a pizza to share for dinner last night for the same price. So being your own lunch here!
The roads in and our of both sites are quite narrow, with some areas too narrow for passing. Since full size busses go to these areas, it was quite an interesting and slow trip.
It was pretty easy to hail a bus back to Cusco when the taxi took us back to the highway. We even got to listen to terrible 90s pop mixed with spanish pop the whole way back.
We were thinking of maybe stopping at Chinchero ruins on the way back, but nether of us could be bothered. As it turns out, heading to Cusco you can see the bulk of the ruins as you drive past, because they are built on a hill.