Peru Blog: 6/1 5:43 - Urubamba, I think

I'm not totally sure this is Urubamba. It also seems to be called "Yucay." Part of the Uru. metro area?

Anyway.

Miami Int'l Airport is not my favorite place - though I admit midnight may not be its finest hour. Baggage claims has no signage, no indication of which flights go to which carousels, and no employees with a clue.
"You... wanna pick up your bags...???"
"Uh, yeah" Hence, 'baggage claim' ?

The English saturation pretty well stopped at the LAN terminal in MIA. Flights were uneventful, which is about the best you can say for flying.

There have been a lot of Gate 1 people to cross our path. Apparently we won't get just one guide for the week. Jorge met us in Lima, and helped us check in for Cusco and meet up with the rest of our group. Another woman had been with them, and she shepherded us through departure taxes -- then left. Willy drove with us from Cusco to Urubamba, and Teddy took us on our tour tonight. Figuring out tipping is somewhat stressful with so many people and so few small denominations of currency.

Our group: There are eight of us. Bob & Judy, Michie & Emiko, David, Nafia, and the two of us. Bob & Judy are Californian. He is extensively well-traveled; I have high expectations that he will play the obligatory role of the Tour Group Know-It-All to the hilt. She doesn't travel as much because, in her own words, she's a princess who prefers her creature comforts. Michie and Emiko are Japanese. [Though currently living in Virginia with his company.] Nafia is Swiss, and also very well traveled. [[It is so quit here. I can hear people upstairs walking, but apart from that, nothing but a silence to make you think you'd gone deaf.]] David is also Californian. So far, I like him the best. He's very open and friendly.

The country: Limited 1st impressions. We've been in an airport most of our time in the country. Cusco looked like pictures of Middle Eastern cities... brown, poor, adobe. The airport was mildly chaotic; really just a lot of people trying to earn a tip by "helping" you with your bags. (Dude, I packed lightly so I wouldn't need your help!) The mountains between Lima and Cusco looked like just the dry parts of the Rockies; it's hard to believe they're part of the same range.
The Sacred Valley is like nothing I've seen before. I can make comparisons, but only to individual pieces. It's dry and scrubby, but mountains are in view. In one view, I see the Palouse of Washington -- but I look up to snow-capped peaks behind green, terraced mountains. Parts of it remind me of the mountains and vegetation of Chloride, only its no desert.

The tour: Tonight we saw Maras and Moray. Maras is the "salt mines." One, tiny stream of warm saltwater is ejected from the mountain. It's then irrigated into 100s of shallow pools. These are allowed to evaporate so the salt can be collected. They're so efficient, by the time this rivulet drains into the river, it's no longer salty. What's really incredible is that this scheme was cooked up by ancient peoples...but modern science still hasn't explained where the salt comes from. The pools are run separately by many groups of nearby families. To them, it is another way to supplement subsistence farming during the dry season. During the wet season, the terraces become unusable mudfalls.

Maras is a series of terraces in which pre-Inca and Inca peoples created different biomes for many kinds of crops. Research is still out about whther it was an early ag. research facility or a holy site sacred to Pachamama, the Earth goddess. [Probably it was both.] Today, it is an active archaeological site, primarily funded by tourist dollars.