Maras and Moray
The half-day Maras and Moray tour starts mid-morning with pickup at your hotel in Cusco and a comfortable drive toward the Sacred Valley. The first stop is Moray, a striking set of circular terraces that descend like an amphitheater and that the Incas used as an agricultural laboratory. Each concentric terrace creates its own microclimate, with notable temperature differences between the highest and lowest levels, which allowed the Incas to experiment with and acclimatize crops brought from different ecological zones of the empire.
From Moray you continue to the Maras Salt Pans, one of the most photographed landscapes in the whole region. They are thousands of terraced salt pools stepping down the hillside, forming an impressive white and ochre mosaic. Fed by a natural saltwater spring, these pools have been worked since pre-Inca times and are still harvested by hand today by local families, who collect and share the salt following a system passed down from generation to generation.
Throughout the tour your bilingual guide explains the history, engineering and workings of each site, so you understand why Maras and Moray are two icons of the Sacred Valley. At midday you return to Cusco with the afternoon free, so you can have a relaxed lunch or combine the outing with another activity, such as the City Tour. It's the ideal option if you're short on time but don't want to miss these two must-sees, on a short, comfortable outing with no demanding trekking.
