Sacred Valley of the Incas (Paso Fino Horses) Full Day
Code: Hbr-1Val/08
Level: Soft adventure, no need experience
Duration: 8 hours from Cusco. (5-6 hours riding approx.)
Location: Sacred Valley (Pachar bridge, Moray , Maras)
Location: Sacred Valley of the Incas. Cusco
Description: Unique horse back ride visiting villages and agriculture crops on the Sacred Valley of the Incas.
Departure: Every day. All year round
Itinerary
we pick you up from your hotel and Transfer to Pachar’s bridge where the horses wait. We'll cross the Urubamba River for the climb (almost 1000 meters) to the altiplano of the Andes. This climb takes about two hours. Take it easy because the change of altitude does not only affect the horses. Once we are at 3700M you will be impressed by the sight of the snow-capped mountains of Chicon, Veronica and Salcantay and the beautiful altiplano of the Andes that surrounds us. After a box lunch in Maras, a typical Andean village that boasts a beautiful 400-year colonial old church, we continue our ride to Moray. This site is not the ruin of a city or a fortress, it is an earthwork. The ancient peoples of the region took four enormous natural depressions in the landscape and sculpted them into several levels of agricultural terraces that served, hundreds of years ago, as an experimental agricultural station for the development of different strain of crops. This was possible due to the discovery of a fascinating phenomenon: the climates of many different ecological zones were present at a single site. In the thirty or so meters of altitude between the bottom and top levels of Moray's main depression, one scientist, John Earls, has recorded a full 15 degrees Celsius difference in temperature. That is equal to the difference between the mean annual temperatures of London and Bombay. Conceivably it was Moray itself that played the key role in the original transformation of maize into a high-altitude crop!
There are no great ruins in Moray to impress visitors. Moray is more for the contemplative traveler with an affinity for such phenomena as the Nazca Lines, the stone rings of Avebury and the menhirs of Brittany and then we will visit the salt mines of Maras, a fascinating system of platforms used since the Inca times to extract salt from a natural mountain spring. Visually the shining salt-encrusted terraces are extraordinary. Return to Cusco. End of our services.
Private service: Upon request
INCLUDED:
- Transportation round trip
- Expert guide and muleteer
- One horse per client.
- Lunch in the Sacred Valley
NOT INCLUDED: Entrance Fee
