I like to think that, within reason, anything you can do, I can do. Maybe not better, but I’ll surely give it a go! Well, friends. Not this time.
Driving an ATV is not for me, and you know what? I’m ok with it.
I’ve gone a bit rogue with my blog-time continuum. My last post was about our final Ecuadorian adventure, a three day hike to the crater lake at Quilotoa! But, before that, we spent three full days in Cusco, Peru, with our friend Kaitlin. So, I’m backtracking a bit!
The ultimate goal of the Peru trip was a visit to Machu Picchu, but we decided to have an acclimatization day beforehand. Cusco sits at an altitude of ~3,400 m / ~11,150 ft. Machu Picchu is a bit lower than that, but regardless, it takes some getting used to! So, when we decided to do a half-day tour on day one, Kaitlin suggested an ATV tour.
When she originally proposed the idea, she asked if I wanted my own or to ride with Shane. “Uh, my own, of course!” was my answer. That was my first mistake.
My second mistake was not immediately changing my mind once I was sitting on the ATV and couldn’t figure out how to turn the damn thing on. Then we got a lecture about how there is no insurance on these ATVs. If you break it, you buy it (or pay to fix it, I should say). THEN, we were given specific instructions on how to hand signal down the line of tour-goers and how we needed to stay close enough (but not too close!) to the person in front so that everyone could see the hand signals!
As I’m writing this, it sounds simple.
For me, it was not simple. And I was nervous!
Then, I killed the motor trying to go, which made me more nervous!
Then, I wasn’t going fast enough, so I tried to speed up.
Then, a dog popped out of nowhere!
Then, a TUK-TUK popped out of nowhere! (Really, this one was a mystery since tuk-tuks aren’t really a thing here).
THEN, I had to give a hand signal! While still moving forward! 🤯
So, I ended up going a bit off-roading, nearly flipping the ATV (at least in my mind).
After that, I pulled off to the side. The guide had turned around by this point since I was considerably far away from the next person in line. “Is everything ok?”
“I’ll ride with my husband now.” I was done. 😆
Shane and Kaitlin were totally fine, albeit a bit worried about me flipping the ATV in a literal span of two minutes. Ha. But, once I was riding on the back, I had a great time! The views were incredible!
The tour included two stops in the Sacred Valley of the Incas: Moray and the Maras salt mines.
First up was Moray, an Incan agricultural laboratory/archeological site.
As you can see, this site is a series of platforms in a natural hole. On average, the platforms are ~1.8 m / 6 ft tall, and our guide told us that each platform represented a microclimate since the temperature and amount of sunlight, for example, varies among the platforms. Hence, it became (so they suspect) an agricultural laboratory!
Up next, the salt mines!
We couldn’t visit the salt mines via ATV; the route is a bit too dangerous for that, given it’s a winding road into a valley. So, we returned the ATVs and hopped on a bus for this part.
The salt mines are indeed a functioning business. Locals own the various salt flats, mine the salt by hand, and carry it out on their own! The salt comes from a saltwater stream from the mountain behind the mines, but the true source of the water is unknown. And according to our guide, it has purposefully not been look for for fear of disrupting it or providing other areas with the source location and, therefore, access to it. They produce three main types of salt here: white, pink, and brown. The white is your standard table salt, the pink is the famous one, and the brown isn’t for consumption (it’s mostly for agriculture or spa/bath treatments). The different salts vary based on the amount of nutrients and are harvested from different layers in the salt pool.
We left with some smoked pink salt, which was incredible and very potent! You could smell the smokey flavor through the plastic bags!
The Sacred Valley is huge, and this was only a taste of the things to see in this area. But we were primarily here for one thing: Machu Picchu! More on that next. 🙂
Nos vemos,
The Shwits 
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