Moray Cusco, Andenes de Moray, Moray of the Sacred Valley

Moray has located 62 km from Cusco and 7 km west of Maras. It is at an altitude of 3500 masl. Maras-Moray is a route very used by cyclists. Nearby is the village of Maras, with its salt marshes of Maras.

Discovered in 1932, Moray is enigmatic to visitors; its impressive circular platforms that look like giant fingerprints make one think of a gigantic agricultural laboratory, although many interpretations go by the side of the astronomical observatory or the cult in a primordial sense.

Moray, which does think to adapt plants to new climatic environments, further proves the high level of agronomic knowledge attained by the Incas.

According to the anthropologist John Earls Moray, an agricultural laboratory was built by the Incas to recreate a series of microclimates to plant a wide variety of experimentally improved crops.

The temperature of the floor of each platform determined that the Incas managed to develop twenty ecological zones in miniature where they produced grains such as quinoa and kiwicha, squash and squash, and, of course, multiple varieties of potatoes.

The Moray terraces were an experimental station formed by immense conical depressions of 47 to 84 m, cut in the limestone, where different climates denoted obtained according to the platform’s depth.

Like an artificial crater, Moray terraces resembling a sunken amphitheater did build on retaining walls filled with fertile soil and irrigated by complex irrigation systems. This way, the thermal variation between the surface and the bottom of these natural holes was used to adapt different varieties of plants (more than 250 plant species) on each terrace.

Observations

At 38 Km to the northwest of Cusco and 7 km to the southwest of Maras is the town of Moray. It is possible to arrive by car on the road that leaves the village.