A farm, or chacra, near Huaraz.
This passage is from Sarity Colonia Comes Flying by Eduardo Gonazález Viaña and found in The Peru Reader. A group of friends attempt to rid themselves of a snake that is at the command of an evil sorcerer.
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Don Guillermo’s remedy for scaring away the snake consisted of boiling heavily salted water in twenty cans. To know if there was enough salt, one had to put a potato in the water and see if it floated. Then we were supposed to dump the salty water on the land around the house. That way, the snake would think he was at sea. Being a land animal, he would never return.
I guess the snake didn’t buy this little ruse, maybe because he already knew about the trick. As you know, Don Guillermo is a journalist in Huancayo and writes a famous column on home remedies. I’m not trying to say that snakes can read, but that at least some of them know how to float.