A trip to the rainbow mountains

The rainbow mountains have gained massive popularity as a tourist attraction in the last years in Peru. You might wonder why it was not famous before – well it's because they didn't exist until recently. These mountains used to be covered with glacier but because of changing climate the glacier melted and revealed all of the colors. 

There are several mountains that were discovered with those properties, the most famous being called Vinicunca, located at 5100 meter above sea level. There are many tour providers that offer day tours from Cusco, typically starting at 4:00 am including buffet breakfast and lunch.

As we were four people that wanted to visit (my mother, my aunt and a neighbor) we decided to hire a taxi service for the day, so we could go at our own pace.

Already the drive from Cusco was very scenic, with beautiful landscapes on the way. Usually there are two places where the car / tours can drive to: Cusipata and Pitumarca. From there, one has to walk either 1.5 hours (Cusipata) or 0.5 hour (Pitumarca) to reach the viewpoint. But during the time we went, the Cusipata entrance was closed because of strikes. So the only option was to enter through Pitumarca.

At the beginning, I was not too bothered by that, as the prospect of only having to walk half an hour instead of one and a half sounded more doable. Before visiting, many of my acquaintances told me the walk was going to be really tough and they barely made it. However, in hindsight I would say that the walks are quite similar. From what I could see, the walk from Cusipata is longer but quite flat with only the end part being on the steeper side. Whereas the walk from Pitumarca also ended up taking 1 hour and 15 minutes because the distance was short but very steep and thus took a lot of energy and breaks. 

Even though by the time I went to Vinicunca I've already been over 2 months in Cusco and was accustomed to the altitude, I struggled a lot with this hike. So I definitely recommend having stayed in Cusco for at least a couple of days before visiting. Also, pack warm clothes such as a thick jacket, gloves and a beanie as it is super windy on top.

From what I understood, another advantage of the entrance through Pitumarca is the variety of alternative options to get to the top. One can rent a horse, sit on the back of a motorcycle or rent one of those 4-wheel motor quad. Each option costs around 70-100 Soles for one way (around 15-25 USD). The horses can be also rented halfway, which I saw a lot of people do, as they reached the limit of their stamina.

On the top there are benches and people selling food and snacks, including hot Chicharron (fried pork belly). To get the typical photo angle (like in my first picture) there was a line that took about 10 minutes. Not sure if it's even longer usually, as we went off-season. Which I honestly don't really recommend, as it was cloudy, so the colors didn't come out the same way as they do with good weather. Also (we didn't know this before going), it is actually quite dangerous to go during the rainy season and only two days after our visit a tourist was killed by a blizzard while hiking down.

In case you are looking for similar views but with less people there is also a second, less touristy mountain called Palcoyo. We haven't visited it but all of my mothers tour guide friends highly recommended it.

Before going down one can take a small detour and visit these hand sculptures. For me personally this view was a bit underwhelming and one has to pay an extra 5 soles (around 1.5 USD) to take pictures here.

After taking loads of pictures on the top, we made our way back down to the car. Near the parking we found this cute heart-shaped sea, for which it looks like they are currently building a proper viewpoint.

On our way back to Cusco, we were looking for a lunch stop and therefore decided to stop in the small town Checacupe. While we were not successful in finding a suitable restaurant, we were able to check out the famous view of the three bridges representing different periods in the Peruvian history. 

As you can see in the picture below, there is a rope bridge, similar to the one in Q'eswachaka representing the inca times. Just behind that is the colonial bridge, built during the 18th century by order of the king of Spain. And then there is a modern bridge that is mainly used today, from where I took the picture.