Rainbow Mountain

December 8^th, 2021

Rainbow Mountain is a relatively new tourist destination in Peru and is known by locals as Vinicunca.  It has only sprung onto the backpacker’s radar in the last 5-6 years but it has become wildly popular since then, enough so that the locals have invested in a new road to make it much easier to access.  The mountain has these multi-coloured stripes passing over it, caused by various minerals.  Even still, it's a full day trip from Cusco, typically starting super early in the morning and returning around 4-5 pm.

For that reason, Lisa and I decided to stay the night before in Cusco instead of attempting to taxi in from Pisac that morning.  Lisa lived in Cusco for 10-12 months during the outbreak of the pandemic, so we returned to her old stomping grounds, an apartment that was part of a complex owned by a friendly family who live on the bottom floor.

I loved the showerhead in the apartment...I'm sure it's to code!  Unfortunately it didn't provide any hot water in the early morning.  Great way to start the day.

At 4:30 am, we stood outside of a nearby hotel and a small tourist bus pulled up…but it wasn’t for us.  I had visions of a repeat performance of my Colca Canyon trip where I was supposed to be picked up at 3 am but the guide had booked me for the following day so I had to wake up again at an ungodly hour the following night.  Thankfully that wasn’t the case and another bus showed up 15 minutes later and we were on our way.

It was almost two hours until we reached our breakfast destination and I attempted to sleep in the bus, but we were seated near the front and the driver and guide were playing some terribly annoying music that was not easy to doze to.  Well, at least the driver stayed awake. 

The peak of Rainbow Mountain is 5200 meters (17,000 feet) so some precautions should be taken to avoid altitude sickness.  Those strategies included drinking lots of water, perhaps chewing on coca leaves or coca candy and not having a big breakfast, at least according to our guide.  The restaurant we stopped at was essentially a big covered shed, open to the outside and sure enough, the breakfast was pretty meagre, consisting of fruit, sweet bread and a vegetable noodle soup (which just didn’t seem right at that time of the day).  Unfortunately, both Lisa and I seemed to have upset stomachs from something we must have eaten the day before.  At first we thought it was last night’s pizza dinner in Cusco but it was more likely our big salad lunch in Pisac.  Oh boy, this could make for an interesting day…

Back on the bus, the vehicle began to climb up to 4600 meters on a dirt road, meandering through some small villages.  As we neared our destination, the mountain sides were not just dusted, but covered in snow.  It seemed like a number of the tourists on the bus thought that was cool but I was immediately concerned that we would maybe not be able to see the multi-colours of the mountain and it would just be white.  At least the sun was out and perhaps it will melt before we reached the top.

The bus parked and we hopped off.  Walking sticks were brought out from the back of the bus and distributed to everyone.  Our guide told us that there was no way we would all stay together so hike on up, enjoy and he’d be following up with the slowest of the group to ensure everyone was safe.  Lisa and I started off and were near the front of the pack and thanks to our tentative tummies, we were both focused on making it to the first pit stop which was about 15 minutes away.

Looking back to the parking lot:

Come on sun, do you work!

There are alpacas in this pic, but good luck finding them:

Above Lisa's hand on the left is the saddle where we are headed:

Lisa and I were steady with our pace as you could definitely feel the altitude.  The snow was melting but on the sides of the trail I could see that it was one to two inches thick, and it was going to take a while to melt.  I was not overly optimistic that we were going to see the Rainbow Mountain in its glory, or at all…but let’s see.

Beside the trail for the hikers, was a muddier, wider path for the horses that were ferrying tourists up and down the mountain with their handlers.  These local men and women are hard workers as they run back down the hill to pick up the next customer, trying to do as many laps as they can during the busy mornings.

The trail we were taking was about 3 kilometres long and climbed about 600 meters.  As we neared the main viewing point, it was obvious that we were not going to get the full effect of the rainbow spectacle.  The only hope was that we were approaching it from the south side and the north face was getting more heat from the sun so it might be clear.

It almost looks like the queues on Everest!

Reaching the saddle where the iconic pictures of Rainbow Mountain are taken, it was a bit disappointing.  The north face was partially melted but the colours were not popping as the terrain was wet, but it could have been worse.  Lisa had started hiking up to the top viewpoint which was another 50-80 meters higher but I thought I would try and get a selfie while I could.  The guide showed up and he said I should head up to the top but I asked him to snap a few pics of me because you never know…I could see some clouds rolling in.

Not bad:

But this is what it could look like, this is Sibel and Reinier's view a week ago.

And then if you have a funky camera lens filter:

Looking off into the distance from the saddle:

Beautiful, but again, it could have looked like this (courtesy of Sibel and Reinier):

At the saddle, looking up to the top viewpoint:

I'll take it though...

I’m glad I got him to do that as by the time I got to the top, the visibility went to shit and we couldn’t see the mountain at all for a while.  Eventually we got a few glimpses here and there but it was nothing like our friends Sibel and Reinier had about a week earlier.  Their guide even told them that they were lucky.  I’ll post a few pics from them to show you what it can be like…

The view from the top.

Okay, it got a bit better.

Made some new friends on the way back down.

The hike down was nice and easy.  We did see a few people, and kids, suffering from altitude sickness though, including a bit of puking.  I felt like I managed it well.  I drank lots of water, chewed on my coca candy (which wasn’t that tasty, but better than the leaves I tried at Machu Picchu).  The views on the way down were stunning.

The upper "horse station", hoping to collect weary climbers on their way down.

We did it!

Back in the bus, we returned to the same restaurant for lunch, which I thought was even more disappointing than breakfast, but it’s what you kind of expect on day trips like this.  It was a few more hours until we were back in Cusco and then we took a taxi back to Pisac.  The trip wasn’t what I had hoped for, but I was still glad to have done it.  You just never know what will happen when mountains and Mother Nature are involved.