Rainbow Mountain

So I thought I’d do a completely separate post about my rainbow mountain trip mainly because I have about a hundred photos to share! 

We all booked the trip with our local guide but you can pretty much book it on any street you walk down in Cusco. Although I do have to say all the photos on the adverts are totally photoshopped so if you’re expecting a bright multicoloured mountain when you arrive you’ll be in for a shock!! Anyway I was a bit apprehensive the day before we went because I’d seen there had been a lot of snow and of course you don’t want to hike all that way and no even see the rainbow mountain itself, and I had read online about how hard the hike was, and as I am no pro hiker with no hiking gear I knew I was going to be in for a fun ride!

An interesting fact I learnt about rainbow mountain is that actually it was only discovered just over 3 years ago, prior to that the actual rainbow mountain itself was covered in snow. Of course this is sadly an effect of global warming. 

The minivan picked us up at 4.30am from the hostel and we drove about 3 hours from Cusco to a local town to have breakfast. After breakfast (we had wheat soup?!?!) we then made a rather rocky 1 hour ascent up the mountain to where we would begin our trek. We drove though villages where children were out playing and the locals were farming their crops. There was countless lamas and alpacas, some of them from time to time running in front of the minivan obviously on a death wish! 

When we arrived at the car park I could already feel the altitude and as the trek started it only got worse. The altitude was 4,800m and we were hiking up to 5,200m. If you wanted you could get a horse ride to the top but it’s quite expensive, not to mention lazy! 

The trek took around 4 hours in total (to get there and back). The initial 1 hour was the easiest bit of the climb with just a gradual incline then the final half hour/ 40 minutes was awful! A very steep climb with little oxygen to breathe in. The ground was also slippery from where the snow had melted, I was only wearing my trainers so I actually slipped over once. Most of the group had hiking boots on so they were more prepared than me! 

Once we reached the top (and finally got my breath back) you soon forgot about the hellish climb up there as the view was incredible. In front of me there was rainbow mountain, to the left there was the red valley, behind me there was snow topped mountains and in the distance you could see a glacier. Totally amazing! I will be honest and say the whole experience was slightly ruined by the amount of people there - I would say there was about 200 people all scrambling around trying to get there perfect photo! A friend of mine did a tour 2 days after me which was ran by another company and left Cusco at 3am, she said there was maybe only 20 other people there at the time so I’d suggest to go earlier if you want to beat the crowds. 

On the climb back down you could opt to hike over to the red valley (which you can see a bit of from rainbow mountain and see in my photos below) but by this point it had started snowing and was bitterly cold (again I wasn’t prepared and I didn’t have enough layers!) Some friends of mine did it on another day and it looked amazing so I’d say it’s also worth the visit if you still have the energy!