My Favorite Places: Peru's Rainbow Mountains

Marco and I at the top!

Earlier this year I spent a month backpacking across Peru and got a chance to see a lot of the country, but one of my favorite places was a relatively new destination (only 3 years old now), the Rainbow Mountains. Located three hours from Cusco, the Rainbow Mountains have become an incredibly popular day trip for travelers and locals alike, and for good reason, they are absolutely stunning and the entire hike is beautiful.

I booked both the Rainbow Mountain and Machu Picchu tours with a friend in Cusco, we basically walked around asking for written prices from all the tour guides and then taking the prices to the next operator to leverage lower prices. This may seem a little cheap but honestly, in a major tourist hotspot like Cusco, the tour operators often will grossly overcharge for everything. We eventually found a fair price and booked the tour for the following day.

The Long Nap

All the tour operators will pick you up from your hotel at 3 AM in order to get you to the mountains early enough to see everything and still get back at a good time. Pretty much as soon as we hit the van seats we were both asleep and off we went on the highway and then onto a relatively decent mountain road. We arrived shortly after 6 AM and another van arrived shortly after us and we all went into a small barn and had a breakfast of homemade bread, jam, and hot coffee. The weather was damp and cool and the coffee was life-changing for me before setting off on the hike.

The Mad Scramble to the Top

The trail was quite muddy from all the traffic but still amazing

Now, most tours in Peru are very well organized and run like a well-oiled machine, but as I said this one is very new so they haven't quite worked out all the kinks. When we set off, there were approximately six large groups all setting off at the same time and the trail immediately became congested and all the groups mixed together into one big mess, the guides tried to keep everyone in their groups but it soon all fell apart. My friend Marco and I both move at a quick pace in the mountains so we were able to separate ourselves from the crowd a bit and get ahead. The trail is about 8km each way and is quite high in altitude at a high of 4400m so everyone does move quite a bit slower, so there is an option of renting a horse to take you to the top for about $20USD but we opted against this as it seems a bit silly.

The hike up took us about 4.5 hours and took us past small farms and fields filled with llamas and alpacas. The landscape along the way is completely breathtaking and I honestly was equally impressed with it as I was with the mountain. When we arrived at the top it was quite cloudy but sure enough, after a few minutes the clouds cleared and we got an amazing view of the rainbow. We spent about an hour up there before heading back down for the 3.5 hour hike to the van. By the time I got to the bottom I was completely spent, it was about 4PM and I was finished for the day.

Me at the top

Beauty along the way

View down from the top

Panorama

Another Panorama

Hiking down

The Wheels on the Bus Go Off The Cliff

Unfortunately, we had a bit of a hiccup on the ride back to Cusco, as we were making a turn on a switchback in the mountains one of the rear wheels flew off the van and down into a farmers field. Luckily the van was a dually (four tires in the back), so the van didn't drop and we were able to find the wheel and we stole a lug nut off all 3 of the other wheels to make it back. We finally arrived at about 11PM in Cusco and by that time both of us were completely exhausted and went right to sleep.

Thanks for Reading!!