Vinicunca Mountain and the Red Valley

For our last day in Cusco we decided to hike up to the Vinicunca Mountain, also called the Rainbow Mountain. It’s a beautiful and colorful mountain at 16,400 ft above sea level.

It hasn’t been long since the Vinicunca is known from the public. Indeed, for a long time this mountain was only known by the locals since you needed to realize a 6 day trek to get to it. But since 2016 the Peruvian government built a road to the bottom of the mountain and now you can see the wonderful landscape in only 1 day from Cusco.

So this is what we did, knowing that the Rainbow Mountain is now the second most visited site around Cusco after the Machu Picchu with over 1,000 people hiking up there everyday…

All travel agencies in Cusco offer the same itinerary : after leaving Cusco around 3:30 or 4am, you have a 2h drive where you stop for breakfast, followed by another 45min drive to the beginning of the trail. It takes about 2 hours to hike up and then you get about 30min at the top for pictures etc… before going back the same path, stopping for lunch and finally heading back to Cusco.

If you know us by now, you can guess that we were not super excited about this express itinerary, especially knowing that absolutely EVERY agency in Cusco offers the same thing…

After doing some research, and with the idea that we would like to be as far from crowds as possible (yes yes we keep thinking it is possible), we finally find an agency that offers the hike up to the Rainbow Mountain but then the hike down another trail through the Red Valley. In total the hike is 10.6 miles long, instead of only 6 miles if we only hiked up and down the Rainbow Mountain. Hopefully with a longer hike there should be less people. On top of that we learn that only 2 agencies in Cusco offer this hike, and each only brings 15 people per day! Told you we could find something off the beaten path and far from crowds! The tour is a little more expensive than the basic one but we know this is the best for us, without waiting a second we book it on the spot.

The alarm rings at 3am (fortunately for you guys we don’t have pictures of us right out of bed) for the scheduled pick up time of 3:30am. For once the bus picks us up right in front of our hostel and oh my God we witnessed a true miracle. The minivan is ON TIME. You can read that again but no there is no typo, for the first time in our month in Peru we see Peruvians on time.

There we go with 11 other people towards the small village where we will grab breakfast. It is only 6 am when we get to the restaurant and boy it is cold outside! The dining room of the restaurant being also outside, it is COLD in the restaurant! So we grab breakfast with all our warmest clothes on, without forgetting the gloves and hat, and sip on a hot mate de coca to keep us warm and give us energy for the hike.

We start hiking around 7:30 am and the guide gladly tells us that we are the first group up top! We do see 3 other minivans on the parking lot but we don’t want to tame his enthusiasm, and man only 3 minivans! That means we will be almost alone at the Rainbow Mountain. When we see the size of the parking lot we can easily imagine that in no time there will be way over 30 buses like ours.

At the beginning of the trail there are a lot of Peruvian horse riders there to propose to climb the mountain by horse, and they are actually present all along the way. Another consequence of mass tourism, before all of this, you had to hike up and earn your view of the mountain, now you can simply pay a guy to climb on his horse… we don’t really understand the reward in that… but at least it creates employment for the locals.

Of course we decided to hike up, we have hiked a lot harder in Peru… Towards the top, the air gets thinner and thinner and we finally get up at 17,060 ft above sea level. Our new personal best!

The first half hour of the trail is the hardest even though the trail is at it’s flattest. The reason? The cold! Our guide explains that at night the temperature drops to 5°F and we walk by a few frozen ponds. We don’t know how cold it is as we walk but despite our gloves, hat and thick socks we are afraid our extremities are going to freeze off. To make things worse this first part is windy and in the shade. Once the sun comes out its feels a lot better and Maider finally stops complaining! She really doesn’t like the cold… and Matt hasn’t had the courage yet to break the news that Bolivia is going to be even colder…

On the way we don’t see many people. We are really glad we chose an agency that starts the day this early.

The scenery is simply incredible along the way.

The last few yards are the steepest and the hardest to breath but we can see that the end is very close!

We are stunned when we get up top after walking 1h20. There is only about 10 people and the weather is absolutely beautiful, the dream! We have the possibility to climb another 650 ft to have an even better look, of course we don’t hesitate and start climbing again.

The view is breathtaking (quite literally since at 1,700 ft above sea level there is 50% less oxygen).

On one side, the view on the Rainbow Mountain and all its different colors,

on the other, the Red Valley and a glacier with snow capped summits.

So where do these colors come from?

It’s simply time and mother nature working hand in hand. For centuries, layers of different sediments have created the landscape that looks like a painting. Indeed sulfur is responsible for the yellow color, iron oxide for the red and copper sulfate for the green. These sediments combined with time have created this amazing mix of colors.

We take our time at the top to take in all these views before joining our guide and the group to continue our journey. When we look back at where we came from we can see hundreds of people hiking up the mountain and we feel very lucky to have been able to enjoy the scenery almost all alone!

We continue in the Red Valley without 3 members of our group. Indeed, they were not feeling well because of the altitude and decided to hike back the same way we came from. Leaving us 10 with the guide to finish the hike.

As the name tells, the Red Valley is a valley located between red mountain tops. It takes us about 20 minutes to get to the beginning of the valley.

We only see one other group, since all the other people go back the same way they came up. Starting now, we will definitely be all alone!

This is where starts a 3h30 long hike down the valley. The first part reminds us of Huacachina and it’s dunes. We go down in some red sand, our guide even runs down!!!

Impressive and really fun (aside from sand in the shoes…) !

The remainder of the hike is in the middle of plains between the mountains.

We come across prairies full of Llamas and Alpacas (and here no need to pay a Peruvian lady to take a picture with them, they are here in their natural habitat),

and small rivers and tiny villages (literally in the middle of nowhere).

This is really a beautiful hike!

We finished hiking around 2 pm at the bottom of the Red Valley, where our bus is awaiting us to drive us to lunch. The drive back offers again some incredible landscapes.

And the lunch buffet was perfect after hiking 10.6 miles.

Very pleased with our day, we get back to Cusco and decide to go drink a last Pisco Sour for our last night in Peru! The next day we are taking a bus to the Titicaca lake on the Bolivian side.

It is time for good byes with Peru, where we have spent an incredible month and are excited to discover a new country in Bolivia.