RAINBOW MOUNTAIN PERU: IN TWO MINDS
My hike to the top of Vinicunca Rainbow Mountain was one of the worst I've ever taken.
How did it go so badly?!
The rainy season had arrived early in Peru. It put a total dampener on things!
Vinicunca Rainbow Mountain was high on my list. Initially checking out the prices of tours with numerous agencies in Cusco, it just didn't feel worthwhile to spend between $20-40 only to get to Rainbow Mountain and find that hundreds of other people were clambering over each other to get their pictures. After a few hours of researching and speaking to locals, my roommate and I settled on a route to get there solo. You can read more about travelling to Rainbow Mountain without a tour here.
Heading out at 8 am to catch our Collectivo, we still had high hopes. The weather will clear, right?
Maybe we'll get that special moment for 2 minutes where all the clouds clear and we're left with a spectacular view.
Nope. Never happened. We began our climb from the foot of the hills and as we passed each person on their way down, their disappointment was written all over their faces. Halfway up, a Peruvian couple even warned us to not bother continuing for the rest of the way. We ignored it. Still in hope. We carried on.
Passing wild horses and beautiful mountains, we were determined to get to the top. The last 800 metres were by far the hardest. Stopping every few minutes to catch our breath. Following our GPS on maps.me I could see we were close. Just push a little harder. Almost there at 5200m.
Finally stumbling to the top and taking 5 minutes to catch our breath before looking around.
And we kept looking around.
Where was Rainbow Mountain? Was it the mountain on the left or the one on the right?! Eventually realising it was in front of us, we climbed a little higher to get a better view.
And it looked like this...
No amount of photoshop could make this look like Rainbow Mountain
I see the stripes now
Ahhhh... Red Mountain. Almost!
Yep.. as beautiful as snow-covered mountains are, you suddenly lack the appreciation when you're expecting a multi-coloured spectacle.
And nope... the clouds did not clear. Our fingers were numbing and momentarily contemplating the hike over Red mountain, we quickly aborted that idea, starting our descent.
We did, however, discover the not so famous rainbow ditch. A peek into what we could have seen.
The infamous rainbow ditch
Was it worth it?
Yes!!
When travelling, you can't always expect the best of everything. The hike was beautiful in itself and with rainbow mountains scattered across South America, I knew there would be other opportunities!
Still smiling!
When you've climbed to 5200m, it's definitely time to celebrate!! And let's not forget, we did achieve our goal of setting out and avoiding the crowds at Rainbow Mountain. So can't complain!
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Vinicunca Rainbow mountain