Rainbow mountain tour, is a trip that depart from cusco city, it’s one of our favorite hikes. Located at the ausangate mountains range, over 5000 meters above sea level, at the east from the city, this peak is also known as Vinicunca, considered sacred by the locals; reason by which the locals go in a pilgrimage and do shamanic offerings close by (they bury offerings consisting in natural products).
This is an amazing summit, that has several colors, offers a wonderful 360 degrees view, many colored summits, mostly reddish, and it is a land of llamas and alpacas as well, where we will see many of them along the way.
There are several itineraries to Vinicunca; from day trips, and several day treks that starts at different places; one of the new, and fantastic itinerary, is the one that starts at Tinqui, it includes 2 nights camping.
This private tour, is one of the best programs we have in the region. with optional early departure we guarantee, that we can get the summit before the crowds, or the later departure to be the last ones, at the top of Vinicunca and enjoy it, without too many people.
We also have the rainbow mountain tour that includes trekking, we depart at Upis, which is right in front of the ausangate mount, we spend two night in tents, then get the view point of the vinicunca on the 3th day.
For people looking for larger treks, we offer the salkantay trek, choquequirao trek, ancascocha, and other programs in the region.
08:00 hrs
The journey starts with an early meet up in your hotel, and drive in a private transport towards east, after about 3 hours drive, you’ll reach a highland settlement, which is the last settlement near the vinicunca, the settlement is at“4,426m / 14520ft”, it is recently populated by the muleteers (villagers who offer horses to ride), they farm llamas and alpacas; they found new way of getting their income, they rent their horses to visitors, and pull the horses.
Before hiking to the Vinicunca, we’ll see at the trail heat, something interesting, the locals wearing their traditional clothes (colorful handmade textiles), wait in line-up, to pull horses in case you want to hire. we will walk towards our destination, during this hike we will cover about 5 kilometers.
Along the hike we will see nice mountains covered by, highland grass named Icchu, see llamas, alpacas and locals with colorful dress, the trail is gentle uphill and some small steep part, as we gain altitude we can start seeing reddish color summits, after about 1.5 hours we finally summit the Vinicunca view point “5,000m / 16, 404 ft” approximately.
The view is magnificent, several summits are white because of snow, rainbow shape mount, is the principal view, the others are red mostly, there is time to explore the area, and climb up to a higher point, for unique pictures, then after enjoying it, we will return; now the trail is all gentle downhill, we will arrive to a village, and have lunch made by our cook, after lunch we will take our exclusive transport and return to the city, arriving back at around 18:00 hrs.
At arrival our guide will escort you to your hotel, where the private adventure ends.
We have daily departures; no minimum or maximum needed, as optional, we can depart later earlier to be the 1st ones on the top, or depart later be the last hikers, and enjoy more.
We can do a combo trip as well, a trip that can include the inca bridge, for which, we should depart earlier, this allow us to enjoy the fresh morning at the mountain top, and get there amongst the 1st ones..
The journey is set in private service, we have discounts for groups .
