Montaña de 7 Colores

The "Montaña de 7 Colores" or "Rainbow Mountain" is one of the tourist attractions around Cusco that gets promoted so much it almost feels like you don't need to go there as you see the pictures everywhere. And it kind of feels like they must have worked on the pictures with photoshop. This can't be natural so maybe the real thing is a disappointment compared to all the pictures?
But I still wanted to go. If just to challenge me to climb up to 5,000m. I booked a tour in Cusco that included transportation to the starting point of the hike, breakfast and lunch. I was picked up at 3:30 in the morning and just climbed on the bus trying to get back to sleep. Unfortunately there were to german people talking to each other on the bus and it's a lot easier to blend out foreign languages than your own. It was an older guy talking to a girl around my age. The guy told her she sounded like she came from Hamburg. Which she did not but I stopped myself from getting into the conversation. This got a lot harder when he suddenly said "I gonna be traveling for about 2 years. I wouldn't if I could work but I had to take a break for health reasons. The time is not gonna bring me anything - you know like if I would be at home working - but it's ok for a while!" How could somebody who has been on the road for a while say something like that? I assumed the experience is similar for everyone but turns out there are actually people that feel working at home is more fulfilling than traveling the world. Even though I almost felt physical pain not commenting on this I guess it's something I have to learn to accept. Not everybody feels the same way about their journey.
We drove around Cusco for easily an hour picking up more people before we finally started towards Japura where we had breakfast before driving the last 30 minutes to the starting point of our hike. The hike started on 4,300m and would go up to 5,100m which was the higher than I hiked up to so far. I expected it to be similar to the hike up to Laguna 69 which had been on 4,600m but with a similar rise.
I started hiking with the german girl who was not from Hamburg but Mainz! We talked about our travels and I had to learn again that the experience is different for everyone. She had just decided to cut her trip short as her travel partner had just left her and she didn't really enjoy traveling by herself.
We talked for a while but even though the hike wasn't to steep I realized quickly that talking wouldn't be to easy. At some point we were walking quietly and when she stopped to redo her shoe laces I kept walking as I knew a hike like this is best done at your own pace. I felt a lot better than when I hiked up to Laguna 69 so I guess being on high altitude for a few weeks helps.
Lots of people were taking horses on the way up so the guides coming down with empty horses always tried to convince you to get on their horse. But I stayed strong and kept walking. Especially as you had to get of the horse for the really steep parts anyway.
The last bit was the steepest. Here all the horses were turning around. But it really wasn't that bad. And the promise of the view was pushing me to keep going. Once up there I realized I was first of my group and I easily waited 15 minutes for the other girls to come up. I was proud to be so well trained by now.
The view of the Rainbow Mountain was unreal. I was amazed by what nature does. After taking tons of pictures we continued walking to the Red Valley. The view point for Rainbow Mountain was super crouch but not a lot of people walk the extra 20 minutes to go to the Red Valley. Which was good for us but a shame for them. The landscape here was almost more impressive. And to get there you had to walk along the surface of Rainbow Mountain which gave you a much closer look of the different colored rocks.
I was really happy I choose to do this tour as it was definitely worth its money. So beautiful and unreal!
After we hiked down and got back to the car quite a lot of people complained about trouble with the altitude. One lady even got oxygen from a tank and almost everybody took a breath of rubbing alcohol against the headache. Seeing this I was really happy that I was used to the thin air by now and never got really bad sickness from it.
We had lunch in Japura and got back to Cusco in the afternoon.Read more