Rainbow territory

While traveling through southern Peru with Remo, other travelers kept telling us about the so-called Rainbow Mountain. It is Vinicunca, a magnificent mountain striped in seven colors, which one could take a guided day tour to from Cusco. No question, after all the gushing, we needed to see the mountain with our own eyes. But since we are not the biggest fans of such organized tours, I leafed through our Rother guidebook where I found a hiking route that ran very close to Vinicunca, as opposed to the Rainbow tour. So, far from any tourist trails, we hiked around an impressive mountain massif over 6000m high called Ausangate. In the six days of our journey we just met hikers twice – otherwise we simply encountered alpacas, vicuñas and a few farmers. Seeing the Rainbow Mountain only from a far didn’t matter, because the mountains around us shone in an incredible variety of colors. We never doubted for a moment that we had made the right decision.

Circuito Ausangate (Peru), July 2017