Palccoyo Rainbow Mountain Tour Offers a Quieter and Easier Alternative to the Vinicunca Mountain This full-day experience will take you to discover the beautiful colored mountains of Palccoyo, which are a 3-hour bus ride away from Cusco. Compared to Vinicunca, the hike in Palccoyo is short and easy, making it perfect for people who want to appreciate beautiful sceneries without breaking a sweat.
We will be able to appreciate 3 different colored mountains, one forest stone with singular stone formations and the beautiful Ausangate in all its splendor. You’ll also get a chance to make friends with some local wildlife — alpacas and llamas — and have an alfresco lunch against the kaleidoscopic mountains.
We begin our day with pick-up from the hotel at 5:00 am and begin our drive towards the Palccoyo Rainbow Mountain trailhead. Located south of Cusco, we drive for approximately 4hrs in private transport until the trail where we will provide you with breakfast.
Along the way, we see beautiful Andes mountains as well as lush green valleys, local people working on their land, and hundreds of alpacas and llamas. If we are lucky we will stop for vicuñas and observe them in their natural free state. When we get to Apacheta, we will begin our hike toward Palcoyo Mountain. After hiking for 10 minutes we get the viewpoint from where you enjoy the first Rainbow Mountain. We take pictures and drink our wáter. Then we hike for another 10 minutes we get to the second viewpoint where we will take pictures of the second Mountain. Then we hike another 10 minutes to the third viewpoint and you will be impressed by the third mountain. This viewpoint is the place from where you take the classical Postcard Picture of Palcoyo.
After enjoying the beautiful colorful mountains, we will hike back to the Trailhead. Then we take the van for about 2 hours until Ttio town where will have our lunch in a local house prepared by our Chef. After enjoying our delicious meal, we drive another 1 hour and a half to Cusco. We will drop you off at your hotel at 05 pm roughly.
If you feel good once you get to the third viewpoint, we can hike another 10 minutes to the Stone forest. You will see beautiful rock formations once you get to the top. The trail is switchbacked and steep. But the view from the top is amazing. You will see Ausangate Mountain in a distance and all 3 Rainbow Mountains. Another good thing to climb is, you don’t come back by the same trail, you hike in a loop.
We booked our trip through Rainbow Mountain Expeditions (highly recommended).
Eber and our driver picked us up at our hotel in Cusco at 4am. We drove to the breakfast restaurant then went off to the village of Palccoyo.
It is difficult to describe the scenery there other than to say it is spectacular. Eber was with us every step of the way explaining everything about the area. He generously offered to take pictures of us throughout the tour, and of course Eber knew all the great spots for pictures. The rainbow mountains and red mountains were stunning. Each different viewpoint made the scenery look slightly different due to the sun, clouds, colors. Sooooo beautiful there.
We made our way to the third rainbow mountains where you are very close to the natural striations with the other rainbow mountains in the background. Amazing views and a wonderful guide. Eber packed hot muña tea again which helped us warm up, such a great way to soak in the views all around us.
The elevation here is quite high, so we took our time on the short hike up to the stone forest. Eber stopped often to let us catch our breath.
The stone forest is also breathtakingly beautiful ( looks like something out of Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings). The sharp stone walls shoot out of the ground…nature is truly amazing.
We have many pictures of us at Palccoyo taken by Eber that we will treasure and help remind us of our time in Peru.
We are so glad we did this tour with Eber and pretty much had the place to ourselves. We only started seeing other tourists on our way back to the car. We really enjoyed our tour of Palccoyo with Rainbow Mountain Expeditions…glad we skipped the crowds of Vinicunca rainbow mountain.
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