Trip Itinerary - The Classic Rainbow Mountain in Group Service full day

What's Included - The Classic Rainbow Mountain in Group Service full day

Not Included - The Classic Rainbow Mountain in Group Service full day

What to Pack - The Classic Rainbow Mountain in Group Service full day

Important Facts - The Classic Rainbow Mountain in Group Service full day

FAQs - The Classic Rainbow Mountain in Group Service full day

FAQs Frequently asked questions of our travelers
Excursions and trips to the rainbow mountain Vinicunca, also known as the rainbow mountain or the Seven Color Mountain, has established itself as one of the great tourist attractions in Peru by receiving visitors every day in high season, assured the Regional Directorate of Tourism (Dircetur) of the region of Cusco – Peru. The multicolored mountain has increased its popularity in recent years to attract a third of the visitors who arrive daily at the ruins of the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, also in Cusco, the main tourist attraction in Peru with 4,000 national and foreign visitors to the day.

Why is it called Cerro Winikunka?

Since before, it has always been known as the Winikunka hill, which in Quechua means “Hill with colored stones in the shape of a neck”. The colors are due to the presence of minerals that are located from the bottom of the earth to the surface and that somehow nature has managed to preserve.

Today it is designated as Cerro Vinicunca, Vinicunca Mountain or Mountain of the Seven Colors. They are hills (or mountains) that correspond to the Andes mountain range in Peru and are close to the snowy Ausangate (6,372 masl), there is a sign for tourists “Wellcome to the mountains” that welcomes the Pitumarca district. Its slopes and mountain tops are tinted by strips of intense shades of fuchsia, turquoise, lavender and gold. Due to climate change and the melting of the Vilcanota mountain range, the geological wonder that is unparalleled in the world is exposed. My family is from the city of Sicuani, capital of the province of Canchis, I remember having heard in my adolescence that there were mines in these colored hills, even my father as a lawyer, in the 1940s, advised some of them at the beginning of their training. local communities: Machupitumarca, Pampachiri and others. Upon reaching Vinincunca, from the viewpoint, where the view is 360º, it is observed that the hills continue to have colors, calling the attention, for its chromatic diversity, the variety of pigmentation of all the strong tones. It is truly a surreal landscape, writes Álvaro Ra,: “It is like being in front of a drawing that seems to burn like lava on its undulating slopes, obscuring the glare of the sun and its celestial atmosphere, which received the name of Mountains of the Seven Colors or Rainbow montain. It is observed that the color blue does not exist because it would be in the sky.

Talking with locals between the ages of seventy and eighty, they refer to the existence of these hills, they were always covered by clouds and snow and the existence of intense cold made them unvisitable”. In 2007, the province of Quispicanchis, regarding the Ausangate area, carried out “ecological economic zoning studies that concluded “there are areas assigned to ecological protection and it is recommended that they be excluded from uses incompatible with their characteristics.” The district of Pitumarca – CANCHIS province – carried out “economic ecological microzoning” studies in the area where the Seven Colors Mountain (or RAINBOW MOUNTAIN) is located, warning of the vulnerability of the zonal ecosystem. Since 2009, the Ausangate area, Just as 35 areas of Cusco processed to be declared “Regional Conservation Areas”, before the Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute (INGEMMET) remaining, six years stuck by the state bureaucracy in the Peruvian government.On the other hand, the National Service of Protected Natural Areas (SERNANP) responded by saying that Ausangate did not meet “the requirements requested in the directive and, therefore, said mining request” did not overlap any Natural Protection Area established by the government of Peru and that an area tour”.