Cusco, Peru & Rainbow Mountain

Views from our hike to Rainbow Mountain, Peru

              Apologies for the silence on this page in the last month or so – between our trip to Peru, finals, and some end of the semester travels, I’ve been too busy experiencing new things to catch up on writing about them. So, the good and bad news: bad – yesterday I officially departed from Chile after nearly 5 months in such a wonderful country and I will miss it very very much (more to come in a separate post); good – I have had all sorts of travel and airport time to catch up on my writing *and* I am coming home to family and friends – can’t wait to see so many of you and catch up!

              This will be the first of two posts about our recent trip to Peru (the next one will include our hike to Machu Picchu) but here I just want to talk about the incredible city of Cusco and our “warm-up” hike day. For a little background: back in mid-August, 5 other friends and I thought it would be a good idea to schedule a week-long trip to Peru 5 days after our San Pedro trip and right in the middle of our final projects and exams at school. Needless to say, academically it wasn’t our smartest idea however educationally (notice the difference here) going to Peru was one of the best decisions we have made all semester.

              Before taking off on our Machu Picchu trek, the company we organized the trip through required that we arrive to Cusco two days before the start of the hike to acclimate to Peru’s altitude. Cusco, Peru is located at 11,150 ft. and is literally situated in the middle of the mountains. We were dropped off in the main downtown plaza where, according to research we’d done before, people passed out on average every hour due to the altitude. Thankfully none of us fainted, however we were all lightheaded and breathing a little heavier than we should have been after walking up the little hill to our hostel.  

We stayed in the historic district of the city, complete with beautiful white and blue adobe buildings and brown brick and wooden structures giving the city plenty of charm. First of all, much like our time in Argentina, Peruvian Spanish is pristine in comparison to Chilean Spanish so we enjoyed being able to easily understand everyone during our stay. The downtown district is pretty touristy, however the city itself is huge. During our first afternoon in the city we walked around to get a feel for the town and local culture, taking it pretty easy as we could feel our bodies having to adjust to the altitude.

Cusco from above

Cusco's main plaza

Typical historic district architecture

Cusco, Peru

Our second day in Peru, my friend Michael and I decided to trek to a place called Rainbow Mountain about three and a half hours outside of Cusco. Unfortunately for them, we couldn’t convince anyone else to come with us, mostly due to the fact that we had to leave at 3:30 AM (but had a 3 hour bus ride to sleep more) and it basically turned our 4-day hiking trip into 5, but they missed out because the views from the hike were unreal.

Views from the start of our hike

The hike started at about 14,200 ft. and neither of us could say that we had really adjusted to the altitude yet, so that was certainly our biggest challenge throughout the day. Luckily, the views were incredible and there were plenty of alpacas to keep us company, so we managed. Here is a sample of our views on the way up:

            The last part of the hike was certainly the most challenging as the peak that we climbed to was at 16, 520 ft. and neither of us had hiked at that altitude before. For about the last 200 feet climbing up, we would literally count out 30 steps walking, stop to breathe for a minute or two, and then do another 30 because our bodies just didn’t have enough oxygen to go further all at once. My head was spinning and I was certainly feeling the nauseous effects of altitude sickness (Michael had taken 3 altitude sickness pills at this point in time), but nonetheless we made it to the top and immediately forgot how oxygen-deprived and sick we felt because we were looking out on these views:

First glacier I'd ever seen!

            Needless to say, the day was a challenge but well worth the slight oxygen deprivation that accompanied it. We were also both much more prepared altitude-wise for our Machu Picchu trek than the rest of our group, so I would call it a success. This hike also happened to be on the same day as Thanksgiving in the U.S., so we met up with the rest of our friends for dinner and found a local Peruvian restaurant in Cusco and did Thanksgiving expat style – complete with llama and alpaca (sorry, but they were really good).

Alpaca for dinner

Machu Picchu post to follow! J