Vinicunca: The Rainbow Mountain

A four-hour journey from Cusco city in Peru, and along the Peruvian Andes, brings you to a region with colourful mountains – some coloured in brick-red, some in lavender, some in greenish-blue. This is due to the sediments present in the soil, and the atmosphere. But the most unique of all these mountains is Vinicunca, or ‘the rainbow mountain’.

Known in Spanish as Montaña de Siete Colores or Montaña de Colores, the 5,200-metre-high Vinicunca is coloured in bands forming a rainbow on earth. For years, Vinicunca and the surrounding mountains lay under thick ice. As the temperatures rose, the ice gave away the natural beauty that had remained underneath.

However, the more the mountain is unique, the tougher a nut it is to crack, as it lies surrounded by other Andean mountains, and can be accessed either by foot or on a horse. But at the end of the ordeal is something that is the only one in the world, which makes all that ordeal worthwhile!