Rainbow Mountain

With Machu Picchu off our list, we had time to visit one more spectacular place in Peru as we bombed it to the border. 

Peru’s rainbow mountain was only discovered in the last decade due to global warming melting its once ice covered peak. With the snow gone, the stones were revealed in stripes of several colours, giving it its name. It’s a huge tourist destination and you can book tours to it from pretty much anywhere, naturally for us though, we’d take a different approach. Although we were running out of time, it was conveniently located on the south of Cusco and not much of a detour on our way to the border. 

Before we’d get anywhere near that though, we decided we’d spend another night at Lee’s favourite laguna spot, just north of Cusco. Here we were effectively retracing our steps but that was fine with me as we’d missed something the last time we’d been there. I was interested in visiting the salt farm of Maras. It's only a quick stop off on route but here they have built hundreds of pools into the side of the valley, with the purpose of harvesting salt from a small stream out of the mountain. This stream of water feeds this entire operation from the top. It’s directed into all of the many pools with dirt channels that are blocked or unblocked to direct the water to whatever pool they want. This thing is huge, and to think of the work created to not only build it but maintain it was impressive. 

After, we went and bought some salted chocolate and a big bag of smoked salt too. Both were delicious! 

As we had arrived here towards the end of the afternoon, it was again sunset as we rounded the edge of Laguna Huaypo and once again settled ourselves in our spot. This time we cooked pizza over a fire outside and took some time to appreciate the stars here, which were spectacular. 

We had read up a little on the best way to visit rainbow mountain, as it is such a tourist hotspot. While I'm all up for seeing the sights, if I can do it cheaper and/or quieter it’s definitely a bonus. One of the things that I like most about doing this trip in a camper is the flexibility that it gives you to visit places like this. You aren’t constrained to a tour, in the absence of a bus and you can do things on your schedule. For rainbow mountain, that meant arriving late. According to many past comments, turning up here at around 3pm would give us the place to ourselves. That was fine, because it meant we had time for a quick stop in Chinchero handicraft market as we needed to buy a gift for a friend as well. We also ended up leaving with a little chessboard, something I've actually wanted for a while even though I can't really play the game. 

Now, we were on track to make it to the mountain for the optimum time. Ruby of course had other ideas. It was a steep climb up a narrow dirt road to reach the car park. Normally, for drives like this we keep Lee’s phone connected to the car ECU so that we can precisely monitor the engine temperature and not overheat it. We were doing well though it seemed. Too well. Then I realised, the app had frozen. While telling us the engine was at a nice 95 degrees, as soon as it rebooted it we were apparently on 111 degrees. Gasket cooking temperature. We pulled over straight away of course, hoping we’d still caught it in time. From then, things were slower. It was a steep slow road in parts with no respite for the engine. As the altitude got higher, things got harder. We crept up there stopping frequently but determined to make it, it would be the highest we had ever driven her, with the car park at 4700m.

With all these stop offs, we arrived a little later than planned after two other giving two hikers a lift up the final climb. We piled out into the car park, pulled on our boots and jackets and set off before we lost the light. At this time, all the vendors and ticket booths had gone and so we only ended up paying a £1 toll for ‘road maintenance’ on the way in. This was at least a plus. Now we just had to hope we climbed up in time. We had dropped altitude a bit since Cusco and so this new height was going to be hard. I plodded my way up the hill, while our hitchhiker friends overtook us. As we got nearer the top, we saw that there were two other people already there and it seemed that we wouldn’t quite have it to ourselves after all. Still, in the day time this place is swarming with people and if I had to share it with another 5, that was a pretty good deal. 

The last part of the climb was the steepest but after what seemed like a lot longer than it probably was, we made it and as you can see, it was pretty much just us.

Then we realised that the two other people were our friends, Kartik and Sim! Up here it was cold and I wished I had put on more clothes at the bottom. A freezing wind whipped around us and soon I couldn’t feel my fingers. Our friends too, were pretty cold and had further to walk and so they headed back down while we continued on.

We still had another 50m to climb before we could say we had officially made it to 5000m and so we trudged up the last of the steps, devouring a chocolate bar I'd bought from the last remaining vendor. Now, we had truly reached the summit and got to enjoy the view with just two other people and for free. To me, that’s what it’s all about. 

It seemed the hitchikers planned on camping up here that night, but as beautiful as it was that didn’t appeal. We said goodbye and began to make our way back down in the last of the fading light.

We hadn’t quite had time to visit the Red Valley, but at least we had caught a view of it from the drone and that would have to do. Now it was time to get back to the camper and get to a lower altitude for the night. Here we are successfully parked at 4700m, Ruby's new record.

We had scouted out potential spots when we drove in, and opted for a large flat grassy area by the river. It was a short drive, but back at a more reasonable altitude where we might actually get some sleep. With another big drive coming up in the morning, that was important. 

Despite dropping nearly 1000m, I didn’t sleep well. However, that didn’t stop the fact that we needed to get to the border and we needed to stock up on some food. We were aiming for some hot springs a few hours away to spend that night and before heading there we went to the small town of Sicuani to go to the market. This had been our new policy throughout Peru and one that was working well. Groceries in the market are a fraction of the cost and in this particular one, we also found hard cheese. As I type this some time later, it is still my biggest regret that we didn’t buy more cheese here. I thought we’d find it again, but apparently this was some rare cheese seller. We found proper, mature cheese and it was delicious. 

After this great success, we moved on to yet another Aguas Calientes. These very cheap hot springs allow you to camp inside the complex and therefore have all night access to the pools. Piped straight from the ground, some of them are, quite literally, boiling. We parked up inside and then went to find a pool that was actually possible to get into. In the end, I ended up siting on the side, dipping my toes in and out and watching as they turned bright red. It was very hot indeed. In true vanlifer fashion, I used this opportunity of free hot water to do a mighty clothes wash, it’s not often you can wash your clothes in hot water after all! Then, with that fun over, we settled down in a good temperature pool for a few hours. 

After the great cheese success, we decided there would be nothing better than having a wine and cheese evening in the hot pool, while watching the stars. Indeed, it was amazing. Often I don't sit and watch the stars because of the huge temperature drop at night and so this was the perfect opportunity to enjoy them while being warm and toasty at the same time. The only downside came when we had to get out. Our towels were frozen solid. Back at the camper we warmed up again and settled down for the night. This turned out to be incredibly loud. People came and went all night, keeping us up for most of it. It still couldn’t put a damper on our lovely evening though and in the morning we set off to get within striking distance of the border.

Now only a few hours away, we planned to camp close that night and cross the following morning. We were a bit delayed leaving, as Aimee had lost her collar. Despite it having an AirTag on it, we couldn’t find it anywhere. A testament to the fact that these are not the best trackers for pets. Reluctantly, we headed off without it, aiming for the large town of Juliaca. Already, I wanted to find more cheese. 

Ruined church? by the side of mountain road.

After a bit of time driving around and visiting the market, it was clear this wasn’t meant to be. We decided we didn’t like Juliarca and continued onwards, through Puno before Ruby played her usual card. With only 40 minutes to our border camping spot, the brakes failed. We pulled off into the nearest town we were passing called Pomata and parked in the square. I assumed the calliper had failed again but on closer inspection it appeared we had lost one of the bolts that hold the two pieces of the brake calliper together. It was the one they had sold us back in Ecuador that was the wrong size, and so this wasn’t much of a surprise. If anything, we should definitely have changed it sooner. This bolt falling out, had caused the other to loosen and so the calliper was splitting in half, allowing all the brake fluid to come out.

The good news was that once I had tightened the remaining bolt, we had pressure again and so we decided that we would continue on with plan A and our planned spot on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Next stop, Bolivia.