Oy. 2:30ish am came stupidly early today. I woke up to Matt rustling around, apparently having woken up way too early. 

We grabbed our stuff and stumbled out the door and were standing outside at 2:56 am. We had to wait for a little bit for our tour to pick us up… They were taking longer than I thought they would, and I sure as hell wasn’t having it. I was in a shit mood. 

Finally, a van pulled up, and a guy got out and yelled my name. We got on, picked up one more group (literally down the street from our guesthouse), and off we went. 

It was like 3:30 in the morning, so it was pitch black. I think the entire tour passed out until we got to breakfast. 

Breakfast was like yesterday’s, a buffet with fresh fruit and pancakes and omelets. After we’d eaten, we got back in the van and headed up the hill toward the trailhead. 

We started hiking at well over 14,000 ft. Might have been closer to 15,000 ft. (15,269, according to Strava). In any case, the “trail” was mostly a road, pretty flat. And the views. Holy SHIT, the views. The valley we were in was out of this world. That seems to be a theme so far on this trip… 

We made our way up and up, on ridiculously gentle grades that just were NOT that hard. Eventually, we got to the “hard” part – which was not really very long at all, even if they did call it the “gringo killer.” We got to the top of the saddle, and there was Rainbow Mountain in all its glory. 

Wow. Just wow. It actually looks exactly like the pictures in real life. We snapped some pictures and then realized we could go even higher to the actual top of a mountain. We topped out at 16,526 ft. 

The views. Oh my GOD, the views. Fucking incredible. From the top of the mountain, we could see the next few ridges behind the one we were on, including the peak with the largest glacier in Peru. And the way the clouds swirled in and out, slowly revealing and hiding the landscape, was amazing also. 

After a bit, our guide gathered us and told us a little history and information about the mountain – how it’s minerals that create the colors. Green is copper, red is iron, yellow is sulfur… Super interesting!

We headed back down a little bit and then made the decision to go over to the Red Valley. Maybe ten more minutes of walking, we paid our entrance fee, and went through the stone opening. 

Talk about holy shit. I’m pretty sure my jaw just dropped. I’m rarely at a loss for words, but this literally took my breath away. I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s red. And oh so GREEN. It’s like Moab met a moss covered forest somehow. The pictures don’t even begin to do it justice. 

We hiked back down to the van afterwards, hanging out with Bethany, a grad student also from Colorado, and Charlotte, a German girl who just finished her masters and was taking a big trip before starting her new job. 

On the walk down, there were a million alpacas. They were so cute! we even got to see this little family playing around…

Back at the van, we started down the hill on our way to lunch. A little ways down, we came to a screeching halt because the road had washed out a bit and some guys were trying to fix it.. They had a backhoe, but two guys were trying to move this giant boulder by hand. Eventually, our driver got out to help, and along with another guy that was walking up the road, they got the thing in place and we were on our way. 

Lunch was alright, another buffet. We tried Inka Cola for the first time – it tasted pink. Really weird, sorta like bubble gum. SO strange. 

We got dropped off near the main square again, at the very reasonable hour of about 3:00 pm, and we walked back to our hotel, where we got showers and chilled a bit. I got some packing done, and then tried to figure out our hotel for tomorrow…

I’d messaged them a couple days ago, and no response. I decided to send them a WhatsApp, and the automated response was that they were closed until Nov. 30th. Awesome. Glad we were confirmed on Expedia. 

Thankfully, we still had an hour to cancel our reservation, so we did. Then we found another hotel that looks AMAZING, and booked that instead. 

We went to dinner at Hanz Gastronomique, a place I’d found on TripAdvisor, located right on the Plaza de Armas. Good lord. This is the trip of the holy SHIT’s. The beer was awesome, the food was incredible, they actually included filtered water, and several little details like a piece of fried octopus that was awesome and chocolate covered strawberries after we’d already had dessert. All in all, an amazing dinner experience. 

Then it was back to the hotel, getting the last of our stuff together, and bed.