Cusco Pallay Punchu Full Day Rainbow Mountain Tour

A farming village in the Vilcanota valley, about two hours south of Cusco. The tour stops here for a buffet breakfast while it is still dark. Eat well at this stop. It is several hours until lunch, and food taken at a comfortable altitude helps more than anything you can do higher up. Toilets are available here.

Layo is a community at 3,978 metres on the shore of Langui Layo, the largest lake in the Cusco region. Your guide gives an introduction here to the community, the lake and the mountain above it. There is free time for photographs before the tour continues to the trailhead.

Pallay Punchu is a ridge of sharp stone fins striped in ochre, red, blue and green. The colour runs vertically up the blades rather than in bands across a rounded hill. The name describes the shape. In Quechua a pallay punchu is the woven pattern of a ceremonial poncho, still made by hand in this part of Canas. From the parking area the walk to the top takes about 45 minutes. It is uphill throughout on uneven ground, but there is no scrambling and nothing exposed. The high point of the route is 4,770 metres. There is a guided explanation at the summit and free time for photographs. The altiplano runs flat to the horizon on one side and Langui Layo lies far below on the other. An entrance ticket is collected at the trailhead and must be paid in cash in local currency.

A buffet lunch is served after the descent, at an altitude where eating is more comfortable than on the ridge.

Raqchi held the largest roofed building the Inca are known to have constructed. What survives is its spine. A central adobe wall runs the length of the temple, still standing at around twelve metres, with the stone bases of the columns that once carried the roof ranged on either side. Behind the temple stand the colcas, more than a hundred round stone storehouses used to hold grain and dried food for the Inca state. Together they form one of the clearest surviving pictures of how the empire fed and organised itself. Your guide walks you through the site.

A short panoramic stop where three bridges cross the same river within a few metres of each other. One is a modern road bridge. One is a colonial stone arch. One is a rebuilt Inca rope bridge, woven from grass and replaced by hand in the traditional way. Five hundred years of engineering in a single view.