Here’s everything you need to know about riding a motorcycle to Rainbow Mountain, Peru, where to stay, the best route and what to do when you get there…
This Rainbow Mountain travel guide is based on our motorcycle ride through Peru as part of our round the world trip. The guides on this website are constantly updated with info from contributors to keep them current, up-to-date and as helpful as possible for you.
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Rainbow Mountain, Peru Guide
By Andy Davidson
Mad or Nomad: Round the World Motorcycle Traveller
The Rainbow Mountain (aka Vinicunca or Mountain of Seven Colours) is a tourist attraction in the Cusco region of Peru.
You will have, no doubt, seen the highly edited photos of the mountain on Instagram with its rippled colours. This famous mountain used to be completely covered in snow and ice all year round, but due to climate change, the glacier caps have melted leaving us with colourful stripes from mineral deposits like iron and copper.
It’s interesting to see, but a massive tourist attraction – probably due to its proximity to Cusco – which is also ridiculously touristy.
We rode to the mountain overtaking confused minibuses in slushy mud and that was probably more fun than the mountain to be honest.
But if you’re interested in seeing it, then we’ve put together this quick and easy guide explaining how to get there using your own motorcycle or transport.
If, however, you’d rather take the easy option and go with an organised tour, then we recommend using this link to viator.com for a selection of the best tours.
Where to stay
We highly recommend staying at Hospedaje Malvin – Motoposada. It’s a lovely little family run place with plenty of secure parking for motorcycles. The hospedaje is located behind the shop you’ll see on the corner. The same family run the shop and the accommodation so ask in the shop if nobody answers at the gate.
This is their WhatsApp number: +51984612266
Note that this is a small town with not a lot of amenities or restaurants. We’ve pinned a great chicken restaurant on iOverlander.
How to ride to Rainbow Mountain
From Malvin, we recommend leaving early to get there before it becomes swarmed with tourists. The ride there is off-road and muddy (but easily doable two-up for example). It’s a pretty ride and not challenging, just take your time and skip it if there’s heavy rain. Expect the ride to take around one-hour. We left at 6am to get there for 7am and were one of the first to arrive.
Here’s how to ride there and the route we recommend.
Inca sculpture
There is a cool Inca sculpture worth checking out along the way. You can find the exact location here. It’s marked on the map above as the second point. There’s a small layby to park and stairs to walk down to the sculptures.
How to get to the top of Rainbow Mountain
We went there with the mindset that we were riding our motorcycles to the top as two fellow motorcycle traveller friends of ours had done that about six months before us.
However, once we arrived at the car park we soon realised there was absolutely no way they were going to allow it. We tried everything with the security guard, even offering a very quiet and eventually very large tip. He even asked his boss who came down and there was no chance.
Apparently, a tourist on a rented bike had recently crashed and fractured his leg and they’ve since tightened up on it.
To be fair, when watching our friend’s video, they are riding their bikes on the same trail people were walking on. Now that’s not possible, the motorcycle taxis have a separate route, so things have changed.
You now have three options.
You can walk, take a horseback ride or pay one of the moto-taxis to take you. We found the idea of paying a motorcycle taxi when we had our own motorcycle right there quite frustrating so decided to walk. Expect about an hour’s walk.
At the top
Being honest, it’s nothing special really and quite the tourist attraction. The longer we spent at the top the more tours and professional looking hikers arrived until the place was packed and there was a queue for people taking photos.
If you’re a motorcycle traveller and have ridden through Peru, you will have no doubt seen some incredible places and equally pretty mountains without all the tourists. But, that’s just our opinion! You might love it.
Read more on motorcycle travel in Peru
Thanks for checking out the Rainbow Mountain Guide, Peru. We hope you enjoyed it! Here’s a few more articles on motorcycle travel in Peru and South America that we recommend you read next.
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Are you planning a motorcycle trip in Peru? Do you have any questions, tips or suggestions? Let us know in the comments below.