Polccoyo Mountains

[purplecat]

Because of all the mix-ups with permits and so on, we were offered an additional "free" activity. We picked a trip to the Polccoyo rainbow mountain area. It turned out that there are two rainbow mountains in Peru of which Vinicunca is the more spectacular, touristy, and better known. Different mineral compositions in the soil - particularly copper - cause the geological layers exposed in rainbow mountains to reveal stripes of bright colours. Our guide for the day, Olmer, was obviously from the Polccoyo area and felt very passionately about it. He explained that it was being opened up to tourists in a bid to stave off a proposed investment from a Canadian mining company who wanted to establish a copper mine in the area.

It was beautiful and remote and while there were two or three parties of tourists, it was easy to feel alone in the landscape. B. and I were a bit dubious that it could both retain its character and generate enough income to hold off the allure of mining company big bucks.






This is the, newly created, area at hte start of the walk.


This view shows the starting viewpoint more clearly.












The Polccoyo walk included an optional side trek to the "Stone Forest". Our guide pretty much said he wasn't taking us up there, somewhat to my relief since it would have taken us up over 5000m in height and our insurance only covered us for hiking up to 5000m.




Obviously it would be a massive shame if all that area behind us were to become a big open-cast mine.



The road up to Palccoyo went along multiple switch-backs from tarmac to dirt track, and past alfalfa farmers on the lower slopes (the alfalfa feeds the guinea pigs which are a local speciality - if you are interested they taste a bit like duck) to alpaca farmers on the higher slopes (alpaca is genuinely nice meat, quite lamby but more restrained). On the way back down I tried to photograph alpaca from the taxi resulting in a lot of blurry photos of alpaca of which these are the best.








This was created, we were told, by a local artist, depicting the Inca animals of the snake, puma and, on the top, the condor.


We also saw a lot of things that looked like they might be Inca terraces but were, in fact, natural formations.

Comments

[spiralsheep]

Wow, lovely.

I wonder if those "terraces" are solifluction.

[purplecat]

It sounds plausible - though I've just tried googling "solifluction peru" and "solifluction polccoyo" and not turned up anything.

[spiralsheep]

Sollifluction, and similar downhill creep, is so common I wouldn't expect it to be notable.

[a_cubed]

I wonder if these natural terraces were originally an inspiration for terracing slopes for farming.

[purplecat]

Tempting to hypothesise, but I'd have said terracing was sufficiently widespread that its more likely just the obvious way to handle farming on slopes.

[ewx]

Unreal.

[purplecat]

Indeed - though I'm slightly surprised the effect isn't more widespread - geology working the way it does.

[ewx]

The web doesn't really explain why this doesn't happen more often.

However, apparently this was only found relatively recently, having previously been hidden under a glacier. So perhaps there's more out there and we just need to wait for a bit more ice to melt l-/

[turlough]

That striped mountain is such a fascinating sight! I really hope they manage to keep the mining corporation away but yeah, it will probably not happen.

Fun photos of the alpacas! I only knew they were rised for their wool but thinking about it I realise that of course their meat would be eaten. Just like sheep!

[purplecat]

I'm slightly reassured in that they've put some investment into building the initial viewing area and the paths, but at the moment part of the selling point for Polccoyo seems to be "less touristy than Vinicunca" so that puts an automatic cap on your ability to generate revenue.