While Machu Picchu and Rainbow Mountain grab most of the attention, Humantay Lake should also be on anyone’s short list when touring the area of Cusco, Peru. The high-altitude body of water offers up stunning mountain scenery that’s matched by few other places in the Andes: As my video above shows, Humantay’s crystal clear surface reflects a towering snowy mountain that feeds the lake via a glacier.
Most (like I did) take a guided day trip to visit Humantay, but it also serves as a notable waypoint along the popular Salkatay trek. The shore where I filmed my footage is reached by a steep, strenuous hike in thin air that tops out at just under 14,000 feet above sea level (around 4,200 meters). In terms of difficulty, I consider it to be comparable to the trek to Rainbow Mountain. While Humantay may be a shorter trail and at lower altitude, it packs in plenty of verticality (1,305 feet of elevation gain in 1.5 miles/~400 meters in ~2.5 kms).
For more information on touring Humantay, check out my article “6 Questions and Answers About Humantay Lake.” It’s part of my travel guides section on the Cusco area.
Related Content
– Click to browse my travel guides for the area of Cusco, Peru.
– Click to view my high-resolution photo collection from Cusco.
– Click to read my feature article “Choquequirao: The Last Stand of the Inca” for the story of how the Neo-Inca state of Vilcabamba resisted Spanish colonialism of Peru in the 16th century.