A hike that turns into drama.
Lightning killed a 47-year-old Peruvian guide and injured six French tourists on Sunday March 10 around 3 p.m. (local time) in the tourist region of Cuzco, in southern Peru, local police announced on Monday.
In this rainy season, lightning struck the group of hikers while they were on the Vinicunca mountain, also called "mountain of seven colors", located in the heart of the Andes, about a hundred kilometers from the city of Cusco.
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In a press release, local police said that the French tourists, aged 22 to 40, were hospitalized in Cuzco.
They suffer from “burns and injuries”, she adds without giving further details on their state of health.
For his part, Saul Caipani, the director of Foreign Trade and Tourism Management, indicated to the media El Comercio that five tourists have already left the clinic but that a young woman is still under observation because of head trauma.
Five people killed by lightning in Peru in 2024
The seven-colored mountain peaks at an altitude of 5,200 m.
The colors that compose it result from an accumulation of layers of sediment over millions of years.
Very popular with tourists, it is one of the most visited places in Peru with Machu Picchu, the most visited Inca site in the world.
It was only in the last decade, however, that it became a major tourist attraction, when global warming melted the layer of snow that covered it, revealing its many colors.
Since the start of the year, no less than five people have been killed by lightning in Peru's Andean regions, according to civil defense.
Faced with this situation, several members of communities in surrounding regions are demanding that the authorities install lightning rods in areas of the high Andes.