Cumbe Mayo: How to visit from Cajamarca (2026 Guide)

📅 Visited: June 2025
🔄 Information last checked: August 2026

Cumbe Mayo (also written Cumbemayo) wasn’t a place I’d never heard of before arriving in Cajamarca. In fact, it was one of the reasons we travelled to this part of Peru.

I first heard about Cajamarca years ago when I read Along the Inca Road by Karin Müller, a travel book about her journey through the Andes and along the Inca Road. Cajamarca appeared in her story, and the place stayed somewhere in the back of my mind.

Later, during the COVID lockdowns, I came across a YouTube video about Cumbe Mayo. The traveller had flown all the way from Lima to Cajamarca for essentially one day, hired a taxi, and spent the day exploring the site before returning to Lima. So Cumbe Mayo was high on my list.

In this post, I’ll share how we visited Cumbe Mayo from Cajamarca, how much it cost, what the tour was like, and what you can expect when visiting the site.

What is Cumbe Mayo?

Cumbe Mayo is an archaeological site about 20 km southwest of Cajamarca, at an altitude of around 3,500 metres. It is best known for an ancient water channel carved into volcanic rock, a spectacular landscape of eroded rock formations known as the Stone Forest, and petroglyphs.

The aqueduct is impressive. It is a pre-Inca hydraulic construction, with the full canal roughly 8–9 km long, but visitors only see part of it on the standard archaeological route. Some sections were cut directly into the volcanic rock, with the channel following surprisingly precise straight lines and making distinctive zigzags and sharp turns.

How to visit Cumbe Mayo from Cajamarca

Can you get to Cumbe Mayo by public transport?

After doing some research, I found that visiting Cumbe Mayo independently isn’t particularly straightforward because there is no regular public transport to the archaeological site. I also checked several sources in Spanish, which confirmed that public transport doesn’t go there.

So, in the end, we joined a local tour from Cajamarca. You can hire a taxi, but it would be more expensive than joining a tour.

Booking a Tour

There are plenty of tour agencies around Plaza de Armas in Cajamarca. We checked a few before booking. From what I saw, the agencies offer the same tours at similar prices. We booked the Cumbe Mayo tour with Luis Travel Peru.

We paid: S/20 per person for the tour + S/8 per person adult entrance fee (prices in June 2025). The tour price included transportation and a guide, and the entrance fee to Cumbe Mayo was paid separately.

Cumbe Mayo Tour: What to expect

The Cumbe Mayo tour is a half-day tour. The advertised departure time was 9:30 am from Plaza de Armas and return at 2 pm.

There were only five of us who had booked through the same agency. We were escorted to the tour van, where tourists booked through other agencies were also brought. Our group didn’t leave exactly at 9:30 because a few people were late, so there was a bit of waiting around before everyone arrived.

Cumbe Mayo is about 20 km from the Plaza de Armas in Cajamarca, and it took us about 50 minutes to get there. The road was paved at first, but later turned into an unsealed road. We travelled in a somewhat old van, but for a relatively short trip from Cajamarca, it was perfectly fine.

I really liked our guide. He was very knowledgeable and professional and shared a lot of information throughout the visit. This is one of the advantages of taking a tour rather than visiting Cumbe Mayo independently.

The Stone Forest

The first thing you notice at Cumbe Mayo is the landscape. The site is surrounded by huge volcanic rock formations. Some of them resemble people or animals, while others look almost like giant towers or walls. They’re known as the Bosque de Piedras, or Stone Forest.

The route takes you through a narrow passage between the rocks and into a small cave or tunnel. It looks quite narrow, so you need to squeeze through. The passage is quite short, and you come out on the other side and continue along the trail. If you don’t want to go through this passage, you can take an alternative route around the cave.

It took us about an hour to walk through the Stone Forest, including stops for photos and explanations from our guide. However, we couldn’t explore at our own pace, as we had to stay with the group and follow the guide’s pace.

The Cumbe Mayo Aqueduct

In about an hour, we reached the famous aqueduct. It’s a remarkable piece of pre-Inca hydraulic construction. The aqueduct is about 9 km long, although the section visitors normally see is the first 850 metres.

The way the channel was constructed is fascinating. In places, it was carved into volcanic rock. There are also sections where the channel makes 90-degree zigzags. As our guide explained, the zigzag sections had helped slow the flow of water and prevent erosion.

Petroglyphs

The aqueduct isn’t the only archaeological feature at Cumbe Mayo. You’ll also see petroglyphs along the route. I didn’t know about petroglyphs before visiting the site, so it was great to have a guide who could show them to us and give us some explanation.

If we had visited independently, I think we could have walked straight past many of them.

Is Cumbe Mayo worth visiting?

Is Cumbe Mayo worth visiting? Yes, absolutely, especially if you’re interested in ancient engineering, archaeology, and unusual landscapes. Before visiting, I expected the Stone Forest to be the main attraction, but I found the aqueduct, with its unusual zigzag sections, even more impressive. If you have a couple of days in Cajamarca, I would definitely combine Cumbe Mayo with Ventanillas de Otuzco and the Cuarto del Rescate (Ransom Room). Together, they give you a good introduction to the area’s pre-Inca and Inca history without requiring too much time.

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