🇵🇪 Peru · The Highlands and the Andes
The Bosque de Piedras de Huayllay National Sanctuary is one of the most impressive geological wonders in Peru: an immense stone forest spread across a plateau at more than 4,000 meters of altitude, in the region of Pasco, in the heart of the central highlands. Established as a protected natural area in 1974, it guards thousands of rock formations sculpted by millions of years of erosion, rising over the puna like towers, animals and giant figures.
Walking through Huayllay is like touring an open-air natural museum: rocks that suggest faces, an elephant, a turtle, an alpaca, a cobra or human silhouettes, with signposted tourist circuits that identify them. Beyond its unique geology, the sanctuary protects pre-Hispanic rock paintings, high-Andean wildlife such as vicuñas and vizcachas, and has hot springs (the Baños Termales de La Calera) that are perfect for resting after hiking at altitude.
This guide covers the essentials of Huayllay with a practical eye: how to get there from Lima or Cerro de Pasco, which circuits and rock formations you should not miss, where the hot springs are, and how to handle a visit to a sanctuary that ranks among the highest and most singular places in the country. A destination for lovers of nature, photography and Andean adventure.
The Bosque de Piedras de Huayllay is the result of millions of years of glacial, wind and water erosion acting on volcanic rock, on a plateau in the central highlands. The area also preserves pre-Hispanic rock paintings in caves and rock shelters. It was declared a National Sanctuary on 7 August 1974 to protect its exceptional rock formations and its puna ecosystem. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The high-altitude mining region and the central jungle of Oxapampa: from the stone forest of Huayllay to the Austro-German colonies of Pozuzo, between the highest puna and the Amazon.
Read the history of Pasco →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Around 20,000 years ago, when this plateau above 4,000 meters was covered in glaciers, water seeped night after night into the cracks in the volcanic rock, froze, expanded and split it apart. Repeated over millennia, that silent hammering by ice sculpted what we see today: thousands of stone towers that the imagination turns into an elephant, a turtle, a cobra, a monk, human faces. No hand carved the Bosque de Piedras de Huayllay; it was shaped by ice, wind and water over an unfathomable stretch of time. This is where it came from.
The Bosque de Piedras de Huayllay sits on the Bombón plateau, a high intermontane plain more than 4,000 meters above sea level, in the heart of Peru's central highlands. Its thousands of rock formations are the product of a long geological process combining volcanic and sedimentary origins: in the remote past the area was part of the sea floor during the Paleozoic, and on that base layers of sandstone, limestone and conglomerate were laid down, later covered by thick layers of volcanic ash and ignimbrite produced by the intense volcanic activity of the range.
Around 90% of the rock formations visible today are of volcanic origin. Ignimbrite, a very porous rock and particularly susceptible to erosion, proved key in shaping the landscape: during the last glaciation, some 20,000 years ago, the repeated cycles of freezing and thawing of the snow on the plateau made water filter into the cracks in the rock and, as it froze and expanded, fracture it bit by bit. That process, sustained over millennia, crumbled much of the rock and exposed the deeply eroded formations that make up the sanctuary today.
The result is one of the most spectacular and extensive sets of rock formations in Peru, a genuine stone 'forest' where differential erosion —which wears away rocks of different hardness and composition unevenly— has produced silhouettes that the human imagination links to animals, faces and figures. It is a geological landscape of exceptional scientific and scenic value, recognized as the highest and largest stone forest in South America.
The Huayllay plateau is not only a geological marvel: it also holds traces of ancient human presence in the region. Among the rocks, in caves and shelters, pre-Hispanic rock paintings survive showing human figures, camelids and scenes tied to hunting and herding. These remains indicate that the people of the puna passed through and lived in this landscape from remote times, drawn perhaps by the resources of the high country and by the singular character of the setting.
The region of Pasco and the central highlands have a long history of Andean occupation. The highland communities built an economy based on herding llamas and alpacas and on making use of the natural pastures of the puna, the bofedales and the water sources. The rock art of Huayllay is part of that legacy, and it adds an archaeological and cultural dimension to the natural value of the sanctuary.
In later periods the area was drawn into wider Andean dynamics, first under the influence of the regional cultures and then of the Tahuantinsuyo, and later into the colonial and republican economy, which in Pasco was marked by mining. The village of Huayllay and the surrounding peasant communities keep their herding traditions alive, along with a strong bond to this monumental landscape, which today they manage directly (as happens with the Baños Termales de La Calera themselves).
The extraordinary geological, scenic and biological value of the Bosque de Piedras de Huayllay led the Peruvian state to protect it formally. On 7 August 1974 it was declared a National Sanctuary under Supreme Decree No. 0750-74-AG, one of the highest categories of protection within the National System of Protected Natural Areas, today administered by SERNANP. The national sanctuary category seeks to preserve, untouched, natural formations of scientific and scenic interest, and in this case it covers 6,815 hectares of the Bombón plateau.
Besides the rock formations, the sanctuary protects a high-Andean puna ecosystem with its characteristic flora and fauna. Notable among the wildlife are the vicuña (a protected wild camelid), the vizcacha, the Andean fox and various high-altitude birds, such as raptors and bofedal birds. The flora includes grassland, cushion plants and species adapted to extreme cold and the low oxygen pressure of great altitude.
Over time, Huayllay has established itself as a destination for nature and adventure tourism, with signposted circuits running past the most famous formations (including the imposing sector known as 'La Catedral'), visitor facilities and services in the nearby village. The Baños Termales de La Calera close by round out what is on offer. Management of the sanctuary combines conservation of the natural and archaeological heritage with the development of responsible tourism that benefits the local communities.
In 2007 the newspaper El Comercio launched a national competition to choose the 'Seven Wonders of Peru', inspired by the worldwide phenomenon that had made Machu Picchu one of the new seven wonders of the world that same year. The call, opened on 4 August 2007, gathered 374 tourist attractions from across the country; the Huayllay town council entered the Bosque de Piedras as a candidate, and the site passed a first round of selection to reach the 28 finalists on 17 November 2007.
The public vote ran for more than seven months and racked up around 155 million votes in total. On 25 March 2008, at an event held at El Comercio's offices in Lima, the final results were announced: the Bosque de Piedras de Huayllay came fifth with 5,574,862 votes, officially confirmed as one of the Seven Wonders of Peru. That same year, in a parallel competition organized by Panamericana Televisión, the sanctuary was recognized in third place.
This popular recognition, on top of its legal protection since 1974, helped spread word of the sanctuary beyond the Pasco region and place it in the national tourist imagination as one of the great natural landscapes of Peru, comparable in singularity to other icons such as the Nazca Lines, Kuélap or the Colca Canyon, also part of that list of wonders chosen by popular vote.