Vilcabamba and Perù!!

First, sorry we have not written in a while but we should be on a pretty regular schedule now. Also our English has gotten steadily worse so excuse the grammar and spelling. Thirdly, our camera finally broke after a slow and painfull death, the pictures we have will have to be loaded later when the new one arrives. And for that we'd like to full heartedly thank Grandma Gene for coming to the rescue after VERY short notice researching, buying, and sending a new one to vilcabamba where we will return to pic it up. So thank you grandma for this blog would be so much less with out your generous help!


The last six weeks of our trip were spent in beautiful Vilcabamba, Ecuador. For a town of only four thousand residents, it has quite the reputation both nationally and internationally. Internationally, Vilcabamba is known to have some of the longest living people on the planet. The face printed on the locally made cigarettes belongs to a man that lived to be 127 years old while smoking their cigarettes. The locals tried to use this fact to disprove most western ideas about medicine. From a national perspective, Vilcabamba is home to a bunch of crazy gringos. When Ben and I first arrived this was our impression as well. We had been traveling for the two weeks before we arrived to Vilcabamba and, as a result, we had come with a group of about 9 other travelors we had met along the way. We all agreed that it was very beautiful but that there was something a little off about the people. As our friends started to leave one by one we decided it was time to start our next farm. This was, after all, the reason we had come to Vilcabamba in the first place. This meant one last night of crazy partying and then to the farm. Our night started at the Hostal Izhcayluma, which might as well be a 5 star hotel, where after enough drinks I got introduced to a guy from California that also had a Woofing farm and he invited us to join him. This was really good news because the farm we had planned on going to was charging 5 dollars a day and the owner was said to be crazy. So we packed up and headed to the new farm. It turns out that it was just a mountainside because the farm had just started. It´s also important to know that the infasis is on it being a community not a farm. So Ben and I got introduced to our first hippie community up in the remote mountains of Ecuador. The stereotypes were almost spot on. Lost of pot, lots of talk, almost no work, cool people, and some really crazy ideas. Some of our friends were reptilians, which you can look up if ur interested, and the others are convinced of the 2012 prophesy and have fled the USA. Most political arguments were derailled when the aliens were brought up, which happened everytime we talked. I thought it was a great experience. I learned and thought more about the merits of religion and belief systems in that week than maybe I have in years. That weekend we went into town with the intent of finding a new farm or a job and, of course, to party a bit too. Evertime i´ve set out to get a job i´ve gotten one and I base this success on the fact that I always cut my hair and shave my beard before applying. At this point, it had been two months since Ben and I had done either. So while Ben was making breakfast I cut it all off. Friends I had been living with didn´t even recognize me and my own brother had to do a double take before he realized it was me. The trick really worked though. I got three jobs from Ecuadorians in one day. This all happened on a Saturday so we went out to the lone club in Vilcabamba to celebrate. I was feeling lucky from all that had happened earlier in the day and so I picked out the cutest girl I could find and started dancing with her. This takes alot of courage because both Ben and I are notoriously bad dancers and latinas are notoriously good. Anyway, it worked out and as we were leaving to go meet up with some of her friends I said hello to the owner/bouncer at the door. I told him I had been looking for work and he started offering me work as a bartender/waiter. So now I had to balance a really good future job or a really hot ecuadorian girl. I got the job but when I looked around the girl had gone. I couldn´t believe how stupid I had been but later on I found her and as the time past she became my girlfriend. In our next blogg we will have to go into more detail about our adventures in Vilcabamba but for now i´ll say that it was split between waiting tables for bus drivers and taxi drivers(typically the best and nicest people right), bartending, and hanging out with our ecuadorian friends.






Dragging ourselves out of Ecuador was difficult, but the daunting $400 fine encouraged us to get out before the visa expired. Our plan was to head to Màncora, a beach town in the north, before returning to pick up our new camera. Unfortunately we headed south from Vilcabamba (it was the last bus we could take) rather than heading west to the much smoother Panamericano Highway. From vilcabamba to Màncora it took us two and a half days of non stop traveling. We first started with a bus to Zumba, through the night and got off at 5 in the morning. Then a giant truck (a Chivas truck for those who were with us in Baños) that has rows of sketchy open air seating that can fit around 30-35 people. It has no seatbelts and only wooden planks for benches. The ride lasted a couple of hours on a dirt road through the mountains that was so bumpy I felt like we'd been sitting on a mechanical bull for 2 hours. A large bridge marked our arrival at the border, to my dissmay there is no public transportaion. You walk accross in the blistering sun and then wait for a long time as a taxi (the only means of transportaion from the border) comes and gathers enough people. Unlike in Ecuador they use normal sedan taxis, but they cram as many people as will fit to make more money. So for another 2 hours we rode with 7 men and luggage through the Peruvian Andes.
Northern Perù is somewhat shocking, culturally. In Comparison to Southern Ecuador there are NO gringos there which meant we stood out... alot and they stare.. a lot. I felt like a dwarf with terrets syndrome. Some people even jumped when they turned around to face two pale strangers with giant packs. Also we noticed that Perù makes use of the ¨Mototaxi¨a modified motorcycle that is essentially a giant trycicle. This is their main means of transportation whithin the cities.. and there are THOUSANDS of them. From San Ignacio (near the border) to Faèn we took another taxi filled with another seven people. Camden and I sat, together, in the passenger seat (welll camden was more on the center console for lack of space). This four hour ride worsened when I mistakenly asked for music, the driver put on really abnoxious traditional singing... very nasally and repetitive with really horrible music videos to accompany. Then randomly in the middle of nowhere we get out and drink the best fresh squeezed pineapple juice I have ever had at some small shack on the side of the road. The worst part about traveling in South America is that the natives seem to never open their windows, no matter how hot or stuffy it gets, like in a taxi filled with seven sweaty people traveling through the high desert at noon, they always seem to wear a jacket and complain if you open your window (if you are lucky enough to have one). This means that most of the time in buses and taxis im am pressing my face and hands against the window to get as much of the chill it brigns from the outside.. as you would do in an airplane. Once in Faèn we took many mototaxis to get to the next bus stop where we waited for the bus to the coast (Chiclayo). During the wait I watched as four boys, who were taking their gallos to Chiclayo for a cock fight, kept getting up and hanging out with some bus drivers that just got off duty. The kids and the drivers were drinking beer and then everyonce in a while I'd watch as two of them at a time would go to the bathroom to do coke. I had hardly slept in the last couple of days and was sick so watching bus drivers from our bus company do coke made me VERY apprehensive about our 9 hr night ride through the Adnes. Luckily they were not our drivers and the kids crashed by the time we borded so they were no longer as jumpy and obnoxious. After that we had one more long bus ride and one more taxi ride (minibus packed with 12 people) to reach Màncora. But we are here now and it is beautiful. The beach is wonderful and were considering staying here 3 weeks or so for the holidays and to learn to surf.