Vilcabamba

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Into Ecuador

First stop in Ecuador was Vilcabamba, a small town in the cloud forest of south Ecuador apparently world famous for having inhabitants that live for a really long time. Something like ten USD bought me a private room in "Hostel Rendezvous", with a hammock out the front overlooking a gigantic courtyard garden and a bunch of really helpful staff who gave me a heap of information for trekking, etc. around the town.

After sleeping off the epic bus trip, i took my new poorly hand-drawn map of the surroundings and some similarly sketchy written directions (turn left at the water trough made out of a tyre and climb over the fence, etc.), and headed off for a five hour or so hike to the "cascada del palto" (waterfall of the avocado??). The walk itself was pretty magnificent, with fantastic views over the forest at some places, and all sorts of retarded jungle plants and insects to be seen. Also a whole lot of cows. I reached the falls at roughly the same time as a bunch of american guys who'd done the same trek riding horses, and were wildly surprised that i'd gone on foot, so, all caught up in my newfound "cocky young australian guy" persona i decided to remove some clothes and go for a shower in the ridiculously freezing waterfall. Heading back to town soggy and on foot, i somehow arrived back almost at the same time as the horse guys. They think i'm a superhero now.

A new day brought a new suspect map and a new hike; this time to Mandango peak, a giant rock formation north of town. The hostel guy told me i could get a better map from the park ranger when i paid the park entrance, so i strolled the couple of kms to the park entrance, paid the "park ranger" (a lady in a apron with a cranky one-eyed dog), got my excellent map (drawn on the back of a business card), and also a bottle of water and a pouch of sugar. The apron ranger told me to put the sugar in the water, so i did. It became slightly brown sugar water.

The hike to the first peak at Mandango took about an hour uphill on a pretty good path, and the top was marked by a large graffitied wooden cross. As the day was still young, i decided to follow my business card map to the second peak, which was easily visible with it's wooden cross a bit further up the mountain. After the first ten minutes or so, the path encountered some pretty thick plantage, but the views were phenominal, and gigantic grasshopper things (exactly like the fairy from Pan's Labyrinth) would occasionally shoot out of the grass, fly around a bit, and then rocket back out of sight. There were also a heap of giant butterfly swarms along the top of the mountain. After the second cross (the highest point of Mandango), both maps described a gentle descent in a kind of loop-fashion leading back to Vilcabamba. After walking for around 45 minutes, no such path was visible, the sun was going down, it was threatening rain, and i had kind of a sore neck (having pulled a muscle the day earlier whilst flailing like a girl because a fist-sized mosquito flew at me out of the toilet bowl). I eventually found a fairly disused cattle-moving track leading back down, scrambled through some spikey bushes and found myself climbing over a fence into a cemetery to get back onto the main road and back to town about an hour and a half later.

At dinner that night, i discovered that Vilcabamba was kind of a haven for new-age american expat retirees with gigantic houses built a little outside town. Comments drifting from the table adjacent to me while i ate included "they discovered the cure for cancer thirty years ago. They just aren't using it." and "The sterile environment gives you a false sence of security. You use disinfectant to kill everything on your hands, but what is attracted to death? The parasitic organisms!". Decided at that point that it was about time i left for the next town.

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Photos

Mandango peak
No friggin way down

Mandango peak
If you zoom in far enough, you can see the second cross on the peak to the far right...