Heaven

Prilly.
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Oh Vilcabamba...What a beautiful, joyful place. We both fell for it rather fast. It was sunny, and hot, and green. There were butterflies everywhere. It was surrounded by rolling hills and cut through by an inviting river. This might be a little hard to write about as I´m all dreamy and starry eyed. Affection and calm inspire my fingers far less than negativy. What a shame.

The valley in which the small town of Vilcabamba lies is often refered to as `The Valley of Longevity´. Not only are you supposed to live longer here but it´s also supposed to be very hard to leave. It is. We did the research. Vilcabamba was the first place we went that we were both genuinely sad to leave. It´s calming effects are great and it´s people very cheery.

Moody.
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It felt like a cowboy world. John Wayne would have fit in perfectly, but he wouldn´t have had to kill anyone.

Ok, more details and less rubbish attempts at trying to explain how lovely it is - I´m clearly not skilled at describing the joyous.

We arrived one sunny afternoon hoping to stay at the Rumi-Wilco Ecolodge and intending to be in town for two days. After some difficulty we found the footpath to the lodge and carefully clambered across the broken bridge which connects it to the rest of the town.

Dreamy.
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I´m pretty sure we´d actually walked around most of the town trying to search for the lodge. This in itself is not a huge problem because the town of Vilcabamba is very small, but we had all our bags on us and for once, it was actually sunny in South America! It was also hard work because of the bridge, which was actually a lopsided slab of concrete that crossed the river to the lodge.

The lodge was without guests when we arrived save for a couple staying in their van who we later discovered had been driving round the world for 8 years! The delightful Alicia (owner of the lodge along with her husband Orlando) informed us there would be some volunteers arriving the next day.

Francesca shooting daggers at Milton and the other horses (literally).
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Being an ecolodge the place is relatively basic but does not suffer one bit for it. There are irrating solar showers, a kitchen that is open to the elements and thousands of bugs (EVERYWHERE). It was great! The insects were a slight issue on occasion (we are pretty sure there was a leech trying to attack us one evening) but generally we loved it. I particularly liked lounging in the hammocks. We enjoyed it so much that we kept deciding to stay longer until two nights turned into five.

And we´d also adopted 2 pet spiders, Henry and Harry, who I becme most fond of, except when they wanted to sleep in my bed.

Francesca pretending not to be in pain when I made her stay on her horse long enough for a photo.
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On our first full day in town I persuaded Frankie to go on a horse tour with me. Four hours riding around the valley with cowboy hats included! Unfortunately my head was too big for all the cool hats so I had to have a stupid floppy straw one. The ride was beautiful and exhilarating though the horses were a little naughty which lessened Frank´s enjoyment. Our guide was a very sexy cowboy type who tried to pretend he was a 40 year old man when he was clearly not. He was 25.

The horses were not ´a little naughty´, my horse was just clearly insane and took great enjoyment from my displeasure. It particularly enjoyed running away at full speed whilst I was on top. I was not impressed. In fact I was terrified. Martha doesn´t seem to understand this, but it scared me, so I don´t really have a great urge to get back on a horse any time soon. And my butt hurt for days!

More dreamy.
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Four hours on a horse is pretty tiring (and painful) so afterwards we decided to rest, drink beer, eat ice cream and attempt to blog - I believe that was the last time we did so.

After our very full day we returned to the lodge to cook dinner and meet the new residents. They turned out to be a very cool New Zealander called Luisa and a very funny and nice Argentinian called Lucho. Both were volunteering at the lodge, an option which we would have been interested in if we´d have known about it in advance. The lodge is on an ecological reserve that is run and maintained by Alica and Orlando with the help of volunteers.

The day after our horse ride we did have plans but instead decided to soothe our aches by swinging in hammocks in the sunshine. In the evening the driving couple invited us all to watch a film on their laptop. It was a perfectly relaxing day.

The next morning Lucho introduced us to dulce de leche and maté - something that all Argentinians (and some other people) seem to drink. One is sweet and tasty, the other is bitter and interesting but I find it hard to refuse either. Drinking maté is very communal and therefore I always feel happy to be asked.

I don´t feel happy to be asked because it means I have to drink it. It´s disgusting! However, I´d feel bad turning it down, because it is a big social thing. That said, I find it most insulting when mate is brought out and offered soley to Martha even though I´m in the room involved in the same conversation and haven´t yet mentioned that i don´t care for the taste! Rudeness!

The rest of that day was rainy which makes most things either impossible or unenjoyable in Vilcabamba so we just went into town and ate cake. That evening we were taught the first of many versions of `Arsehole´ (the card game) by Luisa and watched the truly awful `National Treasure 2´. Why is Nicolas Cage allowed to be in films anymore? It just upsets me.

On our last full day in Vilcabamba we tried to go see some Orchids but the nursery was closed. When we returned to the lodge we found that everyone had been invited to the drivers 8 year anniversary barbeque...expect for us. I´m sure they just thought we´d assume we were welcome but being very English we were highly offended by the lack of direct request of attendence so decided to show them all by going on one of the many trails through the reserve and having a spiffing time! We did have a spiffing time and completely forgot the outrage. We climbed the ridge of the reserve and had great views of the valley. At this point the flora was very dry and meadow-like. We were scared shitless by a giant red creature that looked like a cross between a mantice and a hornet. We were later informed it was mostly likely a giant-grasshopper. Harmless but huge. (I saw a one blue too!) At one point the trail disappeared - we had been warned of this as Alicia had recently discovered a washed-out section - so we had to scramble up a steep muddy slope. We then descended via a wooded gully that was very muddy to the river bed. We had intended to swim but the water was fast and shallow. By now I was sweaty and over-excited so I abandoned the swimming costume idea and just waded in in my underwear. I felt feral. It was incredibly liberating and funny splashing around in my bra and pants and dunking my head in the water. Photos are available at a small fee. Of course not.

I was far more British about the entire thing and just rolled my jeans up and waded cautiously in, before deciding that it was far too cold and I was likely to catch flu standing there.

We returned to the lodge triumphant and beaming.

The day of our departure we once more attempted to view orchids and were again disappointed. Instead we hung around the lodge for a few hours eating and chatting before making our sad and sorry way back to Loja in order to continue to Cuenca.

Vilcabamba is beautiful, Rumi-Wilco is peaceful and perfect.

You should all go. But not at the same time as you´ll ruin the atmosphere.

(But beware of the killer horses!)

x

Oh I just remembered something excellent: At night we could hear all sorts of noises whose orgin we would often guess at. My favourite was when Frankie thought she heard a cat - it was a donkey.