Vilcabamba and the Sacred Valley of Ecuador

A Friday evening, twilight, sitting outside a bar called Agave Blu at the corner of the plaza in this little town in the mountains of southern Ecuador. Ordered a michelada, my first in months, and it is excellent. While the popularity of this Mexican drink — some variation on beer mixed with tomato and lime juices— extends far beyond its home country, at some point they begin to be uncommon and not very good. Watching life slowly unfold on the plaza, old people sitting on benches, kids playing, teenagers flirting, feeling a non-logical sense that all is right with the world. Seventy-two hours here and I have caught the Vilcabamba bug.

This town first became known to the wider world as the result of a National Geographic cover story in the early 1970s, concerning the unusual number of centenarians (people over the age of one hundred) living here. In search of the fountain of youth, travelers and retirees of a certain stripe have been coming here ever since. While the place retains its sleepy, small town character, a look at the items on restaurant menus, or all the signs offering massage, energy work, or shamanic ceremonies — show that the extranjeros have left their mark.

This valley is known as the Valle de Longevidad as well as the Valle Sagrado, and over the years various theories have been espoused as to why people might be living so long. The water has unusually high amounts of magnesium and iron; the Vilca or Huilco tree that gives the town its name and is considered sacred here is said to clean the air and produce a great amount of oxygen. Apparently the culture here venerates older people, and they stay active and working later in life. To be fair, there have also been serious questions as to whether there are actually more centenarians here than anywhere else. Because longevity has long been a mark of prestige in this valley, it is said that many people exaggerate their age.

From my brief body of experience, there is definitely something here — I can’t say exactly what it is, but I get it. On the surface Vilcabamba is easy to like, though not so different from other small mountain towns in Ecuador. The weather is just about perfect: warm days and cool nights, crisp alpine air. Brilliant blue skies with white puffy clouds. Dramatic mountains on all sides in solid green. The town is understated but charming, a leafy plaza with a strangely whimsical church painted in turquoise and salmon. But none of that is “it”. There’s something more, some quality of light, something in the air, in the water, that gives this place its magic.

Came in to Vilcabamba three nights ago, not in a good state of mind. Hard to explain, as thirty hours before that, I’d been feeling inspired from my first visit to an Inca site. Perhaps all those bad nights of sleep in hostel dorm rooms caught up to me — sleep deprivation will have its way, eventually. By my count it was seven in a row. Maybe it was the specter of travel fatigue creeping in again. This would portend poorly for my continued wanderings, as upon my arrival here I’d only been traveling for eleven days, after a month off the road in Quito. Perhaps (read: clearly) after several hundred hours, I have developed a profoundly adverse emotional reaction to buses. Whatever the reason, I arrived here after seven hours of transit, in and out of bus stations, feeling lost on the road, empty, disconnected.

Found a bed in a dingy, tired room at Crucita Backbackers Hostel, and got a good — if pricey — plate of Eggplant Parmesan at a restaurant just off the plaza. Went back to my hostel to make some tea, and sitting on the patio, reading Alice Munro short stories, I met Eva, a lovely french hippie girl. We had a good talk in Spanish, as I have lost my French and her English is rough. She is on her way north, but seems to have been happily waylaid by the energies here. We compared notes on our various journeys, and I thought we’d had a nice connection, but just now, just as I was writing about her, she walked right by my table on the plaza twice and looked right at me but didn’t respond to me saying hello. Maybe she has forgotten me, maybe she doesn’t want to talk, but I shan’t devote any more words to her, and get on with my story.

The next morning, tired of hostels and seeking a better vantage point from which to experience this sacred valley, I checked out of the Backpackers’, walked my bags to the edge of town, then down a gravel road and across a pedestrian bridge to the Rumi Huilco Reserva Natural. This 100-acre reserve consists of a narrow strip of forested floodplain on the east side of the Rio Chamba, and the sheer, mostly treeless mountains above, which contain a number of steep ravines that are little densely vegetated micro-climates. The reserve is said to contain some of the highest concentrations of Huilco trees, which in all the world can only be found in this valley and hereabouts.

I walked past the eco-lodge, a wood and adobe hostel building, where a blonde girl was sitting out front disinterestedly smoking, and a bit further to the house of the owners, a couple of Argentinian biologists. Theirs is a rustic house sitting atop wooden pilings, wood bleached grey by the elements, more of a large cabin than a house. The type you could expect to find in the woods of Maine; or Northern California, in the redwoods. I set my bags down and climbed up the steps. A serious but not-unfriendly woman in her sixties answered the door, said her name was Alicia. I told her I wanted to camp, and she said it was $5 a night, that I just keep walking down the path. I paid for a couple nights, and she gave me a key to the kitchen house and a map of the trails on the reserve. She seemed reserved, so I tried not to ask too many questions, as I am wont to do.

Another fifteen minutes walk down the path, past a few inviting cabins, was a shaded campground twenty yards from the rushing river, where I pitched my tent and have been sleeping ever since. The area is a secluded meadow surrounded by thick dry-jungle forest, with three “river cabins” on pilings, which are uninhabited at the moment. There are a few camp spots along the edge of the meadow, a kitchen house with a gas stove and sink, a table to sit at; a bathhouse with toilets. After I set up camp I made a cup of tea, and was sitting on the bench in front of the kitchen when I was visited by a brilliant blue-colored bird with an extraordinary long tail. It looked to be a Torogoz, the national bird of El Salvador, which are not supposed to live here. It sat on a branch and squawked at me tellingly, but I was unable to discern the message.

Soon I met the other resident of the campground, Jamie, a young blonde Brit in his mid 20s, who had cycled here all the way from Vancouver. This was a travel story I wanted to hear. I made a pot of mate and we talked about the road. He had started his journey two months after mine, and while I was riding all those buses, he was powering himself by pedal. Amazing. Given that I know in a palpable, bodily sense how far it is, how many mountains he has crossed, I have immense admiration for the distance he’s covered. He says it’s simple: you ride as far as you can in a day, and then you stop. He lamented the lack of good food after Mexico, and the difficulties of cycling through all of the mountains since Medellín (it’s all mountains). He’d decided after Central America that despite the challenges of the up and down, he preferred the mountains to the heat of the coast. I understood this sentiment exactly.

After a while I walked back to town in search of lunch, and found a place called Charlito’s Cafe just off the plaza. At one of the tables outside, a group of rough-around-the-edges and boisterous older expats were working through a small forest of beers. Scanning the menu, in keeping with the hippie predilections of the town, I saw that among other things they were offering a tempeh reuben (!) something rarely found even in the states. I was sold.

At the bar-counter in back I met Charlie, the waiter (and owner). He is a kind-faced, somewhat rounded expat in his sixties with that look you want from a restauranteur — a man who loves food. Turns out he is also from Virginia, outside Richmond, though he’s been in Ecuador a long time, where he says he’s much happier. We talked about our home state and restaurants here and there and I put in my order and sat down. If I was to open a restaurant, it might be something like this: vegetarian-oriented comfort food. My sandwich was wonderful, crispy tempeh, fresh sauerkraut, served with a generous pile of hand-cut fries. The sourdough bread was fantastic, and when I asked Charlie about it, he proudly declared that he makes it himself and asked if I wanted to buy a loaf. I most certainly did. Thanked him enthusiastically on my way out, said I’d be back.

Did some food shopping on my way out of town, and walked back to camp. As it got dark, I cooked an eggplant lentil soup and offered some to Jamie, who gladly accepted. We talked more about travel, about careers and work and horse racing and Peru, which was not far to the south. After a couple servings of soup I taught him to play cribbage — it’s a British game in origin but apparently no longer popular among young people — and he was a quick study. I felt a certain satisfaction in helping bring this venerable game back to its native shores. We had a good game and I won on the last hand.

Woke up the next morning feeling different. A good long sleep on the ground, sounds of flowing water, all the oxygen you get from sleeping in a forest. Somewhere along this journey, probably due to general background exhaustion, I have regained the ability to sleep late into the morning. Got up around eleven and made a pot of tea.

In early afternoon I followed one of the paths in the reserve almost straight up, for a ways through dry jungle trees and brush, and then high along a mountain spur. The path was incredibly steep, little steps carved into the very spine of the narrow ridge, with drop-offs on each side. Climbed carefully, panting for air, until I could see the whole of the sacred valley and into the next one. Sat a long time at the top, and got a feeling that is hard to describe. The word is easy to say, but to actually get it, feel it in your bones, is hard. Peace. The feeling that life is not about getting anywhere, but rather, being there. That there’s nothing to do, nowhere to go. The essence of life is just being where you are, being in your body, present to the beauty of the world.

Across the valley I could see on the mountains opposite, the curious, house like formation of Mandango, the most popular hike in the area. Hints of a dark side of paradise lie in the warnings I’ve been given not to climb there alone, that there have been muggings of hikers. It is sad, but seems like a predictable result of the juxtaposition of poor local residents with moneyed tourists. I could see the main road that I’d come in on, leading back north to Cuenca, and south towards Peru. When the wind would come sweeping across the mountain face, I felt like I might just get blown off the mountain. Made my way gingerly down, arms and legs sticky with some kind of sap-resin from all these jungle plants. When I got back to camp the only thing to do about all the sap and sweat and stick was to get in that river.

On the bank just below the campsite, I found Orlando Falco, the white-bearded falcon-eyed Argentine biologist who along with Alicia runs the reserve, standing in the current with high black wading boots. This was my first encounter with him, but I picked him out right away. He asked if I was camping here, and I told him I was. I said es magica, and he nodded, a smile in his eyes. Asked him what he was doing, and his accent and multi-sentence reply were beyond my capacity for Spanish comprehension. He recognized this, and switched to English: some property owners were trying to repair the opposite riverbank after a recent flood. He was watching to see that they were doing it properly, and seemed skeptical. I’d been able to hear the sounds of the backhoe moving rocks all the way from the top of the mountain.

He recommended a deeper spot upriver for swimming, so I thanked him and walked up there, to a little beach of smooth river rocks with a sandy descent into clear, fast-moving waters. Downstream on the other side, a young woman was washing clothes in the river, a common sight in this part of the world. Her two small children were playing and wading, and despite the current she didn’t appear the least worried about them getting swept away. Their black dog didn’t like the looks of me, and barked and barked until he got bored with watching me try and fail to persuade myself fully into the water.

River very cold, very cold, finally I lower myself in. Freezing — satori — clarity of no-thought — lying on my back, looking up at blue sky through thick overhanging branches.

Didn’t last long. Cleaned the sap off my body with river sand, in once more to rinse, then laid on the stones for warmth. Walked back to camp and took a hot solar-heated shower in an outdoor stall with jungle plants all around. A hike, a swim, a shower, a cup of tea in the afternoon and a book to read. I felt cured of all the ills of the road.

That evening Jamie repaid me for my soup with his favorite traveling meal. Spaghetti aglio e olio. Pasta tossed with olive oil, minced garlic and parsley, salt and pepper. It was incredibly simple but very satisfying. He wanted a rematch at cribbage, and I was certainly not going to argue with this idea. We played a couple games, each winning one.

Today was rainy, and I spent much of it in a cafe in town, writing about Isla de Ometepe in Nicaragua. I walked back to the campground in a light drizzle. By early evening the skies had cleared, and on my way out of the reserve I stopped in at the Falco’s to say that I would be staying on a few more days. Alicia was cooking some dinner, but came out on the porch to talk to me.

I asked her how long they had been living there, and she gave me a lovely and much more in-depth answer than I’d been expecting. I did my best to follow her story — I find the Argentine accent melodic but not easy to understand. “Ll” and “y” — which both sound like “yih” throughout almost all of Latin America — sound like “zshih”, and in general there is a much different intonation than most of Latin American Spanish. From what I gathered from what she told me, and later filled in from a flier I found in the kitchen house, their story goes something like this.

Orlando first visited Vilcabamba in the 80s, and bought a small piece of land by the river where he built their house himself. He then went back to Argentina, met Alicia, and together they went to the Galapagos to be biologist-guides. They moved here for good in 1991, where their three children were born and raised. Their youngest son is in his early twenties and lives on the reserve — I’d seen him in the process of some kind of a woodworking project in the yard the day before.

They had grown concerned about deforestation in the area and the shrinking habitat of their beloved Huilco trees, and joined together with some neighbors to put the undeveloped land along the river and in the mountains above into a conservation trust. And ever since, they’ve been here, building and maintaining trails, caring for the land, studying it. She said proudly that they had identified over seven hundred plant species and one hundred forty two species of birds. They believe in protecting this land and keeping it open for people to experience (the charge is $2 to hike in the reserve, which gets you three visits).

I thanked her for telling me this, said her story was inspiradora. I said I was happy to have found this land, happy to stay more days here. She had been in the middle of preparing dinner, and I’d kept her standing here at the door, so I bid her goodnight and walked away thinking it was probably inspirador, though that didn’t sound right to my ear, and maybe inspiroso. No, definitely not that last one. She got the message either way.

As I continued along the path to town, my admiration for them only grew. To find this land, populated with sacred trees and a river rumored to be the fountain of youth running through it. To decide: this is the land I want to live on. Where I will raise my children. And then to devote your years to protecting the land, learning about and studying it, making it open to the public. What could be a better life’s work than to leave behind this living, vibrant piece of earth?

from the flier:

making a conscious choice for a place to stay, where expenses are being recycled into a profitable conservation effort…our little “Valley of Longevity” enjoys a steady stream of travelers from the world over who savor a tranquil stopover on their somewhat tiring journeys around South America, only to realize later (not without a touch of surprise) that their Vilcabamba experience was one of the best they’ve had!

I had heard there was a used bookstore on the edge of town, and as I had finished my current supply of books, wanted to get there before it closed. At the edge of the reserve, rather than take the bridge across to town, I kept on this side of the river and took a little gravel road south that meets up with a paved road running uphill and out of the valley to the east. After ten minutes I was standing in front of Craig’s Book Exchange, an actual English bookstore, the first I’d found since Guatemala. It happened to be closed, but I wasn’t going to be so easily deterred. Hearing some voices around the side of the building I walked up the driveway. In back it was someone’s house, and a woman there was willing to open the store just for me. It was a kind of disheveled book heaven, with that musty smell of old paper. There were so many books, on high long shelves and in stacks and piles everywhere you looked.

I was half an hour into deep perusing, totally having forgotten that I told the woman I would be quick, when a white-haired man with an American accent said hello. He could see that I was a fellow book-lover, checked out my selections, approved, and we got to talking. I asked if he was Craig. Nope. The namesake Craig, a former Merry Prankster, had been his friend but had long since passed, and he was keeping the dream alive. His name was Lee, an old hippie with clear eyes and a big white mustache. He is a potter by trade, but runs this shop as his day job. Originally from Boston, he first came here in 1991, when GHW Bush “ruined the economy”, and has been here full-time since 2006. He said he was too old for winter, too old for “all the bitterness of the states”. I understood. I could see why he likes it here.

Somehow basketball came up, and it turns out he is a huge Celtics fan, who are in the midst of a playoff run, playing well even without Kyrie Irving, their best player, who is injured and out for the year. He said he has satellite tv just so he can watch their games. Talking basketball felt like a long lost pleasure. Tomorrow night will be Game 7 in the Celtics series, and I asked if there was a place to watch in town, hoping that he would take the hint and invite me to watch with him, but he didn’t. He told me about a bar in town that might show it if I could convince them to change the channel from futbol. Seemed unlikely.

I walked out with a non-fiction book about this famous Canadian landscape painter I’d never heard of named Tom Thomson, who died in mysterious circumstances on a lake, and The Enchantress of Florence, a Salman Rushdie novel that I couldn’t decide if I’d read already or just heard so much about that I thought I’d read it. Felt like I was holding great riches.

Craig closed up the shop and went back to his life, and I walked back down the road called the Via a Yambarura Baja — the way to Lower Yambarura — hinting at one of the endless intriguing places that I wouldn’t see. This took me straight down to the Parque Vilcabamba, what they call the plaza, where I found this table outside a bar with a fancy name, and have been sitting writing and drinking micheladas for some hours. After three days in this valley, I feel much better about life. It’s long since gotten dark, and I am hungry. There’s supposed to be some kind of secret pizza place on the east side of town called Shanta’s, with an eccentric Ecuadoran waiter/owner obsessed with the American West. I’m headed that way.