This is the testimony of a expat living in the Hacienda San Joaquin, in Vilcabamba. It has nothing to do with story written by Gavin Moore:
It's shocking visiting the United States after living in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, even for a short while. In just a few weeks in the Valley of Longevity, you naturally get used to the connection with nature: The evening lightning bugs, the dreamscape of stars lighting up the night sky, the sound of the river water cascading its way from the mountains to the coast. You hear the night crickets of the bamboo forest, the chattering birds in the morning, and the occasional mooing of a cow somewhere in the valley.
There's also the scent of life in the valley; trees, grass, water in the air and rich soil under your feet. It's part of the fresh breeze you invite into your home each day by opening your windows to enjoy the near-perfect climate.
Compared to all this, traveling to the United States and waking up in a city is a bit of shock. The first thing I noticed is the complete disconnect from nature. Gone were the sounds of water, birds, insects and animals. The deep blue sky was replaced with a pale, shallow sky. The moon and stars seemed distant and dim. The Vilcabamba smell of abundant plant life was replaced with the scent of diesel exhaust and wet pavement. There were no natural sounds in the environment, and I was overtaken by a sense of artificiality. I longed to be back in Vilcabamba, near my garden, bamboo forest, water canal and medicinal plants.
Of course, this experience is really more about city life vs. country life than any particular country. Ecuador has cities, too, where life is artificial and nature seems distant. But the density and abundance of life in the Ecuadorian countryside is truly astonishing. It goes beyond any country living I've ever experienced in the U.S. Only Hawaii approaches the kind of rich, natural diversity of life that I'm privileged to wake up to in the Valley of Longevity every single day.
More of the story visiting Natural News
It may be an 'hypocritic' article but set dots on the i's. Jeff of Lives of Wander
says he's found that small town of Vilcabamba is being invaded by gringos because locals have no much control of what they want and what they need. In a very interesting post he calls to answer the question of how to find the right balance on his statement: No beautiful town should be kept from visitors enjoying it, but no beautiful town should be overrun and destroyed by visitors. He's an experienced traveler and he knows what' writing.
"...this leaves the town quite a paradox. On the one hand, it is still a beautiful place and a very comfortable place to stay and enjoy. We found it very relaxing (and, even though we had spent the last few days relaxing, another few days was no trouble!). On the other hand, we couldn’t help thinking that this naive, small town had been taken over. The houses just outside of town were enormous, multi-storied, walled complexes complete with swimming pools. The ex-pats ate at the foreign owned restaurants (which admittedly, were very tasty) and seemed to run in their own social circles. They sat around the park with blackberrys and iphones."
As far as we are concerned we still think Vilcabamba should be kept the same way it always was. If tourist want to come, they are very welcome, but can affect locals making them change that of life the live. Vilcabambans had live there per centuries and they will continue to survive even when ex-pats stay to live and foreigners bring new customs.
In Ecuador, the pace of glacier melt threatens hydroelectric power plants and water systems that rely on water from the glaciers. With the help of the World Bank, local researchers are launching new efforts to track the decline and urge residents to preserve crucial water supplies, particularly in Quito, the Ecuador's capital.
Technicians
want to know how much precipitation is added to the glacier, and how
much rain water and melted ice flow down into the the Ecuadorean
capital's water supply. Maintaining a balance is crucial to Quito's
future. EMAAP (Pichincha's Municipal Water and Sewerage Company) employees are taking measurements every five minutes.
"The glacier is a huge reservoir of water that supplies
us every year. We have a lot of monitoring activity to make sure it
never runs out," Diego Paredes, the EMAAP's employee, said.
Head over for the complete report written by Brian Wagner
There are a little more than 300 people in the world with the
condition Laron dwarfism, a third of whom live in remote villages in
Ecuador’s southern Loja province (Zapotillo, Macará, Celica)
Dr Jaime Guevara-Aguirre, a hormone expert from the Ecuadorian Institute of Endocrinology, who has been studying Laron dwarfism for more than ten years, said: ‘We’ve discovered that people with Laron simply don’t get cancer.
‘Cancer can be detected in their relatives of a normal size, but never in my patients – not one single case.
‘Every experiment has demonstrated that high levels of IGF1 are associated with cancer, but these patients have low levels of IGF1 and an absence of the disease.’
According to Dr Guevara-Aguirre, finding a way to reduce levels of IGF1 could mean finding a way to prevent cancer from developing. ‘Medically, this is very, very exciting,’ he said.
"One, man's way may be as good as another, but we all like our own best"
You and I are so important and the others thin they are.
The following is a cross-post from the german blog, Neulich im Coffeeshop.
Vilcabamba is a place in the Ecuadorian province of Loja. It is 1,600 above sea level, with year-round mild, springlike climate and the
temperature range from 18 to 28 ° C. From October to May it is a rainy
season, from June to September dry season. The most pleasant time to
travel is from September to January.
The term Vilcabamba comes from the Quechua, which means "Sacred Valley" (vilca = "holy" bamba = "Valley").
Vilcabamba is known mainly for its long-dwellers, they call it the "Valley of the Hundred Years". The reason for this is controversial, scientists led the high reached age and the high level of vitality to the negative ions of air cargo, the evening caused by electrical storms, to the perfect Vilcabamban mineral water, the healthy climate all year round, balanced diet and the constant movement of its people.
The coffee from this valley is mild and pleasant but alive and in its taste. Since the cultivation of coffee in Vilcabamba is primarily a manual work and "family matter", each year only small quantities of this coffee produced.
For more details visit the online store: CoffeeShop
Erik just started a page to register the chronologies of his travel to Ecuador. He's getting in touch with Never Land Farm people and launched a very original idea. Get organic coffee by July 3th by mail. You just need a PayPal account and you are all set.
The money collected will be used to buy clothes, toys, and solar lights. These items are going to help families in the Loja province of Ecuador, specifically a town called Tumianuma ( near Vilcabamba)
So, if this is something you feel like helping out with and getting an awesome item in return, he's put a paypal button here. The cost is $13.50/lb ppd and will be shipping Priority Mail between July 3 and 5. Feel free to post comments if you have any questions you have for Erik!
Please, pread it out!
"It has the original mouth but remains wordless;
It is surrounded by a magnificent mound of hair.
Sentient beings can get completely lost in it;
But it is also the birthplace of all the Buddhas of the ten thousand worlds."
By Ikkyu (1394-1481), a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest and poet.
It's being a while since we don't write a word in this blog but today we felt motivated to share with you a post from The Universe, an ecuadorean newspaper where Bernard Fougéres, writes about a beutiful small city in the ecuadorean southern. Carlos Jumbo is our alibi, and we've traslated a paragraph for your beneplacit:
Loja shelters inside a carton of mountains. Anyone who does not know it, feels Ecuador only the half. I enjoyed myself as a child taking photos on the Jipiro's Recreational Park (the dictionary rebuffed the 'recreational' word). At the City's Gate Museum , drawings by Manuel Serrano fascinated me by the way he changes animal image into humans and viceversa, creating beings from other dimensions with the instinctive cruelty of Stornaiolo, the contrasts of light and shade that Rembrandt loved. I've got my lunch in Quo Vadis, Latin question answered in the same language when I had to affix my signature in the visitors' book: "Quo vadis? Semper usque ad felicitatem sweet est quia desipere in loco "(" Where do I go? Always towards happiness because it is sweet fool around in the right place "). Since then, I remembered the film Quo Vadis?, Created in 1951, with Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Peter Ustinov. I've got to try a entire bottle of Beronia, romantic wine from La Rioja. In Vilcabamba I triped over in the same way Fidel Castro did it, not for being drunk but for being clumsy since birth
Next time you choose Ecuador for a trip, I strongly suggest to head down south and ask for Loja and Vilcabamba.
