Dschungelblog!

Hi everybody,

here some slightly late news brought to you via Vilcabamba-net which is as slow as the tortoises on Galapagos…

After a sad “good bye” to the Galapagos we boarded the plane and later the bus in Guayaquil that was supposed to bring us to Cuenca, a town in the south Andes. We did arrive but sometimes didn´t believe we would. Going over the Andes is one thing but going over with a mad busdriver, really bad roads with holes in them that would hide a whole car, and loads of steep descends into the valley is another thing!! However, the ones who were still able to look out of the windows witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets of their entire lives.

Arrived in Cuenca we enjoyed the fiesta that was going on and were annoyed by bad hostels. The first one featured the famous bed bugs that bit us allover and when we moved to the second one we were to “enjoy” their eighties-dance-trance-techno party at night in the courtyard until 4.30 a.m.! You can imagine… But except from that the town was nice especially if you´re interested in the mixture between colonial and indian art and architecture. Even though we did not sleep much we managed to go to a Sunday market in one of the nearby villages (see the photo with the pile of huge papayas!). We saw sweet old grandmas selling even sweeter fruits we didn´t even have names for sometimes. Also some lazy men who got drunk after they´d just been to church (a big event still with a lot of singing and praying) and hung around on the central plaza to relax and chat with their pals.

After a few days in Cuenca we hit the road again and arrived in Vilcabamba where we still are. We cannot imagine that time went by so fast and it is already two weeks we´re here! You get sucked into the tranquility and relaxed atmosphere so that it is hard to leave! People here are said to get far over 100 years old and it seems no wonder if you look at their lifestyle: loads of fresh fruit, no stress, and total disinterest for what is going on in the rest of the world! Everything here goes very slow. Even the internet … The town is tiny and doesn´t even have an own bank but it is a great place with many foreigners who settled here because it is such a pleasant area. They have their own bars and restaurants or craft shops and make a living. Also Vilcabamba is a great place for hikes into the area. We had some great experiences here.

But we´re not only hiking and lying in the hammocks all day as you might probably think. For a week now we´re working in a private nature reserve to help the family there. But more on this in the next blog entry…