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After almost 48 hours on buses in the last 4 days we finally arrived into Ecuador and a sleepy little town called Vilcabamba. Vilcabamba is located in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains covered in cloud forest and the scenery really is breathtaking. The valley is overlooked by a mountain called Mandango, the Sleeping Inca, and the locals believe that the spirit of the sleeping Inca protects the area from earthquakes and other natural disasters. We made the one hour climb up the mountain one of the days to take in the views.
Vilcabamba apparently has some of the highest life expectancy in the world with people living to almost 120 years old. And yes we did spot a few very old folks who looked particularly sprightly for their age! The reasons why people live so long here aren´t entirely clear though the diet, climate and lifestyle have all been mentioned. But a reason I find more believable is that many of the locals exaggerate their age and becuase there are no proper birth certificates their actual ages cannot be verified! Normally people lie and make themselves younger not older but what can you do!
Other than that Vilcabamba was a place to chill in hammocks and relax after many hours of travelling. Vilcabamba unusually has a lot of Americans living there, perhaps trying to live to a ripe old age! In fact with Ecuador´s official currency being the US dollar and so many Americans and lots of Mexican restaurants and huge utility vehicles you really could be in a small rural town in America.
We also found a strange little pub called Shanty´s where the bar stools are actually horse saddles, not overly comfortable, and the local beverage is snake juice (they actually have a dead snake in a bottle of some sort of liquor and shots are $2 a pop!).
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