Lifestyle in Vilcabamba, Ecuador

There is a feeling of joy in Vilcabamba. People, including kids and teenagers, seem to be content and full of life. It is refreshing. They all love being outdoors. TV or electronics are not a priority here. These people definitely have something to teach us Westerners... To us, most teenagers seem to exude selfconfidence and joy.

First things firt, let's see what Louis has been up to these days.

He still loves riding his bike

and in the back of taxis with Angelina and Yukira.

Angelina hangs out a bunch with Ely, Leo's mum.

 These are painted chicks.

 The river is used by a lot of locals for bathing. It looks like lots of Vilcabambans do not have a shower in their home or maybe they just prefer the river. You can see groups of friends wearing just shorts, walking to the river with their towels and soaps.

This family was shampooing right here. We left to give them some privacy.

It is also a social thing to go to the river to soap up with your buddies.

Ecuadorians love their rivers. They do not mind the cold water.

Cooking on the banks while laundry is soaking.

Most people do not have a laundry sink at their house. They go to the river for laundry too.
Locals love their parks too and make good use of them.

While some are sleeping

others bet a little change on a card game.
Go Grandma!

Some people still own oxen.

We have seen this man and his donkeys many times. He goes to the creek by our house and loads up his donkeys with sand for construction projects.

 

 So, he delivers the sand to whereever he is asked to. No truck needed.

People love horses here. Young kids are excellent riders.

There is a rodeo here once a year.

Check out this little guy's Christmas present

Most people do not own a vehicle, just like us!
We must be the only ones in town without a machete.

This person is one of the famous elders in Vilcabamba.

 This is the star elder of Vilcabamba. Agustin Jaramillo. He is 100 years old and walks to the plaza every day.

This is another famous elder here. He told us that his daughter lives in the US and she comes to visit. He hopes that she will come back.

Every church service is full.

 On specific religious days, some people set up their own altars on the sidewalks.

Vilcabambans are very religious.

How many nuns can you fit in a Toyota Hilux with a soft shell?

The plaza is a cool place to hang out and read. Since there are no peddlers around here, nobody will try to sell you anything.

 Locals are getting ready for the Westerners.

This one-time organic fair dowtown was planned for 4 years before it finally took place.
There is a movement to make this place organic.
  

This vendor sells fermented cane juice and also exhibits some local venomous snakes.
 

 
Crafts were available that day for kids

 The plaza always has a nice feel to it.

 Gems naturally abound in the area.

 Chek out this fun playhouse made of plastic bottles, egg cartons and beer bottle caps!

Kokopelli is here

and DirecTV too!

 A circus is in town for a week.

This nice wood is probably being carefully put aside for future art use.

 This old-timer is always sitting in front of her house selling her own produce. This feels just like Vilcabamba 30 years ago.

 These dogs are tied but Vilcabamba has a ton of free roaming dogs, too many maybe. We see a lot of dog fights in the street. Unfortunately, some people put poisoned meat in the parque central and many of these dogs die this way.

 This is the middle/high school ("colegio") in Vilcabamba. The sign fell down recently. It may take a while for it to get fixed. The high school teachers and the police work together to eliminate drugs from the school. There are six grades in the high school. It is said to be a good high school. There are also six grades in elementary school.

 A few months later, repairs were done.

This is the joyful wave of high-school students at lunchtime.

These guys are carrying some kind of old-fashioned drawing board.

Students from the colegio are doing homework together on the sidewalk.

 There are two elementary schools in Vilcabamba. This one is the "13 de Abril", formerly the girls school. This is the monday morning celebration where students sing the national anthem of Ecuador and the school anthem. One student per class also speaks on the microphone about a subject they chose. That morning, a student talked about the soccer game in Barcelona and another talked about how a mum killed herself after she gave birth to a boy because she wanted a girl...

This is the national anthem of Ecuador.

 This is also the national anthem.

Then comes the school anthem.

This is recess.

This young boy just learned how to say I like ice-cream.

Everybody rides in the beds of taxis standing up. Guess who these kids are.

 The free library was set up by an American in 2012. It is the only library in Vilcabamba. They have thousands of books in English and some in Spanish and other languages. It is open to all.

The Vilcabamba dispensary is a useful resource. We went there a few times for Louis or Angelina for small stuff. Medical care is totally free including all shots. There are several doctors, a lab and X rays on the spot.

It is a friendly place where Angelina can also practice the piano. They are open five afternoons per week and the place is mostly operated by volunteers.
 
Impromptu parties. Tons of young people from Loja come and hang out on the weekends. They drink beer and eat ice cream. Unfortunately they leave their trash behind.

The old timers "longevos"  do not appreciate of the younger crowds who come out from Loja and disturb the peace:

Wild fires are common in the dry season. As there are no fire fighters or fire department at all, fires run their course or neighbours will get together and fight fires with buckets of water if their homes are endangered.

Hail storms are very rare in Vilcabamba. They happen less than once a year. We were able to witness a good one.



Time is at a standstill in Vilcabamba. It's been 10:27 for 14 years now. The internet service is also crawling everwhere in town. No one can do skype with the video on and it can take forever just to open a simple email. We are actually spending more than a hundred dollars at the internet cafe every month. This includes our kids' internet spending for homeschooling (khanacademy) and all our emails/internet searches/skype. We found out that we cannot get an internet connexion at our home because our trees are so tall. Otherwise, for service at your house, it would cost you 50 USD per month for a speed of 500 Kb plus an installation fee of 134 USD and you do not own the unit.

 This ugly house is not far from ours. The first time we asked how much they were selling it for, we were told 250,000 USD, the second time 400,000 USD possibly down to 350,000! It has many problems including serious erosion or the land by the creek when it rises and the buyer would have to have a wall built all around the property to prevent it from being washed away by the creek. This house may stay on the market for ever, nobody will be stupid enough to buy it for that kind of price.

Justine and Stephane's Nomadic Adventure of the Spirit - Lucky or crazy?

While strolling through the central plaza Christelle stopped to take a photo of this vehicle. It obviously has a story and with the French license plates it did not arrive by land. After a couple of shots we circled around and met Justine (28) and Stephane (30) who are 13 months into their exploration of South America. They lived in the French Alps region of France very close to the Swiss border and many of their friends were following the standard modus operandi path to happiness: acquire education, get job, meet and marry spouse, purchase house, have kids, buy things and look forward to decades of work followed by a hopefully comfy retirement and death. Justine and Stephane decided to do something different.

 Some of the inspiration for their trip must have come from Justine’s parents who did a similar trip 35 years ago with a Citroen 2CV or Deux Chevaux, the French equivalent of the Volkswagen Bug. These days it is not rare to see people like Justine and Stephane exploring South America in a mini RV, but back in 1977 the local people’s jaws must have dropped and eyes bugged out when Justine’s parents were tooling around. To save money for the trip, Justine and Stephane made sacrifices by renting a small apartment and working hard. They considered purchasing a vehicle in the U.S. and driving south, but the cost to ship the vehicle around the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia was almost the same as the cost to ship it from France to Buenos Aires. They decided to purchase a vehicle in France to ensure they could prepare it exactly as they wanted and chose a 1987 Toyota Land Cruiser that was already modified into a mini RV complete with stove, fridge, bed, outdoor hand held shower. After a couple of months of hard work that included a lot of cleaning, they felt good about their home-on-wheels. They were able to use the overhead storage cases that Justine’s parents had saved from their trip in the 70's and had a special sticker made for the side of the vehicle that says “Les Zoomeurs”-The Zoomers. Their website is www.leszoomeurs.com and you will find a lot of useful info if you are planning a similar trip.

  The journey across the ocean took 28 days then they traveled through Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia the south of Brazil (Iguacu Falls and Pantanal) and Peru before arriving in Ecuador. Somewhere in Argentina after a long, steep climb the engine overheated and, from what Peter could deduce from Stephane’s description, shortly thereafter threw a rod (which means broke a connecting rod and punched a hole in the side of the engine block which spewed oil everywhere and destroyed the engine). The Zoomers’ adventure came to a screeching halt and they found themselves in a small town with 1 mechanic. It took 2 months and the parts were hard to source but the guy got it done. The Zoomers spent most of that time still living in the back of their vehicle at the shop. It cost over $5000 and not only did the engine blow up but so did their budget. Regardless, they resumed their journey exploring a lot of nature and learning about different cultures and their histories.

   Continuing with the tradition we started in Durango, Sunday is still French toast day. So, of course we invited Justine and Stephane over for French toast (called “lost bread” in France). We began to learn more about their adventure and we just instantly liked these two and admired the guts needed to take on this kind of journey. We offered for them to park the RV in our yard and spend the night at our place and they accepted. The common thread between us all, which is not uncommon these days, is leaving what we know in order to explore the unknown. A person who does this could be defined loosely as a contrarian-one who rejects popular opinion. Stephane said that slowly over the 13 months this trip has brought about a change of the spirit. It did not happen right away but took time to occur. 

 Peter and Christelle have found during their time in Vilcabamba that most people just want one-way conversations where they do most of the talking and we are the listeners. Our conversations with Justine and Stephane were multi directional. They made direct eye contact and really listened to what we were saying. And they made a big effort to speak English even though it was the weakest of the 3 languages that were spoken. They said after 13 months of speaking Spanish they were losing their English. 

  Most people close to them said they were either “crazy” or “lucky” for what they were doing but not that they were creating their life experience. Around the dying campfire of wet bamboo that night Stephane confessed that he and Justine do not know how to explain to their families and friends not only the changes that have been happening within themselves spiritually, but also their desire to remain in South America somewhere and start a new life with children.

   The following day Justine and Stephane had the pleasure of watching the Monday morning school ceremony of recent news notices and the singing of both the national and school anthems. We regressed back to our home and enjoyed food and conversation together. Justine and Stephane ended up hearing about our life story and politely listened. We were late for dropping off the “desayuno escolar” (school snack) and had no plans for lunch so we did some internet business at the cafe then ate out at “The Juice Factory” with the kids. 

   Later that afternoon the Zoomers packed up and headed north. Justine’s parents had met and become close friends with a family that presently lives in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, and Justine and Stephane were invited to stay with this family before heading to Colombia, Venezuela and lastly Brazil. It was not until later that evening that we realize that Justine’s fleece was still at our home. We would email them the following day to get their friends’ shipping address in Quito. The next morning as we were about to enter the lavanderia some taxi driver was honking at us repeatedly from behind. We turned around to discover it was Justine and Stephane. When they realized the fleece was missing they spent the night parked at the zoo. We told them they could have come back over and spent the night at our place again and then nobody spoke as we were all doing a silent dance around the truth. Did they want to be alone? Did they feel that it might be an imposition? Maybe the independent nomad types just want to move on.

   Food was in order. The Zoomers bought a bunch of pains au chocolat from the French bakery (Peter and Stephane went back for seconds) and we had coffee at the cafe. Peter mentioned to Stephane on the second trip back from the bakery that he could not see how Stephane and Justine could go back to France and try to resume their old lives (even though they both love their families and friends) and Stephane agreed. To Peter, trying to re-enter their old lives conjures up images of mucking through wet cement, floundering in quicksand or simply running headlong into a brick wall. A close friend of Peter’s would call this endeavor mingling with the “dark humor of the spirit.”

   So again we said our goodbyes. Mixed in with all the thank yous was the unspoken thanks of the recognition and understanding of each other’s journey. At times it was almost as if when Justine and Stephane spoke that they were talking about our current life experience. We also heard comments from people close to us that contained the words “crazy” or “lucky”. Similarly, we do not know how to explain what we are doing or where we are heading. We live life by the day rather than the minute with no long term plan for the future and almost all of our activities are centered around family life. We are not trying to “figure out our lives”.

   Nature, teeming with wildlife, is spirit and travel stirs the soul. Justine and Stephane are traveling around South America through all of the countries, immersing themselves in the beauty of nature that is on offer, visiting ruins of ancient societies and learning about their cultures. How could they not be effecting a change of the spirit? What a mega-dose of a healing tonic for the soul. How could an adventure as such not bring about a deep, profound, lifelong change in a person?

   We know we are doing the right thing in our lives, also. We said we would use our kids as barometers and they would help us make decisions. The first morning while strolling through the central plaza of Vilcabamba, Louis remarked that it felt like home. We found our rental within the hour while some extranjeros here have commented that it can take several months. Ours is in an ideal location within walking distance to town in a very tranquil setting. We also are effecting our own “change of the spirit.”

   The changes in the behavior of our kids has been overwhelmingly positive. And we live a simple life almost completely unplugged compared to our previous daily life experience in Durango. We have no TV, Internet service, cell phones, radio or car and it is all by choice. Our simple home is a 2br with the living room converted into a third bedroom, so the kids spend a lot of time outdoors. Nature is the great equalizer and balancer and most of the family dynamic and daily life stress we experienced back in Durango has dissolved. We walk everywhere and it is wonderful.

   We have ideas for the future and are letting life guide us and it is a great way to live. We thank life for allowing our path to cross with Justine and Stephane’s.

Louis's 11th birthday

 Louis invited his classmate Miguel. They get along well. Miguel is wearing the yellow and blue tee shirt. The computer got themost attention from the kids. No language barrier there.

 These guys are Leo and Alex.

 As always, Peter as the cake baker. Half of the cake had a chocolate frosting, the other side had a vanilla frosting.

It looks like Louis and his friends had a good time. We hope!

 Javier had a great time smearing his face.

 

Chloe and Gorgina also enjoyed the fruit salad.