Lost City of the Inca Vilcabamba

After being here in Cuenca, Ecuador for three weeks we felt the need to get out of town and see a little of the country. We had heard of a town only and hour or so away called Loja, so decided we would jump on the bus ($7) and check it out. We were not sure how far it was and reports were sketchy as to how long. As it turns out about 90miles and four hours up and down and around and around, through winding valleys and over passes (we are in the middle of the Andes). It was definitely a good thing we had bought Leiann some anti nausea meds, I was temped to take one myself and could not read for the onset of nausea. We stayed the night in Loja and just happened to be there for the start of Carnival. There was a small parade and boys chasing girls in the streets to throw water balloons, eggs and flour at them. Apparently is is OK to be really bad during Carnival and then you pay for it during Lent. We walked the streets and found the squares and churches, but compared with the history, churches and colonial past of Cuenca, Loja was a distant running up at best. We met a new friend Jessica on the bus to Loja and then we caught up with each other again in one of the squares. Jessica was a world traveler and wrote about spiritual healing/living and all the places she had been. She was definitely a different being than you would normally meet and we enjoyed her spirit and we spent the evening together and vowed to meet up again somewhere down the trail. We jumped on another bus going to another place we had heard about, Vilcabamba. It was supposed to be a little town way up in the mountains where people live to 120 years old and was the last refuge of the Inca trying to evade the Spanish. Our bus as usual was a deal at $1.30 each! Along the way the bus broke down so we were hanging out with about 30 other passengers none of which spoke a lick of English and our Spanish is progressing painfully slow. The place the bus broke down could not have been better we had a view of farms on the hillside going straight up to the peaks of the Andes. The little houses built on the hillside were far apart and had no roads going up to them. Anything needed was packed by human or horse up the hills. The pastures were vibrant green and the home of happy and well exercised cattle. I spoke to an Ecuadorian standing next to that it looked like a very hard way to live with much work, he looked at me and said “total tranquillo”. I had to admit it did look like a very simple life, probably no WiFi. We got into Vilcabamba just before dark and found to our delight a Chinese place with fantastic and cheap food ($5 for chicken and vegetables). We finally found our hostel/old run down hotel after an hour of walking and asking. It turns out there were two with nearly the same name, the first of which was way up a hill. Our room was OK but had a slight sent of sewer wafting up from the shower drain, we kept the bathroom door shut all night. The next morning I could hardly walk as the bed was to soft for my old back. The place was probably the swingingest joint in town thirty years ago but now had become run down. With a little work and million dollars it could be one again, as the courtyards were filled with plants and trees that had taken years to grow. The next morning we headed out hostel hunting and found a nice little place, with a hot water shower (run down place cold shower) but later it had a rooster farm across the fence. We found earplugs at the pharmacy, it's all good. So we ended up spending two days in this very little town, only one Catholic church. The town square was very nicely treed with benches to sit on and watch the world go by. Around the square were many little stores, restaurants, coffee houses and places selling healing potions of one kind or another (Vilcabamba has become a healing mecca for hippy healers, taking advantage of the reputation of the residents tendency to have long lives). Leiann tried an elixir that was called “get over it”, lemon juice, thieves, a red sauce that was supposed to kill and heal anything you might have, peppermint and well were not sure what else, but she felt zippy afterward. While we were there the first day of Carnival had started and a little tiny carnival was just setting up, we rode the snail train all over town with the driver zigzagging on both sides of the road with the music blaring loudly and boys threatening to throw water balloons at us. The next morning we met Ruththira, who had started her own coffee house “The Midas Touch” a few years ago. The building was an old adobe building (as were many in town), it looked ancient. She had done a wonderful job of creating a warm, artistic atmosphere. We chatted for an hour while we enjoyed our espressos. She told us how she came to be here, falling in love with an Chilean poet living in town and now expecting. We were sad to leave but knew we would be back and may stay for awhile next time. Back at our little casa we enjoyed live jazz last night hoping to meet back up with our new friend Jessica, but her mother had an old injury flare up and they could not make it. Having our morning coffee we are now planning our next adventure taking a friend out to the Galapagos Islands.
A little history of the “Lost City of Vilcambamba.



"The Inca brought together all those of the royal blood he could find, men and women alike, and retired to the wild forest of the Antis to a place called Villcapampa where he lived in exile and solitude as one can imagine a dispossessed and disinherited prince would live, until one day he was slain by a Spaniard whom he had sheltered and protected from enemies who had sought his death."[


Archaeologic studies[edit]
The location of Vilcabamba was forgotten.
The first outsiders in modern times to rediscover the remote forest site that has since come to be identified with Old Vilcabamba (Vilcabamba la Vieja) were three Cuzqueños: Manuel Ugarte, Manuel López Torres, and Juan Cancio Saavedra, in 1892. In 1911, Hiram Bingham with his book Lost City of the Incas brought to public attention the site of the ruins of the city at the remote forest site then called Espíritu Pampa, 130 kilometres (81 mi) west of Cuzco. Bingham, however, did not realize its significance and believed that Machu Picchu was the fabled "Vilcabamba", lost city and last refuge of the Incas.
In the 1960s, the explorations and discoveries of Antonio Santander Casselli and Gene Savoy finally associated the Espíritu Pampa site with the legendary Vilcabamba. Their 1970 book Antisuyo brought the site to even wider attention. Researcher and author John Hemming provided additional substantive confirmation as to Espíritu Pampa's significance in his 1970 The Conquest of the Incas.
In 1976, Professor Edmundo Guillén and Polish explorers Tony Halik and Elżbieta Dzikowska continued to explore the long-known ruins. However, before the expedition, Guillen visited a museum in Seville where he discovered letters from Spaniards, in which they described the progress of the invasion and what they found in Vilcabamba. Comparison between the letters' contents and the ruins provided additional proof of the location of Vilcabamba.
In 1981, the party of American explorer Gregory Deyermenjian reached and photographed parts of the site, soon thereafter generating a popular article concerning the site and its history.[11]
Later extensive archeological work by Vincent Lee, and especially his exhaustive study, his 2000 book Forgotten Vilcabamba, gave further and even more precise confirmation that has made Espíritu Pampa the definitively accepted site of the historical Vilcabamba.
On 16 June 2006, a museum in Cuzco[which?] unveiled a plaque that commemorates the thirtieth anniversary of the 1976 Vilcabamba findings.

Stay tuned for more adventures.