Vilcabamba's alitude is only 1520m, so here is much warmer than Cuenca. And this little villge is famous for the long lives of people living there.
I heard many backpackers said they loved Vilcabamba and so I had high expectations on it, but then I found it was quite similar to Banos, with many hiking opportunities, horse riding, swimming, massage etc. So I was not too excited about this little villge.
After comparing with Banos, I even think Banos is more beauiful, with so many waterfalls dotted around the village and the background of Tungurahua is incrediblely splendid.
Having said that, I also had some good days in Vilcabamba. For the first day, As I heard from the locals, Vilcabamba is very tranquil and safe, so I went trekking alone in the Mollepamba loop. The only dangerous thing was always the dogs on the road, luckily with the presence of the owners, I bypassed a few barking dogs.
The valley of Vilcabamba.
While I was trekking up the mountain, I met a local farmer, Miguel, who was riding a donkey. He seemed very interested about talking with me, so he kept his donkey slowing down and walked along with me. He even invited me to have a look of his little hut, where he kept 10 chickens, 3cats and 1 dog.
A snapshot of local people's lives.
When we went into the house, his mother welcomed us back and started to work on squeezing the maize to feed the chickens. She walked slowly to the stone platform and then used another big rock to squeezing the yellow maize into white powder for the chickens. It really seemed a hard work, so I offered to help. Once the big and heavy rock was in my hand, I started to move it from left to right, or vice versa, then the maize changed to powder little by little.
I wondered if the mother do this every day, it was really a hard work and not interesting at all. It seemed they were quite poor also, the wooden hut would be easily destroyed in heavy rainstorm and their clothes were torn off and old. So I really appecrated for their hospitalility and friendliness.
This was the advantages of trekking alone, because it would be easier to meet local people.
The next day I trekked the symbolic mountain, Mandango Peak(about 2100m), with Yuhei. As my hostel provided information about the route and the owner said the route was not too difficult which could be finished in at most 4hours, so we set off after mid day.
The spectacular shape of Mandango Peak.
At first, I didn't know tourists could trek up to the top of Mandango Peak(1.5USD for entering the national park), because its shape was so uncommon and seemed so narrow at the top. So I was really happy that I could trek this mountain. And it turned out to be one of my unforgettable trek.
When we trekked up to the mid level of the mountain, we already had a very impressive view of the whole village of Vilcacamba and the mountain behind. When we trekked up higher, bypassing the two crosses at the top, the view was much more incredible. The mountains here differed from the mountains I saw before a lot, it just like big rocks falling from the sky, but not folding up by pressure from the crust of the earth.
Only after 45mins of trekking, we were already rewarded by the beautiful scenery.
The first cross! We are coming!
The panoromic view given by the reflection of the cross.
A narrow path towards the bottom edge of the peaks.
Encountered with nature.
The second cross overlooking the whole village of Vilcabamba.
We had to walk through all the path which leaded through the top of peaks.
And the trek at the top those peaks was very tough, most of the time, we could only walked on a trail which was less than 50cm wide and both sides were cliffs. I might had been even using 5mins to walk (or crawled more properly) down a 2 meters cliff-like path! Really felt so scared at that moment!
The steep slope which made my legs shaking!
While paying attention on the cliffs just beside my feet, my eyes also enjoying the scenic view of the mountain and valley.
Pefect sky.
A lit of sunshine over the mountains.
Looked like the faces of apes.
Though the trek was quite dangerous, the view was really scenic and unforgettable, sometimes we saw cacti and big colourful spiders on the road, sometimes we were scratched by the needle-like leaves and we could even see rainbows from the opposite valley.
Spiders and big cacti were undivideable.
This annoying plants are all along the narrow path.
As the path was so tough, once scared by the dogs in the farm and sometimes we could not find the signs of the correct path, so we finally used almost 7hours for the whole trek. Just lucky enough to get out of the bushes before the night curtains had fallen down. Otherwise, we would be in a real trouble.
Thanks for the Mandango Peak, it gave me a perfect full stop of my travel in Ecuador.
Ciao, Ecuador.
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