Raging rivers in southern Ecuador: an extended weekend in Loja and Vilcabamba

Somewhere the beginning of February, Will suddenly realised that his weekends in Ecuador were numbered … Hereupon, we made our wish list of places-to-visit (see Google map), I asked two days off from work and we booked a flight to the South (which saved us a crazy bus ride of at least 14 hours).

We left Wednesday afternoon, the 20^th of February, and a couple of hours later we were already exploring the town of Loja. Both of us liked it immediately: a pleasant buzz, friendly people, nice streets, a cool city gate and - for Will - computer stores that sell the good stuff … ;-)

Thursday

On Thursday, we continued our discovery of town and around. We walked up one of the hills to visit two enigmatic towers and found out that Loja - with no particularly high hills, at least not according to Ecuadorian standards - is planning to install a télépherique here?!

In the afternoon, we took the bus to Vilcabamba, a town an hour to the South of Loja known as the Valley of Eternal Youth and for its peace and quiet which is - isn't it ironic - usually full of tourists. We checked in into one of the local hostals, which - at a time of abundant precipitation - had only muddy water available for a shower since the rains had washed away the pipes leading to the water treatment station. We booked ourselves a guide for a two day trek in the nearby Podocarpus National Park, met two nice American people on their extended six-month honeymoon through South America and exchanged stories with them over dinner.

Friday

Next day, we took off with Jose as our guide and a horse to carry our bags and to ... ... ... (a not so clear explanation, but we’d find out soon enough!) The weather was beautiful, the landscape as well: high mountains deeply cut by rivers and overgrown with cloudforest.

After three hours of walking, we found out why the horse had to come ... The trail we were following was cut by some rivers. Normally, these can easily be crossed on foot, jumping from stone to stone, but because of the unrelenting rainfall of the previous weeks, the small streams had grown into raging rivers. We had to cross the river on the back of the horse (scary as hell!). Check out the video we took of Jose crossing ... Luckily - thanks to the horse that didn't like the crossing and tried to take off - Will found a tree that had fallen across the river and crossed it that way. At the second river, we declared defeat and took an alternative route.

In the afternoon, we arrived in the mountain hut, where we prepared a delicious lunch and had some great horchata, a typical herbal thee. Will and I then took off and went down to the river, where we discovered a huge, normally non-existent waterfall. When we came back Jose had marinated the pork that we would have for dinner and was just starting a fire to grill it. We had a hot shower (how decadent!), a beautiful sunset, enjoyed our meal and at night - for the first time - had a great view of the stars.

Saturday

The next day, Will ran to the top of the mountain while I went with Jose to have a look at a 400 (?!) year old podocarpus, the eponym three of the park and only native Ecuadorian pine tree. After that, we started our walk back to civilisation, taking a different route to avoid the rivers. Back on more horizontal soil, I had my first real horseride! Back in Vilcabamba, we took a (full!) bus back to Loja, right in time before another rainstorm burst loose.

Sunday

A truly lazy Sunday! We spent the morning on the squares of Loja, bought some fruit on the market (mango season at the coast was over, but had just started in the southern lower sierra), were treated to a fanfare and the raising of the flags (one or other regional holiday), ran into the American couple again and took the bus to the not-so-interesting-but-ice cream-selling town of Catamayo to get to the airport and then back to Quito.

More pictures ...