Vilcabamba, Ecuador

  Vilcabamba, Ecuador
Saturday, March 17, 2007

Not much point in writing up anything for the previous 2 places... Riobamba and Cuenca, as it piddled rain for the time we were there and there´s not much point in telling ye what we watched on the TV... now is there!

Well... one thing of note did happen... McGarry went to the Darkside.. look at the pix to see what is meant by that!!

27 "We´re on the road again...on our way to..."

We had a couple of hairy bus trips on our way to Vilcabamba... driving on muddy roads just inches from sheer vertical drops... avoiding a few landslides and only one bus crash... just the everyday, run of the mill travelling in the Andes apparantly.

Vilcabamba, in the Andes (at the bottom of the Armies), is one of our favouritest places that we´ve ever visited! We had the best accommodation since we left home (called Le Rendezvous) and we ate the the same restaurant for the 5 nights that we were there (the food was so good)!!!!

We spent 5 days relaxing and constantly discussing the robbery... flaming ninkinpoops!!! We did a good hike up to the top of the mountain next to the town... crikey we are gettin into this hiking lark!!! It was funny actually... on our way back down from the top we passed a pair of "serious hikers", complete with the ultra sunglasses, sticks with a spike at the end, boots, shorts, and tubes coming out of the rucksack to suck water from.... here´s the 2 Paddies with only our bag for the camera, sunglasses and water!!

14 "awright barry like.....top o´the hill like"

Unfortunately our Paddies Day was spent mostly on a bus... seven hours to be precise! When we arrived in the town, however, we showed our Irishness and had a few beers to celebrate the day! Our final night in Vilcabamba will forever be remembered as the "Night of the Snake Juice". The restaurant that we ate in for the 5 nights gave us a going away present... free shots of their own brewed in-house Snake Juice... the jar actually had about 3 dead snakes inside the friggin thing. We´d had a few beers before this slippery surprise and had a few more afterwards... and to put it mildly... we were demented!!!! To top it off we had to do a 9 hour bus journey next day... now that wasn´t a smart plan was it!!!

Vilcabamba was our last stop of any note in Ecuador (we did stop in Loja for 1 night, but it don´t count)

Our overall feeling on Ecuador....
Apart from that "little incident" on the bus with the bold men, we think that Ecuador is defo one of our favourite places on the planet that we´ve been to... .HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!