7 posts tagged “loja”
This is the testimony of a expat living in the Hacienda San Joaquin, in Vilcabamba. It has nothing to do with story written by Gavin Moore:
It's shocking visiting the United States after living in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, even for a short while. In just a few weeks in the Valley of Longevity, you naturally get used to the connection with nature: The evening lightning bugs, the dreamscape of stars lighting up the night sky, the sound of the river water cascading its way from the mountains to the coast. You hear the night crickets of the bamboo forest, the chattering birds in the morning, and the occasional mooing of a cow somewhere in the valley.
There's also the scent of life in the valley; trees, grass, water in the air and rich soil under your feet. It's part of the fresh breeze you invite into your home each day by opening your windows to enjoy the near-perfect climate.
Compared to all this, traveling to the United States and waking up in a city is a bit of shock. The first thing I noticed is the complete disconnect from nature. Gone were the sounds of water, birds, insects and animals. The deep blue sky was replaced with a pale, shallow sky. The moon and stars seemed distant and dim. The Vilcabamba smell of abundant plant life was replaced with the scent of diesel exhaust and wet pavement. There were no natural sounds in the environment, and I was overtaken by a sense of artificiality. I longed to be back in Vilcabamba, near my garden, bamboo forest, water canal and medicinal plants.
Of course, this experience is really more about city life vs. country life than any particular country. Ecuador has cities, too, where life is artificial and nature seems distant. But the density and abundance of life in the Ecuadorian countryside is truly astonishing. It goes beyond any country living I've ever experienced in the U.S. Only Hawaii approaches the kind of rich, natural diversity of life that I'm privileged to wake up to in the Valley of Longevity every single day.
More of the story visiting Natural News
Erik just started a page to register the chronologies of his travel to Ecuador. He's getting in touch with Never Land Farm people and launched a very original idea. Get organic coffee by July 3th by mail. You just need a PayPal account and you are all set.
The money collected will be used to buy clothes, toys, and solar lights. These items are going to help families in the Loja province of Ecuador, specifically a town called Tumianuma ( near Vilcabamba)
So, if this is something you feel like helping out with and getting an awesome item in return, he's put a paypal button here. The cost is $13.50/lb ppd and will be shipping Priority Mail between July 3 and 5. Feel free to post comments if you have any questions you have for Erik!
Please, pread it out!
It's being a while since we don't write a word in this blog but today we felt motivated to share with you a post from The Universe, an ecuadorean newspaper where Bernard Fougéres, writes about a beutiful small city in the ecuadorean southern. Carlos Jumbo is our alibi, and we've traslated a paragraph for your beneplacit:
Loja shelters inside a carton of mountains. Anyone who does not know it, feels Ecuador only the half. I enjoyed myself as a child taking photos on the Jipiro's Recreational Park (the dictionary rebuffed the 'recreational' word). At the City's Gate Museum , drawings by Manuel Serrano fascinated me by the way he changes animal image into humans and viceversa, creating beings from other dimensions with the instinctive cruelty of Stornaiolo, the contrasts of light and shade that Rembrandt loved. I've got my lunch in Quo Vadis, Latin question answered in the same language when I had to affix my signature in the visitors' book: "Quo vadis? Semper usque ad felicitatem sweet est quia desipere in loco "(" Where do I go? Always towards happiness because it is sweet fool around in the right place "). Since then, I remembered the film Quo Vadis?, Created in 1951, with Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Peter Ustinov. I've got to try a entire bottle of Beronia, romantic wine from La Rioja. In Vilcabamba I triped over in the same way Fidel Castro did it, not for being drunk but for being clumsy since birth
Next time you choose Ecuador for a trip, I strongly suggest to head down south and ask for Loja and Vilcabamba.
Have no time to type in anything for now. Please, come by our blog and give us some feedback
Ecuadorean Food. Ihave here some of the typical Ecuadorian dishes, including ones more unusual that can only be ingested by the daring. Are you bold enough? Don't worry, we have Papa John's, Taco Bell, and McDonald's among other
American food chains. If you want to eat traditional food without the traditional American gastrointestinal reaction, we can stick with stews and patacones (fried green plantains) that Ms. Alicia can cook for us.
- locro-yaguarlocro: potato soup with or without blood
- cuy a la brasa: roasted Guinea pig
- canelazo: sugar cane alcohol and cinnamon
- empanadas de morocho, de verde y de harina
- ceviche: seafood marinated in lemon and onions
- encebollado: fish dish that apparently cures hangovers
- pan de yuca, muchines de yuca: cassava bread or cassava cakes
- seco de guanta: dish with tomato, onion, etc and tapir. They can also make
encocado de guanta as an alternative. Look up tapir.
- Naranjillas (plum or tree tomatos), guanabana, mamey, maracuya (passion
fruit), guayaba (guava), lychees, guavas (it's not what you think, guineo
(bananas), grenadilla, ovos, rosellas, mangos, pineapples, and many more
(So I guess this can technically be 9 reasons of the 100. I'm being generous by
not counting the fruit individually)
REASON 2 of 101:
Vilcabamba is a town in Ecuador also known as the Valley of Longevity. Its
people usually live to be centenarians. Something about the water. No,
seriously, there have been scientific studies conducted in the vally basically
concluding that the environment is optimal for long life. Vilcabamba is in the
southern province of Loja, so the trip is long when you take a bus. In any
case,people have told me that many foreigners are buying property in the area,
and the locals are slowly disappearing. If you find an interesting article that
proves or disproves what I've said, tell me. I haven't been there yet.
OMG...Vilcabamba. The Ecuadorian town where hippies and travellers go to relax. You will definitely get more than you expect. Initially, Vilcabamba is an amazing little town with a feeling that you can't explain with words. It is quaint and everyone mind themselves. People move at their own relaxed pace. Vilcabamba is famous for not only being a gringo town but also for having the largest population of people who live the longest. So that means most people in Vilcabamba live a long time. There was a study done with the people of the village and they found that they lived longer because they: 1) Ate lots of (healthy) yogurt...not the sugary american stuff, 2) Exercised regularly, and 3) Had low blood pressure because of a lack of stress. I think the lack of stress has something to do with the environment around them. It's very serene and mountainous. The mountains and hills just have the ability to calm you no matter how shaky you are.
So I can't write this blog without mentioning the food there. You might want to get a taste of home with spagetti that isn't overcooked and a wonderful lasagna. I know it seems silly to write about food but it's surprising how much you can miss the good stuff when its not at your fingertips. The yogurt was all natural with NO sugar...it's a rarity to find in the US and come in a yummy crepe.
Natalie a tourist in her way to Peru says: I had trying to cross the border back into Peru. So on Sunday, there was only one bus out of Loja back to Piura at 10:30pm because of some religious festival in Loja(arriving El Cisne's Virgin). This meant that we got stuck at the Ecuadorian border for 2 hours because Ecuador has decided that they should close their border between 1am and 5am. Finally 5am rolls around and we get our exit stamp for Ecuador and so we can now finally get our entrance stamp for Peru. I decided to play it off as if I didn't understand the Spanish or at all what was going on. It was worth a try...actually it worked and he gave me 90 more days. I don't think he was too keen on having to explain to me a few times that he was trying to cheat me and that I should bribe him to get through. Silly border police...maybe next time I should bat my eyes and give them a big smile...!
Wednesday to Friday this week are national holidays, to celebrate the Day of the Dead and the independence of Guayaquil. The Municipio of Loja is well on course for its preparations for November 18th which is the anniversary of Loja’s independence, and every high school in the centre of town has had early morning marching band practises ready for the anuual civil parade. My friends went to investigate the babies made of bread the other day, and were not disappointed, which perhaps reveals a lot about my concern for the welfare of pastry people. One side of the main square is full of identical stalls selling colada morada (made of babaco, pineapple, blackberry, apple and a magic ingredient that makes it thick and taste like a distant, more exotic cousin of mulled wine) and bread in all shapes and sizes. All attempts to discover the link between these items and any historical events have so far been futile. Do you know any, I beg you. The local newspaper’s main article on the tradition can tell you where to go, each shape of bread cost between 10-50 centavos, where to go if we wanted to complain about anything and how much each stall holder had to pay to sell their wares. Wikipedia is equally unforthcoming.
The political antics continue, with one of the two presidential candidates being forced to whip out his school certificates following an accusation that he never finished his studies. He clearly payed even less attention in Maths lessons than I did, as he is promising to build 833 new houses per day if he gets into office. I read a hilarious quote from him defending this promise against its many incredulous opponents: ‘There is no way that we will not fulfil this promise, and we shall achieve this by letting the Ecuadorian people know who will be doing the building work, and telling them everything.’ Beautiful Bullcrap!
I feel it is important to share the state of the cheese industry in Loja, given that in USA it would be a fairly important part of our life. Apart from the hugely overpriced imported cheese in the main supermarket, there is one kind of cheese in Loja, which is often sold in CD shops or pharmacies. It is large, woobly, white, and looks like a part of an albino coral reef. It is soaked in water, crumbles to the touch and tastes of little else but salt. Until today you had not enjoyed any form of appreciation or friendship with said item, however, to your delight, you will discover in the absence of background music that it actually squeaks like a tiny trapped bird when you chew it. Not that you’d want to eat a live bird, but you're going to feel that the cheese’s less positive characteristics are entirely outweighed by this clear display of a desire to communicate, or even serenade, its muncher. Perhaps it could be combined with the baby bread and two superficially superfluous culinary items could finally, together, reach their zenith.
TonNet have just said it, babe!
