Vilcabamba

This week was quite the adventure.  We decided to make the LONG and VERY CURVY drive to Vilcabamba, a city in the Providence of Loja near the border of Peru.  

City of Loja entrance

Mural in the city of Loja

The countryside was spectacular we were in awe of how stunning and massive the mountains were.  It's such a stark contrast to the mountains of Montana, which are more peaks, these mountains are covered in green grass and forests and are higher in elevation but since they're on the equator there's no snow.  

The way to Vilcabamba we were feeling great and looking forward to a great time exploring the area.
We arrived at our cute hotel Madre Tierra, which sat on the side of a mountain overlooking the sleepy town and surrounding mountains.

We were sooooo excited with how quaint and cool our room was and were in awe of the HOT water with the added bonus of GREAT PRESSURE!! :)  The shower was amazing considering we haven't showered without losing water pressure in our flat in months and not to mention it's NEVER hot!! Simple pleasures... :)  The only down fall was the ENORMOUS black spiders that would crawl out onto the walls at sunset and all throughout the night.  I found one a foot above my head while sleeping.. I guess this is what you get when choosing to stay in an Ecolodge, no use of chemicals or poisons. So yep, we had our creepy visitors each night... :(

Loving the modern conveniences! :)

Our room!

Taking a rest and watching a little Dora the Explorer (appropriate)

We absolutely LOVED the views from our room!! :)

Stunning!! This is a sacred mountain in the Incan history.  The valley was the place for royalty to vacation and they believed the mountain protected them from natural disasters

These two LOVED the hammocks!! :)  

I was feeling so good while  in Vilcabamba so we decided to try horse back riding.  I grew up with horses, but haven't ridden in years.  I absolutely LOVED every minute of it.  So did Coco...

All smiles!! 

This was a bridge over a BEAUTIFUL river.. I'm sad we didn't get a picture of the river.. :( 

Coco and her horse Prince

Great horses!! 

Riding through downtown Vilcabamba

Vilcabamba

Videos from our ride! :)

That night we came home to a beautiful dinner at our hotel.  Met some wonderful people and enjoyed great conversations. 

Coco was intrigued with our neighbor who was water painting outside his room.  We quietly snapped this picture from our window.  It was cute how intense she was in learning what he was doing.  

Dinner each night is on a beautiful veranda overlooking the valley

Cheers to memories!

The next day we decided to go for a hike.  We'd heard of a reserve that a couple of biologists had founded and had marked many species of plants and identified different types of butterflies and insects.  I was feeling great and not nauseated up till this point so we decided to check it out.  When the taxi dropped us off at the entrance to the reserve there was no one around and we could see a sign for an ecolodge, which we decided would probably be the best bet at finding a map or some sort of direction.  When we came to the lodge it was literally a shack built on stilts.  An older lady came out and explained that we guide ourselves and handed us a map.  She wasn't friendly and quickly explained different trails in her broken English.  She pointed to one and said it was her favorite and reassured us that Coco would probably do fine on it.  Lets just say I think she was drinking too much of the hallucinogenic tea the valley's known for, because...

THE HIKE WAS CRAZY!! I was terrified.  I grew up in Montana and had spent years with my family hiking in the wildernesses of the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat, Glacier National Park and even Idaho's Selway wilderness, this was absolutely foreign to any hiking I had done before.  First off, the insects were HUGE, the spiders and their webs were intimidating.  I don't think anyone had hiked the trail in a quite a while (it needed a good machete chopping) the jungle was thick, the trail was barely visible at times and you could see that on rainy days the trail becomes a waterfall streaming down the mountain.

This was the trail at the start, you could at least see it.  

This is sections in which we were literally climbing on hands and knees

Big sections were taken out of the trail.

This kid is meant to hike!! She LOVED every minute (except the large grasshoppers), but she was incredible wanting to keep going.

We started to make our way out of the jungle and the terrain became dry and full of cactus which was a challenge to avoid especially when there was little to grab or hold onto.  Not to mention there are many huge trees that have large thorns which makes you constantly cautious about grabbing onto for help.  Coco was amazing...  Then came the cliffs, these were intense especially with a 4.5 year old and being pregnant...

It was all WORTH every minute... When we finally got to the top, we were AMAZED at the beautiful views... Not to mention it was all ours, no one else came across our path or disrupted our solitude.

Taking it all in... 

My munchkin..

On top of the world

I had shared the below picture on Facebook of me sitting on top of the Rocky Mountain divide in Glacier National Park after an intense hike in which I was 7 weeks pregnant with Coco.  This picture now in Ecuador in the Andes is a beautiful memory of being 7 week pregnant with this new blessing...

After our hike we went back to our hotel and went swimming, which I couldn't believe Coco had enough energy to do after our hike.. .



That night we met some of our friends from Cuenca at another hotel in Vilcabamba, we watched the sunset, had dinner and then played some intense games of ping pong.  It was weird, but cool to have already made friends we could meet up with in other parts of Ecuador.

Our friend Rich took an amazing picture of the sunset that evening!! :)

Jen and I playing a heated game of ping pong.  She beat me :( 

Another beautiful picture taken by our friend Rich of Vilcabamba

The next day we said goodbye to the magical valley of Vilcabamba and drove the 4 hours back home to Cuenca, just in time since the next 5 days I was very sick with morning sickness.  I was never this sick with Coco.  I found it challenging locating the simplest things like ginger tea in Cuenca grocery stores and instead had to comb the markets for ginger root, which we quickly learned how to boil into a wonderful tea.

Valentines day was no exception to the sickness.  We decided to hang at home and have a celebration with Coco.  I made dinner and we bought a cake, since I can't make one (sans oven).  She absolutely had a blast and honestly it was one of my favorite Valentines ever.  :)

All ready for Valentines Day!! :) 

She got a new coin purse 

I had a quick reprieve from sickness and made a yummy dinner.. 

We had a beautiful night... :)

We found the beauty of nature this week to be overwhelming to all our senses...

I found this quote to be very meaningful...

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us.. We can never have enough of nature.” 

― Henry David Thoreau