Vilcabamba, Ecuador Trip - Part 2

After we got to our hotel, we decided to take a walk downtown.  It took us about 15 minutes and here are some pics from our walk:

Bienvenido A Vilcabamba!!  (Welcome to Vilcabamba)

Beautiful Mountains Everywhere!

I loved the look of these wooden doors.

Church in the Main Square

Carol sitting on the steps of the church

George, Me & Pat in front of the park

Park in Town

Another View of Park

George's Taxi Ride to Town

There were a few beggars in town

This dog was one of the worst beggars, but she was just SO hungry.  How could we resist that face?

Here are some pictures of Brian O'Leary's place.  It was really beautiful and it sat up on the side of the mountain with great views all around.

The building in the back is a hotel where you can stay.  The truck in front is what they use as taxi cabs in Vilcabamba.  After the cab driver took us up to Brian O'Leary's place, we understood why they need to use diesel trucks.  The roads are very muddy and somewhat steep.  The rooms that we saw in the hotel were very nice.

Fabulous views!!

Beautiful flowers and gardens were all around

Then on the way back to town, the taxi driver took us into a beautiful development (I can't remember the name of it) where he said mostly Germans and French lived.  Here are a few shots:

Look at this beautiful house

Common Area

Small ponies grazing next to the common area

Hot Tub in the Common Area

Awesome Pool with Unbelievable Views!  Makes you wonder why no one was in the pool, although it was the middle of the day in the middle of the week, so maybe the owners were working.

All in all, we had a wonderful time and look forward to returning in the future.  We would definitely recommend staying at Madre Tierra.  We also decided that when we do go back, we will stay for more than 3 days.  This time we left on a Monday and returned on Wednesday.  We think we would stay at least until Friday the next time.  That was a pretty rugged ride for such a short trip.  On our return trip, we took one of the Vilcabamba "taxi cabs" (which is really a diesel truck) instead of the bus.  It was still alittle bit rough, but it was much better than the bus.  But it was also more expensive.  The bus ride was $7.50 for each of us from Cuenca to Loja.  Then the taxi ride from Loja to Vilcabamba cost $15.00 for all of us (for a total of $45.00) and our return trip cost us $100.00 for all of us.  So we paid almost twice as much coming back, but it was much more comfortable and we could stop when we wanted.

Thanks to George and Carol for a wonderful trip!!  Sue and Pat