Rebecca Rice, Via’s Director of Communications, just returned from Vilcabamba.  Over the next 3 weeks, she’ll share her experiences and photos of the adventure.

May 11 – Day 1:
We arrived in Quito, Ecuador last night at 11pm.  Our flight to Loja is scheduled to depart at 5:35am, which means we woke up at 3:30am to meet Christina and Enrique, our Quito friends, to go to the airport.  Christina and Enrique arrive with Darren Minke, one of our still photographers, and Diego Ortuno, our videographer who are traveling to Vilcabamba with us.

We board a small 30-seater plane with Ecuadorian business men and women and families.  A few minutes after takeoff, I peer out my window to see the sun rising over the Andean Mountains.  I realize that we have been in Ecuador for less than 8 hours. 

Jaime Mendoza is a long-time resident of Vilcabamba and the local representative of ViaViente and the Andes Children’s Foundation.  He meets us at the Loja airport with taxis to drive us over the lush green hills and winding bumpy roads to Vilcabamba.  We arrive there about an hour and a half later.  Our hotel is small but lovely.  The main building houses the lobby and restaurant.  Our rooms are just beyond the garden and green lawn where a Llama is grazing.  Our rooms are basic but just enough.  No television or radio, but there is hot and cold running water and it is spotless.

There are 4 of us travelers:  Darren, Diego, my friend Kris, and me.  We are all hungry and ready for breakfast.  We drop our belongings in our rooms and join Jaime and his son Adrian in the hotel restaurant for breakfast.  Breakfast includes a full plate of fruit for each of us including papaya, pineapple, melon, along with fresh eggs, ham, toast and the local coffee.

Jaime has arranged for us to visit Vilcabamba Girls’ School where we will be presenting them with a copy machine from the Andes Children’s Foundation.  It is a much needed gift.  The school administrators will use this copy machine to make copies of the few textbooks they have and assemble enough books for each of the children.

To say that the children are excited to see us is a huge understatement.  Some of the girls are dressed in colorful traditional costumes.  The rest are dressed in bright yellow ViaViente shirts.  They entertain us for over an hour with singing and dancing.  At one point, a sea of squealing children in Via shirts tackles Darren, who is six feet five inches tall.  Each child is trying to hug him harder than the next.

We step in to see the school’s computer room.  It is filled with computers for the students to use in their classes.  Thanks to the ACF, these children have an educational resource that they otherwise would never be able to have.

When you visit Vilcabamba, you will notice that the sky is a more intense blue and the light has a brilliance you don’t see in most of the rest of the world.  The food is so fresh, it has flavors that you ordinarily won’t taste when your fruits and vegetables take days, sometimes weeks, to arrive at your local grocery.  Jaime tells us that the food here is completely organic, meaning no pesticides are used.  He says that at high altitudes, pests and bacteria cannot grow so pesticides are unnecessary.

The people of Vilcabamba are extremely friendly and beautiful with soft brown hair and eyes.  The older people are quite short in stature.  Some stand just over four feet tall.  But the kindness in their eyes and the joy and resilience of their spirits is visceral.  The children radiate that same joyful spirit of beauty.