Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 5, 1993 TAG: 9312050209
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Steve Silk The Hartford Courant
DATELINE: VILCABAMBA, ECUADOR LENGTH: Long
Folks in Vilcabamba have a reputation for long life. Very long life. More than a few say they have passed the century mark; people in their 80s and 90s appear almost common. And the Ancient Ones, as they are called, maintain their health and vitality right to the end. Heart disease is virtually unknown and cancer is a rarity, according to doctors at the local Kokichi Otani Hospital.
Claims that some villagers had celebrated their 130th and 140th birthdays are questionable at best, but life of every kind thrives with especial zeal in Vilcabamba.
According to local legend, this was the original Garden of Eden. Flowers and fruit trees are everywhere. Seeds practically burst into bloom in the rich soil. Fence posts sunk in the fields routinely sprout new leaves. Even the animals are healthy. The dogs are perhaps the most robust in all South America - one mutt is said to have lived to 37.
News of this so-called Sacred Valley of Longevity reached the outside world about 20 years ago, courtesy of an anthropologist who visited Vilcabamba. Since then, scientific researchers and a slowly increasing trickle of visitors from around the world have been riding the gaily painted but battered buses that lurch through the Andes to reach this storied Shangri-La.
And although scientists doubt there's anything like a fountain of youth hereabouts, visitors aren't so sure. After all, vacationers at hotels such as Madre Tierra (Mother Earth) can easily avail themselves of all the things that locals say contribute to their longevity: peace, healthful food, a perfect climate and abundant natural beauty.
An almost transcendent tranquillity suffuses Vilcabamba. You're never far from the bray of a rooster, the moo of a cow or the chirp of birds. The climate, eternally springlike, is adjudged to be perfectly suited to the human organism. It's hard to say whether it's the profusion of flowers, the lush green of patchwork fields or the heavenly blue canopy of the sky, but there is something distinctly otherworldly about Vilcabamba.
Here, where five valleys converge in the shape of a star, peace is maintained by the spirit of the Reclining God, the huge and eerily Incan-looking stone profile that stares eternally skyward from the summit of Mandango, a mountain that dominates the western skyline like a thunderhead.
Exploring the Reclining God's domain - and meeting some of the Ancient Ones - is as easy as mounting a horse and riding off down the Avenue of Eternal Youth, straight into the heart of town. Just about every one of the five hostelries in town, from the grungy-but-cheap Valle Sagrado (Sacred Valley) to the well-appointed (by local standards), hacienda-style Hosteria de Vilcabamba - can help get you saddled up.
Riding into town is like galloping into the pages of a dreamy Gabriel Garcia Marquez story. Sprawled-out, snoozing dogs clutter the main street. Now and then, they are awakened as a somnambulent campesino leads a string of cargo-laden mules past the mostly empty cafes on the town square. Sometimes the church bells ring. Other than that, not much happens.
Just around the corner, a frail-looking Abertano Roa is basking in the afternoon light, shaded by an enormous hat.
"I'm the oldest one here," he says, waggling a finger at a visitor. "There's nobody older than me."
Roa says the sweet water and tranquil atmosphere of Vilcabamba are what kept him alive for such a long time. The reed-thin man says he is 120, but Victor Carpio Toledo, who works at the local hospital, says Roa is exaggerating. "He's only 116," Carpio Toledo says.
A lack of documentation makes proving the ages of the Ancient Ones impossible.
Down a side street, 94-year-old Alfonso Ojeda-Bastides fires up a cigarette hand-rolled in brown paper. Smoke curls from under his battered sombrero. "Everybody in Vilcabamba smokes," he says, laughing, and nobody worries about the consequences.
The Ancient Ones are hardly ascetics. Like Ojeda-Bastides, they puff on big stogies stuffed with chamico, a leafy herb sometimes smoked to relieve asthma or cold symptoms; drink gut-burning trago, a moonshine distilled from sugar cane; and, according to some published reports, indulge in promiscuous behavior. It's hardly the prescription for health in the West.
Over the hills to the east of Ojeda-Bastides' adobe home lies one of the only traditional tourist attractions in Vilcabamba, a down-at-the-heels park with an orchid-arium displaying almost 400 varieties of orchids. Here you can also commiserate with the bears, llamas, monkeys and birds imprisoned in a sorry-looking zoo.
Along the winding dirt road that leads to the park, you might pass Gustovio Luzon, 97, working hard in cane fields so steep it's almost impossible to stand upright. Dressed in patchwork coveralls, rheumy-eyed Luzon vigorously shreds leaves from maturing stalks. He's been working all day, without even a stop for lunch.
"The old ones never get tired," says passerby Fanny Macas, 38. "When we're like them, we'll be strong too.'
Only 20 years ago, the modern world had not set foot in Vilcabamba. Many of history's currents have somehow swept past this pinprick on the map - no one seems too sure where the inhabitants even came from. Anyway, a generation ago there was no radio, no TV, no plumbing, no electricity. Now the outside world has established a toehold, and Vilcabamba is changing.
But the mineral-rich waters that course through town are still free for bathing, and a dip in the rivers - the Chamba and the Uchima - is said to rejuvenate body and soul.
by CNB