MUNGO EATS Latin America

We are on the shores of the Yambala River, just a bit east of Vilcabamba.  Vilcabamba is a small town, with the fame of longevity of it’s residence.  Maybe it’s the mountain air.  In any case, we are staying a some cabins near the town.  We had a hard time finding the cabins.  We had directions from the website, and they seemed pretty clear when we read them:  take the eastward road out of town, until there is a Y in the road, then take the left arm of the Y to the cabins.  Sounds easy.  We knew we were in trouble when we looked at a map of the town and realized, hmm, there are two roads leaving the town to the east.  Problem number one.  The first east road didn’t feel right, so we quickly turned around and tried road number two.  The second problem was that there were several Y-ish roads branching off.  Which was the right one?  We finally did pick one, the most suggestive of a Y, but the road was gravel, not asphalt and the road just seemed to get rougher and rougher.  There were no signs whatsoever.  Finally we decided we must be wrong  and tried another road.  This one was wrong as well, but we did find someone who spoke English, who did tell us that our original choice of roads was  correct…we just had to drive 3 km up the rough, unsigned road.  I know that not very many tourists end up driving to these cabins, mostly they would just catch a cab from town, but really, would it kill them to put up ONE little sign?

There is a national park nearby and the people who run the cabins actually own a private nature reserve that borders the park, so there are may trails that you can hike, even 2 or 3 day trips from this location.  We decided to just walk a short hike to a waterfall.  We had directions (or so we thought) to guide us to the falls, but as we started walking, these directions became more and more ambiguous, less and less clear.  It became apparent to us that the cabin owners are not great with describing directions!!  We had pretty much given up hope of finding the falls and were just about to turn back when a young couple came down the trail and asked if we were going to the falls.  Their directions were much clearer that ours, so we ended  up following them to the falls.  It is always “worth it” to hike to waterfalls.

Tomorrow we strike out towards the Peruvian border.  I don’t think we will cross it, but we should get awfully close.