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Vilcabamba
The Valley of Longevity.
Vilcabamba is a village in the southern region of Ecuador, in the Loja province, about 45 km from the city of Loja. The area has been referred to as the “Playground of the Inca” which refers to its historic use as a retreat for Incan royalty. The valley is overlooked by a mountain called Mandango whose presence is said to protect the area from earthquakes and other natural disasters.
Located in a historical and scenic valley, it is a common destination for tourists, in part because it is widely believed that its inhabitants grow to a very old age. Locals assert that it is not uncommon to see a person reach 100 years of age and it is claimed that many have gotten to 120, even up to 135. It is often called the Valley of Longevity. As proof, there is one person over 100 years old for every 2.7 million Americans; In Vilcabamba, it is one in 68.
Located in a historical and scenic valley, it is a common destination for tourists, in part because it is widely believed that its inhabitants grow to a very old age. Locals assert that it is not uncommon to see a person reach 100 years of age and it is claimed that many have gotten to 120, even up to 135. It is often called the Valley of Longevity. As proof, there is one person over 100 years old for every 2.7 million Americans; In Vilcabamba, it is one in 68.
Jose Maria Roa was 132 years old when we met, married for the third time to a woman who was then 66, and who had given birth to Roa’s youngest son 24 years earlier. The Ecuadorian government verified these facts and the Spanish interpreters supplied to us by the Ministry of Health, presented Roa’s birth certificate that indicated he was born in 1850. Also, his name is carved into the foundation stone of the church sitting in the center of Vilcabamba; Roa helped erect that church in 1866.
~ Dr. MortonWalker
In 1973, Dr. Alexander Leaf of Harvard Medical School introduced these remarkable people to the world for the first time in his cover story for National Geographic Magazine. In 1981, the Ecuadorian government hired medical journalist Dr. Morton Walker to study these people in depth. Medical researchers have confirmed that the retinas of 100 year-old residents are often comparable with those of 45 year-old city-dwellers.
Several books published in the mid-1970s further enhanced the town’s reputation. In 1975, Dr. David Davies, an English gerontologist, published The Centenarians of the Andes which contains his research in Vilcabamba. In 1976 the popular author Grace Halsell published Los Viejos: Secrets of Long Life from the Sacred Valley, about her experience living in Vilcabamba for a year.
Halsell’s picturesque account of life in Vilcabamba emphasized the simple virtues of the villager’s way of life. She wrote, “I lived in a dirt-floor mountain hut with Gabriel Erazo, who matter-offactly says, ‘I am 132.’ Halsell described how Erazo stayed healthy by composing poetry in his head while hiking in the mountains. She also wrote of 113-year-old Gabriel Sanchez who “climbed the steep El Chaupi mountain to work all day with his crude hoe or lampa, cultivating a small plot of ground.”
Several books published in the mid-1970s further enhanced the town’s reputation. In 1975, Dr. David Davies, an English gerontologist, published The Centenarians of the Andes which contains his research in Vilcabamba. In 1976 the popular author Grace Halsell published Los Viejos: Secrets of Long Life from the Sacred Valley, about her experience living in Vilcabamba for a year.
Halsell’s picturesque account of life in Vilcabamba emphasized the simple virtues of the villager’s way of life. She wrote, “I lived in a dirt-floor mountain hut with Gabriel Erazo, who matter-offactly says, ‘I am 132.’ Halsell described how Erazo stayed healthy by composing poetry in his head while hiking in the mountains. She also wrote of 113-year-old Gabriel Sanchez who “climbed the steep El Chaupi mountain to work all day with his crude hoe or lampa, cultivating a small plot of ground.”
It was also in the 1960s that one of the first foreign residents— Johnny Lovewisdom— found his way to the Vilcabama Valley. An eccentric spiritual seeker, he was looking for his own version of Nirvana, a place with a near-perfect climate where food could be grown unsullied by chemicals or the threat of nuclear fallout that was then top-of-mind in the post-World-War-II world. He brought an eclectic mix of alternative lifestyle pursuits, including some out-of-the-ordinary (at least for back then) dietary and religious beliefs.
This tendency to attract the more interesting and offbeat among us continues to this day.
~Suzan Haskins
Halsell concluded that the secret to long life was to stay active: “The viejos apparently do not suffer from bad arteries or heart attacks. I saw no examples of fractured legs or arms. They stayflexible and hardy by a simple rule: Keep moving, don’t stop, now or ever.”
Members of this community also appeared in Ripley’s Believe It or Not and were featured in National Geographic, Reader’s Digest and other popular press outlets. These books and articles about Vilcabamba led to a sharp rise in tourism to the area.
Dietary pattern is similar to other Blue Zone areas. They eat only fresh fruits and vegetables. Although the sacred valley is almost exactIy on the equator, it’s not hot because Vilcabamba is so high up. There’s plenty of rainfall and sun, and plant life grows in abundance. You need but reach out your hand to gather bananas, mango, papaya, grapes, lemons, oranges, apple, pineapple, crab-apples and berries of all kinds. A variety of vegetables grows everywhere without cultivation; there are avocados, zucchini, legumes, potatoes, rice, all of the grains, tomatoes, cabbage, eggplant, squash, and much more. Canned foods are never used. Meat is hardly eaten except on feast days. There is no refrigeration. Food is eaten fresh.
Members of this community also appeared in Ripley’s Believe It or Not and were featured in National Geographic, Reader’s Digest and other popular press outlets. These books and articles about Vilcabamba led to a sharp rise in tourism to the area.
Dietary pattern is similar to other Blue Zone areas. They eat only fresh fruits and vegetables. Although the sacred valley is almost exactIy on the equator, it’s not hot because Vilcabamba is so high up. There’s plenty of rainfall and sun, and plant life grows in abundance. You need but reach out your hand to gather bananas, mango, papaya, grapes, lemons, oranges, apple, pineapple, crab-apples and berries of all kinds. A variety of vegetables grows everywhere without cultivation; there are avocados, zucchini, legumes, potatoes, rice, all of the grains, tomatoes, cabbage, eggplant, squash, and much more. Canned foods are never used. Meat is hardly eaten except on feast days. There is no refrigeration. Food is eaten fresh.
High up among the surrounding mountain peaks lies an area of primevial tundra, which is made up of great masses of vegetation .... layer upon layer of these grasses and vegetation of many types and colors. There are also some fourteen lakes, each containing the melt of this uncontaminated glacier ice. Come the rainy season, these lakes overflow and flood the tundra, which then acts as a filter for any undesirable heavy metals or minerals. After seeping through these countless layers of tundra, this purest of waters flows down into thousands of pools, then into hundreds of cascading waterfalls .... and remember this part for a little later, because the countless waterfalls contributes to the extremely high negative ion count in the valley.
Modern science has also demonstrated that the inhabitants of Vilcabamba have something else going for them, besides pristine water. Dr. Richard Laurence Millington Synge, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the man who discovered amino acids, claims that there are medicinal remarkable qualities to be found in the plant-life in certain places near the Equator .... with the valley of Vilcabamba being one of these areas. Due to scientific chemical assay techniques, analysis has now shown that the fruit, roots and herbs of this particular Equatorial sub-area offer the strongest anti-oxidant protection in the world!
This hardy race of indiginous Vilcabambans attribute their long-lived heritage to “being touched by the hand of God.” There is no degenerative disease in Vilcabamba – no heart attacks, no cancer, never diabetes, no stroke - they didn’t even know the word senility.
No doubt it’s so, thanks to all these ingredients…and to the fact that it was only a short time ago (in the 1960s) that “civilization” came to this part of the world…in the form of a reliably drivable road that connected it with the outside world.
It was even only more recently that the telephone, television, and the Internet forced their versions of stress into this valley. Foreigners and other tourists are increasingly buying property in the region for spa and vacation homes. Tourists have created problems for the locals, including rising prices as well as increasing drug and alcohol use. Some locals say that the peace and simplicity of their lives, to which they attributed their longevity, has been lost.
No doubt it’s so, thanks to all these ingredients…and to the fact that it was only a short time ago (in the 1960s) that “civilization” came to this part of the world…in the form of a reliably drivable road that connected it with the outside world.
It was even only more recently that the telephone, television, and the Internet forced their versions of stress into this valley. Foreigners and other tourists are increasingly buying property in the region for spa and vacation homes. Tourists have created problems for the locals, including rising prices as well as increasing drug and alcohol use. Some locals say that the peace and simplicity of their lives, to which they attributed their longevity, has been lost.
If your energy is all engaged in manufacturing tires and wheels, then who will go to the... Actually I have seen in your country. Now the farmers’ son, they do not like to remain in the farm. They go in the city. I have seen it. The farmers’ son, they do not like to take up the profession of his father. So gradually farming will be reduced, and the city residents, they are satisfied if they can eat meat. And the farmer means keeping the, raising the cattle and killing them, send to the city, and they will think that “We are eating. What is the use of going to...” But these rascals have no brain that “If there is no food grain or grass, how these cattle will be...?” Actually it is happening. They are eating swiftly.
-Srila Prabhupada (Room Conversation with Dr. Theodore Kneupper, November 6, 1976, Vrindavana)