After our horrendously long and painful journey from Mancora we arrived in Loja after 12 hours on the bus. Once here we bought the next ticket available to Vilcabamba which was for 7am. We killed some time eating breakfast before getting on yet another bus for an hour and a half before finally arriving in Vilcabamba.

Vilcabamba is famous for having residents that enjoy very lengthy lives with many claiming to be well over 100 years old. However, for a town famous for longevity I must say i didn´t see many old people, the vast majoirty were tourists. However, I did manage to find one old boy who was kind enough to let me take my photo with him, even if meant interrupting him from his giant spliff - perhaps that is his secret!

Upon arriving we decided to delay exploring initially in favour of a much needed siesta. Before we knew it was lunch time, where we met up with some friends of Luke´s from his Machu Pichu adventure. After a long lunch, and at risk of doing nothing with the day again we finally managed to get ourselves motivated for a stroll through a nearby national park.

After some initial directional problems we were soon on the right path and went for a short hike up a nearby hill side where we could enjoy the view. Vilcabamba is beautiful, its a small town tucked in between lushious green mountains - i can certainly see why you would want to cling on to life here. We saw lots of butterflies and different types of plants within the National Park and headed back to town after around an hour and a half. Whilst we waited for our laundry we got chatting to some Americans in the central plaza for an hour or so. We headed back to the hostel to freshen up and went in search of food in town. Jonathan, Luke and I ended up eating at Luke´s friends hostel. We ended up spending the evening there chatting to the owner of the hostel and his long term residents, and it paid off as we all got free desserts with our dinner after. We had all intended to have an early night, but ended up turning in during the early hours again!

Next morning we were awake early (and slightly groggy from the free rum too). We had to persuade a taxi driver to drive like a maniac to get us to Loja before 11am so we could catch a bus to Banos that day. We were in a rush because Luke wanted to spend his birthday in Banos which he thought was the next day. Sadly, Luke is an idiot and his birthday was a day later than he thought. The result was that the 16.5 hour journey we had ahead of us that day was completely unnecessary - nice one!

As you can imagine the journey was pretty bad, especially as we seemed to pick up the worst passengers ever on the bus. The only saving grace was the awesome scenery as we passed through the Andes mountains.

We finally arrived in Ambato at 2am and waited for 30 minutes for a bus before deciding to get a taxi to Banos which was an hours journey away.