Cuenca 8500 ft. Up to 10,500 ft. down to Loja 6500 ft. and finally to Vilcabamba 4500 ft.!

Talk about a roller coaster, I don’t recall such a variety of absolutely gorgeous mountain terrain and the does not include a somewhat harrowing drive along a very steep, narrow, winding, twisting, unpaved, side, road between Cuenca to our lunch provided by the indigenous Saguro women in their home high in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador.  They are such simple relatively poor people but apparently happy in their simple life style.  They grow most of the ingredients of their diet on small plots of steep hilly land and depend om free range chickens which they raise themselves and also dairy cows for protein.  Of the entire long day from 7 am to 6 pm when we arrived in Vilcabamba it was the Saguro people with whom I was most impressed although the grandeur of the Andes Mountains with vista extending from peaks of 12,000 feet to deep valleys many thousands of feet below was also impressive and awe inspiring.  I hope that you enjoy just a brief sampling of the photos that I took today.  Tomorrow will concentrate on Vilcabamba after which we will head back to Loja and fly back to Quito for the International Living conference from 7/28-30.