Vilcabamba, Ecuador

What is it about this town that appeals to people? It’s conservative, dirty, the weather is either grey and warm or grey and rainy. Not much sunshine, which gives the town a ramshackled and dispaired look, not happy.

The stench of the sewers permeates virtually all corners of the town, crisscrossed by rivers in which the locals and expats alike dump their trash, latrines and dirty laundry water. In the rainy season the stench becomes almost intolerable, attracting flies, mosquitos and other vermin.

The town’s population is 5000 people yet there are 9 real estate offices all owned by expats waiting like vultures to throw themselves at the flesh of the new coming zombies. Be sure to get ripped off! With property values about as high as rural USA without the guarantee nor the protection of Uncle Sam, it is a highly risky proposition. Often times one can see a disheveled person walking into one of the few restaurants, recounting their story of how they bought a property for way more money than they should have and realize after the start of the rainy season that part of the property is a huge landslide, that their road washed out and that it really wasn’t worth the 150k at a minimum that they put for their 2 acres without a house. Then, their best best is to try to pass it on to some other freshly arrived clueless gringo. The real estate companies buy properties off of old Ecuadorians for a song and resell it for 10 to 15 times more!

Yes, there is the occasional well integrated gringo who came to Vilcabamba years ago, settled removed from the town’s square, who comes down seldom and engages in organic agriculture and lives in harmony with the place. Those are a rare sight though… And some of the ones that I have met such as Meredith who came here 7 years ago with her astronaut husband (now defunct) wishes she was younger and could relocate.

I can see how the town could have looked before the massive arrivals of gringos. It has a lot of inherent charm and beauty, and a comfortable mediterranean climate (not warm enough for me) which unfortunately attracted all the expatriates which has created a major density problem. This small town cannot handle such a quick population boom!

When the locals lived there on their small farms, growing all types of fruit from cherimoya to granadilla, herding sheep, the place must have been lovely. The locals still seem to be wanting to lead their simple farming life but the massive presence of expats makes it difficult. Imagine living a quiet rural life, riding your horse into the town and all of a sudden you get an influx of whites who don’t speak your language, driving into town with their massive SUVs! What a shock!

How My Ecuadorian Journey Began

My first plan when I arrived in Ecuador, last December, was to find a large amount of undesirable land to reforest or some Amazon forest to protect and on which I would start a female-centric commune.

I had done a fair amount of research beforehand and had a pretty good idea as to the region where I wanted to start my search. I had eliminated the high altitude areas because of their cold climates, I have eliminated the coast because I do not want to live by the ocean now that the water levels are rising with the melting of glaciers, with risks of tsunamis and whatnot, it wasn’t a smart long-term option. Then I eliminated the densely populated regions. I was basically left with the Amazon and the southern province of Loja. After some further research I realized that the Ecuadorian Amazon was not viable because a lot of it is being used for oil exploitation, a practice that I find despicable since they are clear cutting and impuningly destroying such rich habitats and the lungs of the planet. What little is left is dedicated as indigenous lands and is already protected. So I was left with the southern province of Loja which is one of the least densely populated areas as well as having one of the nicest climates.

I made my way to the small town of Malacatos from which I had plans to start my search for a large chunk of land. My requirements for the property where first its size, I wanted at least a few hundred acres which would allow for greater privacy as well as having the capacity to sustain and accommodate a number of women without being one on top of the other. The second criteria was water: I wanted self-sufficiency in terms of water source so I was looking for places that had their own rivers, lakes, streams or waterfalls. Of course, there was also the issue of cost; an affordable property which didn’t need to have any preexisting construction on it. Then came the practicality of the land: how many slopes (hey I’m in the Andes here, lots of steep hills and mountains), I didn’t want to end up with very few flats which would make it difficult to build housing and gardens. As for the rest, I was keeping an open mind, no point in being too demanding.

I have visited about a dozen properties that more or less fit the bill of what I was looking for. Some were immediately eliminated because the paperwork was not in order which would have made it a legal nightmare to sort out. Remember, I’m in a foreign country here where the legal system is quite different from what I’m used to. There is no legal recourse if you get ripped off, you just have to shoulder the cost yourself as best you can. I had heard some terrible stories of foreigners buying a piece of property and paying for it in cash only to realize that the seller wasn’t the actual owner and that after the transaction was complete he had disappeared in thin air. Some other properties didn’t have the right energy, something about them just didn’t feel right so I set them aside.

One property located in Yangana consisting of 2000 acres of virgin rainforest with 3 rivers running on it as well as numerous waterfalls particularly caught my eye. The property seemed perfect, perhaps on the hilly side, but so impossibly big with incredible wide rivers, streams of fresh clear water, lots of exotic plants, it was worth pursuing. I asked the owners to spend a few days camping out on it to help me in my decision process. There was a small, humble cabin on the property in which I spent 3 miserably cold nights. In the daytime the property was very foggy with dark skies, definitely not the sunny warm heaven that I was looking for. With a confused and questioning mind, I decided to let it go. The price was also way over what I had planned on spending which made the decision a little easier. Another thing that facilitated my thinking was the fact that most of the property was already designated as protected rain forest by the Ecuadorian government which defeated the purpose of buying it to protect it. While staying on that property, I have also come to realize that another prerequisite that I wanted to add to my list of requirements for the purchase of land, was wildlife: I want monkeys on the land! This particular land was strangely void of any exotic birds and other beasts due, without a doubt, to the encroaching population density of Ecuador. Sadly, I realized, Ecuador was losing its wildlife. Besides the Galapagos Islands as well as a few parks in the Amazon, the country that is supposed to be the most biodiverse in the world is becoming strangely bare. Later, my observations were validated when I spoke with people from the Ecuadorian ministry of the environment. They told me that the situation is pretty bad but the government doesn’t want to disclose any real statistics out of fear of losing its very lucrative tourist business.

There was another property that I pursued actually pretty far into the final stages of the buying process but ended up abandoning once again due to the lack of wildlife that at that point had become quite high on the list of requirements. My mind was constantly dreaming of a lush, warm jungle filled with exotic birds and screaming monkeys. It’s about that time that Bolivia appeared in my head as a destination that I needed to pursue before committing to any property here in Ecuador.

Nomadic Living vs LGBT Tourism

I have always known that I like women. I did not feel the need to come out since to me loving women was as natural as breathing. I never declared to my family my sexual identity and to this day don’t feel the need to talk about it as if it was something strange that needed discussing. I just know who I am and go on with my life. To me being a lesbian is not an important all encompassing part of who I am but simply an attribute like my blue eyes or full-sleeve tattoos. I don’t need to veer the conversation towards it, don’t need to rehash society’s stand on it, nor do I need to constantly surround myself with flags and slogans. Who I fuck is far from being the main characteristic of who I am. I have been a part of the LGBT community for a very long time and find less and less space in it for myself. Heteronormativity has strongly hit the community in the face. Marriage, kids, 9 to 5 careers, consumerism, shallow values make it as much of an enjoyable place to be as a Sunday morning in church. I don’t find myself represented in the LGBT media filled with heterosexual morals and conservative values.

Where does a solitary, nomadic, post-consumerist, environmentalist, world traveler with a healthy dose of spiritual thirst fit inside the LGBT community? I am not sure that I do. No mainstream community be it queer or other appeals to me, because it ultimately ends up being normative and shallow.

I am not saying that the LGBT community is useless but simply that it does not meet my needs for growth and does not answer my questions as to the meaning of this life.

LGBT used to mean adventurous and expansive in terms of reinventing the way one leads their life. Our community used to be avant-garde, creative, radical. Nowadays, within the LGBT community one finds the same cookie cutter unidimensional personalities that one finds in any heterosexual enclaves. What happened? Is that the price to pay to be accepted; to tone done our edge? Not for me, that’s for sure.

How could I ever identify with people who go on GLBT travel tours? I couldn’t identify with anybody going on any kind of organized, predictable tourist ventures. I am not a tourist, never was, and please hang me if I ever become one. I would never ascend so low as to visit a country from a tour bus, never connecting with the real people’s lives in the countries that I visit, buy mass produced trinkets from native markets and give myself the good feeling that I am encouraging the local economy. All that the tourist does is to further the gap between the rich and the poor. The tourist only injects his money into the pockets of those who already have plenty; the local business owners or more likely the foreign owned business owners. My problem with tourists is their refusal to experience the foreign culture that they are just the mere spectators of. They don’t speak the language, they don’t interact with the locals and they gate themselves with others of their kind, making sure that their wealth remains a divide between them and the locals. Once their 2 weeks are up they pack their knick knacks and pictures and go back home to show them proudly to co-workers and whoever wants to see them. After all, what’s the use of taking a tourist vacation if you can’t brag about it afterwards?

I hate hotels and would never go to another country and spend it with other tourists. In fact, I don’t even care to see any tourist attractions when I travel. For me traveling is a way of life. I don’t have a home to go back to. The road is my home.

Motivations to Leave

For a long time I have been feeling the dissatisfaction and malaise of urban sprawl living. Somehow my capacity to function in the city has slowly diminished. Activities such as shopping, running errands or even taking my dogs for a walk became dreadful, anxiety filled tasks that I would speed through with my heart racing. The constant noise of cars, alarms, dense population became completely suffocating and I longed to get away. I would spend weeks at a time camping in the Death Valley desert, away from everything, mostly away from civilization. Upon coming back to the city my dread and anxiety would come back full force.
Unable to function in that state, I decided to move to the country side. I moved into the red woods. My condition improved, the anxiety went away but a restlessness came in its place. A feeling of futility to life and a sense of a lack of purpose. If one is not interested in consumerism, the quest of wealth, the pursuit of futile glories and recognitions, meaningless relationships; what is one supposed to do? The idea of leaving everything behind and relocating myself somewhere where modernity hasn’t fully showed its dirty face.way.
There is something more to life than the egoistic pursuit of ones well being. With so much strife and misery happening to so many across the globe, and the uncontrolled environmental destruction plunging the world into chaos. There has to be something done.
These thoughts have led me to want to invest money into the purchase of vast amounts of Amazon forest in order to protect it from clear cutting and unsustainable development and allow the multitude of unique wildlife to subsist. Of course, I encourage others to do the same since the more people get involved in the project, the bigger the amounts of land we will be able to protect. I will be starting a website dedicated to the project once I move closer to its concrete beginning.
Also, one of the biggest issues in the Amazon is clear cutting for cattle grazing or soybean production. Both of which are horrendous and totally unsustainable activities. Cattle ranching being such an atrociously dumb activity. Eating beef is not viable for the future of our overcrowded planet, it requires so much more energy than it provides in terms of nutrition. I don’t understand why people are unwilling to give vegetarianism a try. It’s a much healthier way to eat and such a more responsible way to act towards the well being of the planet. As for soybean which is always genetically modified, why not try diversity instead of this damaging monoculture? Permaculture will be my solution.
I am also extremely interested in alpacas, vicuñas and guanacos. I am an avid spinner, weaver and machine knitter and using the fleece of these animals is a dream. I plan on pursuing the making of unique looking garments and costumes. If this enterprise becomes larger, I will hire indigenous women to help me thus creating much needed employment.
One of my goals is to set up a communal female-centric space where women and girls can come to live permanently and partake in the communal tasks or temporarily if they are in need. I plan on taking in battered women and girls and help them reinstate themselves in society independent of their abuser.

Many ideas and motivations are pushing me forward in my quest. I know that it is not an easy pursuit but when I set my mind up on something, however hard the endeavor, I can’t rest easy until I set myself in motion towards achieving my goal. Many people around me are trying to dissuade me with negative thoughts and discouraging speech but being so wonderfully stubborn and independently minded, I don’t give them a chance.
And of course a huge motivation has also been to see how lesbians in South America live. Especially amongst the indigenous people, the tribal people in the Amazon. Is the compulsory heterosexuality affecting everyone, or are there some strong women out there who reject it? I need to find out because if there are indigenous or tribal lesbian women living their queer lives, I want to be a part of it. Just the thought of a bunch of dykes out there in the Amazon sends shivers down my spine.

One day I have had enough and decided to flee the Northern Hemisphere…

I feel the impending chaos that is to follow with global warming, senseless wars and uncontrollable consumerism. Knowing that my fleeing reaction is just a refusal of what is to follow, nonetheless I decided to pack my few belongings and go.

It was far from being an impulsive decision, I had been thinking about changing my life for a very long time. Not that I am a corporate slut with obligations and serious binding ties to a career, a house and other cages. Not at all. In fact, I have always been a nomad, changing countries and continents as freely as my impulses allowed me. As far as a job, my last serious commitment was as an independent Dominatrix! You will be able to read all about it in my future posts as I reflect upon the good, the bad and everything in between of being a professional Dominatrix in Berlin, Montreal, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But for now back to my decision of leaving the northern hemisphere… I set aside my whips and paddles and disappeared.

Why South America? Ideally it would be the Middle East which I am enamored with since I can remember. More on my passionate love of Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran later. But since the patriarchy maintains its firm hold on the madness of war and bloodshed, it has become impossible to travel peacefully into these countries. So my second choice is South America which still holds the promise of vast stretches of not completely spoiled land, as well as some hopes of a simple life without the obsessive consumerism so rampant in the wasteful north.

Yes, I can hear lots of you cringing at the thought of a lesbian going to either of these places. I have heard lots of warnings and horror stories about the struggles of the LGBT community in these areas but my adventurous nature and deep belief in ones ability to be free to be oneself won’t let me sit down and forget about my plans.

Also, I have been far from happy in the privileged LGBT communities from Canada and the US mostly because people seem to be treating one another as disposable goods, obsessing about sex and the conquest. Not being a drinker anymore, I also feel oddly out of place in the club and bar scene, seeking something deeper to quench my thirst for the deeper meaning in life. Sitting in a bar at night and working the 9 to 5 the rest of the time is far from my idea of a fulfilling life. Ideally, there would be lots of queer girls on the road, having adventures, living more meaningful lives. I am sure that there are some strong, free spirited queer gals out there on the vast stretches of South American roads.

The ultimate plan for me is to start a womyn centric commune in the Amazon. I plan to purchase vast amounts of Amazon forest in order to protect it from clear cutting and development and start a very low impact female centric alternative living community.