Years ago, a researcher declared the village of Vilcabamba, Ecuador a “Blue Zone.” That means it’s supposedly a place where people live much longer than normal. This Blue Zone designation put Vilcabamba on the cover of National Geographic. Researchers from all over the world, as well North American and European retirees, came to this tiny Ecuadorian valley seeking some secret Fountain of Youth or Peach of Immortality. Vilcabamba became known far and wide as the “valley of longevity.”

And, as you may have guessed, it’s basically all bullshit.

Further research discovered that local residents were remarkably inconsistent about their reported ages. One guy would be 122 years old one year, and somehow become 134 years old just three years later. It turns out that a lot of the local people were just flat out lying about their age.

The researchers in Vilcabamba also did a pretty piss-poor job confirming these claims. Families in Vilcabamba, like many good Catholic families, are prone to reusing names. Yet, the researchers never seemed to realize that the Juan Moreno they were speaking to in the 1970s was not the same Juan Moreno listed on a hand-written birth certificate from the 1860s, but his great grand-nephew.

The so-called “valley of longevity” was nothing more than lies and mistakes. There was no Fountain of Youth and no Peach of Immortality.

The Hippies Flock to Vilcabamba, Ecuador

Yet, it’s hard to keep a good myth down, and Vilcabamba retains its reputation as a magical center of semi-immortality to this day. A quick google search for “Vilcabamba, Ecuador” will show you countless travel and expat blogs telling you to come to the Vilcabamba and live forever. They tout the climate, the water, or even some other intangible supernational properties. Despite the completely lack of any scientific evidence.

This lack of scientific evidence has drawn the crowd you’d expect. Ex-hippie boomers with overflowing retirement funds take advantage of Ecuador’s relatively cheap labor to build mansions in the hills outside of town. Current hippie-capitalists with overflowing trust funds start up cannabis dispensaries (despite Marijuana being illegal in Ecuador) and wellness retreats. Across from the local bakery, a woman who can’t speak a word of Spanish hawks her homemade gluten-free baked goods. The modern hippie industrial complex is alive and well in Vilcabamba.

As you can probably tell, I’m not too fond of hippies, and I’m even less fond of gluten-free baked goods.

The hippies in Vilcabamba, Ecuador (like those in San Marcos Laguna in Guatemala) are exploiting the local population for their own gain, whether that gain is spiritual or monetary.

And in Vilcabamba the hippies are starting to get weird. Not groovy, 60s freakout weird, but scary far-right conspiracy weird.

The Final Lockdown

During our time in Vilcabamba, we saw tons of posters up all over town advertising an event called “Final Lockdown: ‘Smart’ Cities and the Global Agenda to Build a Digital Prison.” This poster (completely in English, of course) explained how some new traffic cameras installed in Vilcabamba were part of a conspiracy by “global elites” to enslave us all and shift from money to a “carbon based and social credit system.”

I am as skeptical of government surveillance and big tech as anyone, but I hope that you can appreciate how absolutely batshit insane that sounds.

I looked up the guy they had doing the video presentation at this meeting. To be honest, I couldn’t find much. Just a few YouTube videos and an interview from a woman who looked like she was trying to become the Australian Alex Jones. But, part of the guy’s whole theory includes the idea that LED street lights can somehow shoot lasers and kill people.

I’m not linking to anything because these nut jobs don’t deserve any more internet traffic.

This sort of thing would be funny if the broader implications weren’t so scary. Donald Trump got elected partly on the support of these kinds of conspiracy theorists. The far-right internationally relies on lies and conspiracies. I recently lived through Trump’s ICE occupation of Minneapolis. I do not believe LED street lights can kill me, but masked paramilitary goons definitely can.

It baffles me, though, how the hippie movement devolved into what it is today, but there really seems to be a direct pipeline between hippies and far-right authoritarianism. How and why did people go from wellness retreats, yoga and organic food to semi-fascism?

Not that all hippies are fascists, but take a look at the politics of the RFK Jr. and anti-vax crowd. It’s a weird overlap that shouldn’t exist.

And yet, those crazy conspiracy posters were up all over in the wellness haven of Vilcabamba. It really felt like that was the overall crowd and vibes among the expat community in town and it was weird and kind of scary.

I won’t go back to Vilcabamba, and neither should you.

Our Experience and Alternatives to Vilcabamba

We went to Vilcabamba over Christmas. We wanted somewhere nice to settle down for a week during the holidays during our year-and-a-half long journey through Central and South America. Despite the craziness of the expats, I actually really enjoyed my time there.

We rented an Airbnb from a lovely couple, located a solid thirty-minute uphill walk from town. This uphill walk must’ve kept the riffraff out. The neighborhood/suburb of Izhcayluma Bajo was a refreshing oasis of actual locals in Vilcabamba’s hippie expat desert.

The Airbnb itself was the downstairs unit in a local couple’s house. The backyard had a mini orchard, with avocados, bananas and even some coffee trees. We ate fresh bananas every day and drank coffee made from beans from the plants in the backyard.

The area surrounding Vilcabamba is beautiful. The hills are majestic and there are some really lovely hikes in the area. You can also have a wonderful time just wandering the dirt roads along the outskirts, but my favorite hours were spent laying in a hammock and watching the birds flit among the fruit trees.

It was a nice time, but I still would never go back nor would I recommend anyone else visit. In fact, I would avoid Vilcabamba like an anti-vaxer avoids measles shots. Ecuador has plenty of other beautiful places that aren’t overrun by right-wing hippies.

You could stay in nearby Loja to hike in Podocarpus National Park. Or you could embrace touristy Baños. If you want a more rural experience, you can head north to Quilotoa, Cotopaxi or even Alausí. In fact, you could just throw a dart on a map of Ecuador and find a better alternative to Vilcabamba.

But maybe… that’s what they want you to think. Maybe the global elites have gotten to me too. I could be under the employ of the secret cabal of Jewish lizard people who are trying to enslave you and only by bathing in the Fountain of Youth in Vilcabamba can you defeat them!

Of course, if I were being controlled by a conspiracy of global elites, I really wish they paid better.

Get out of Vilcabamba as fast as possible, click here to learn about the rest of Ecuador: Expeditions in Ecuador: A Travel Guide to the Country in the Middle of the World