By Mike Adams, NaturalNews Editor
NaturalNews) Amazing things are happening in Vilcabamba, Ecuador right now. Vilcabamba is known as the "Valley of Longevity" for its amazing negative ions, incredible air quality, year-round growing season and long-lived citizens. This week, without any special planning, a number of fascinating pioneers in raw foods and healthy living converged in Vilcabamba. They include:
David Wolfe (www.Sunfood.com), Aarona (www.YogaOfNourishment.com), Matt Monarch (www.TheRawFoodWorld.com) and Angela Stokes, Tim and Vanessa from Rain Shadow (www.RainShadowLabs.com) and many others. We all gathered yesterday evening at the new Sambuca Cafe on the Northwest corner of the main town square of Vilcabamba, hitting off an amazing evening of spontaneous raw juice shots (made with fresh garden vegetables) and raw burritos made with cabbage, guacamole and dulse (a mineral-rich seaweed).
It was an amazingly good time! Watch the video yourself to see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6ew...
During the evening, an idea spontaneously emerged: A World Raw Food Conference to be held in Vilcabamba in May, 2010! (The video says June, but the date has been moved to May.) It would be a completely free-flow conference, with no admission, no tickets and no booths. Just lots of people gathering for sharing information, experiences and wisdom about living close to nature and enjoying the amazing health properties of raw foods.
David Wolfe and I will develop this concept further and post additional information on this in the months ahead.
Coming soon from the Health Ranger: The Immigration & Traveler's Guide to Southern Ecuador
There is a LOT of interest in Vilcabamba, Ecuador lately. We've been inundated with email requests from people wanting to visit the valley or live here permanently (like my wife and I do).
I want to let everyone know that we're receiving your emails and we're working on both a traveler's guide and a real estate guide to Vilcabamba and the Valley of Longevity. In fact, we are about to announce the organization of a real estate tour in Vilcabamba on June 12 - 14. On this tour, we'll show you all the available land we know of in the region, including lots in several new communities that have sprung up. So if you're interested in land in Vilcabamba, watch for that announcement soon!
Good living on a few bucks a day
Once you acquire land and build a house, the cost of living in Ecuador is extraordinarily low: A few dollars a day buys you food, electricity and even gasoline if you need it. You can buy huge bags of fresh produce at the local market -- almost as much as you can carry -- for less than $10 (equivalent to $250 or more at Whole Foods in the U.S.).
Local labor is available for $10 - $12 per day for a full-time cook or gardener (plus you must provide lunch and transportation). Fireflies light up the fields at night, and birds sing throughout the day. Every single person who has visited here has been touched by it. (That's why I chose to live here, after all!)
Qualifying for permanent residency only requires that you purchase property worth $25,000 or more. From there, you can apply for Ecuadorian residency (which involves quite an elaborate paper chase, but it's worth it when you finish). I recently got my Ecuadorian driver's license, which required an entertaining course of driving instruction given in Spanish, followed by a day of what I call "the paper chase game" in Loja.
