Sometimes finding your place in the world takes a lifetime.
After traveling the world twice and living or working on six continents, we finally found ours.
This may be what you’ve been looking for.
The Andes, near Loja
After traveling around the world twice and living or working on six continents, Arianne and I had experienced many beautiful places. But when serendipity brought us to this small valley in the southern Ecuadorian Andes, we sensed something different. Eventually, we stopped looking.
The Vilcabamba valley
There are places one visits and places that somehow capture you. Vilcabamba did that to us.
Vilcabamba's story reaches back centuries. Its ancient name, Huillopamba, is associated with the sacred huilco tree, which once grew throughout the valley and still grows on our property. The Municipality of Loja translates the old name as “Sacred Valley.”
Hacienda San Joaquín
It took us more than a year of visiting countless locations in and around Vilcabamba before we came upon this unusual property. The instant we entered the gate, we felt something neither of us expected. The land seemed to recognize us—as though it had known we were coming and had been patiently waiting for our arrival.
Perhaps your search has brought you here.
Nature without isolation. Privacy without inconvenience. Simplicity without sacrifice.
What began as a few acres of open land became a private sanctuary created over fourteen years — not for resale, but for the way we wanted to live.
Welcome to Hacienda San Joaquín Q10E.
Water is one of the great natural assets of this property and, over the years, it has become an important part of the way we have chosen to live here. With extensive gardens, fruit trees, coffee, vegetables, greenhouses and bees, water touches almost everything we do. We are fortunate to have three independent sources, giving us an unusual degree of security and redundancy.
We often remind ourselves that we are in the business of creating soil. It is the soil's job to nourish extraordinary plants.
Over the years, that simple philosophy led us to develop our own system for producing much of the organic nourishment used throughout the property. It is part composting, part vermiculture, part fermentation—and, after years of refinement, very much our own.
One of our large greenhouses is devoted to tomatoes, including one that has become very much our own.
Many years ago, we began with organic Brandywine tomatoes. Instead of buying new seed after each crop, we saved seeds from our harvest and planted them again. We continued doing this generation after generation, always selecting seeds from the tomatoes we most wanted to continue.
We have always had a soft spot for honey.
Raw honey is one of those remarkable foods that seems almost miraculous when you stop to consider how it is made. Thousands of bees visit countless blossoms, gathering tiny quantities of nectar and carrying them home to the hive, where they are gradually transformed into something entirely different. The aroma, color and flavor of the finished honey reflect the flowers, trees and landscape from which it came.
2.834 acres · 2,256 sq. ft. residence · Hacienda San Joaquín
Vilcabamba, Ecuador
US $865,000
Seller financing available: 40% down, balance over five years at 5.0% interest.
Furnishings: details available upon request.