Ecuador

Ecuador

February:
7 - Ibarra
8 - Quito
10 - Sigcho (dirt road loop)
11 - Banos
13 - Ambato
14 - "Chimborazo" (volcano)
15 - Alausi (train Nariz del Diablo)
15 - Cuenca
16 - Loja





Originally we had planned a week for this unassuming country, but we ended up staying 10 days.

Border formalities were reasonably quick and efficient. No bribing :-)

We made it to Ibarra on the first day, the town with the most hotels per area I have ever seen. That´s good, the hotel was great and cheap.

The town itself isn´t that great looking though, it must have had some tourism influx in the past, probably due to the nearby lakes.

The main church looks great at night

Next morning was a Sunday, and we witnessed the marriage of this unlikely couple...no comments.

Otavalo. Known place of great bargains for local wool and alpaca stuff. Caro got this poncho, which I bet she´ll never wear..:-)

Don´t I look cool with my alpaca scarf?

On the way south we crossed the "middle of the earth", which is a bit off the real middle of the earth. Here Caro sits on both sides of the earth.

Finally made it to Quito, and as we were approaching downtown, we saw a big sign, "Toronto". Some Chinese-Canadian businessman opened a chinese buffet in Quito. We had to have some!

Quito was hell to navigate, but we followed the general flow of traffic and ended up in old Quito, which was very nice.

Lots of well maintained colonial buildings and churches

Sitting in the Plaza San Francisco, with the largest original colonial structure in the city, from the 1600s

Hello, sir, how are you? Have you been here long?

Lots of tourists, I blend in...

Great place to explore, we accidently found this inner courtyard.

The gothic basilica del Voto Nacional is relatively new (less than 100 years old) compared with the other churches, but it soon allowed us some breathtaking views form the top towers.

More funny than scary, these...

Biiiig city

The climb up the towers gets less and less secure. Adrenaline is starting to pour in.

Are you kiddin' me?! I was shittin´ in my pants at this point.

Than we proceeded to walk over the roof of the main cathedral.

la-la-la, no, I haven´t got a clue of what I´m doing.

Picked this great-looking colonial hotel for a few days.

There´s even a touristic TeleferiQo, that takes you up the Volcano Pichincha to the top of Cruz Loma, at 4100m. The views of the city were pretty nice.

But even nicer were the views on the other side of the mountain, beyond the sign "Go at your own risk"

Our room with a view of Sucre Theatre/Plaza. It´s low season so we chose the best room (for the same price). The worst room was basically a windowless closet with a bed.

Next we left Quito with big hopes of riding up Volcano Cotopaxi further south. After a difficult 8 kms from the main road, the park rangers informed us that motorcycles are not allowed up the mountain because we are bad people that go offroad and destroy the paths. I though that was pretty ironic considering the total lack of respect Ecuadorians seem to have for their environment. I was actually pretty bummed as we had planned to sleep up there in a refuge. Caroline, however, quickly found another interest.

So instead we started another planned loop, the Quilotoa loop. This is barely on maps, and it´s a road that goes around a volcano crater that formed a lake.
The roads itself is amazing, highly scenic, absolute pleasure.

Aaaand, our first Llamas!

The first night of this loop we slept in quaint Sigcho.
Not much to remember other than this cute pup with a bit of a crazy look ..:-)

The next day the road got tough, but no less beautiful. Here the road got swallowed by a mud slide, but it was strong enough to ride it.

Finally got to the Quilotoa Crater lake. Great entrance!

So big, absolutely breathtaking!

Continuing on, we noticed these cracks, like the earth split.

Extreme agriculture, they´ll go as far up the hill as the horse can.

Next stop was Banos, conviniently named so, as this is where you can take a dip in thermal waters up in the mountains. It´s also famous for being nearby volcano Tungurahua, which erupted violently in 2006, distroying villages, roads and forcing the evacuation of Banos.

First night I invited my french woman to a french restaurant and had moroccan food. deeeeelicious, and she looks happy! A nice change from the daily rice routine.

This was bliss. Caroline concurs.

Up that cascade, some workers were trying to catch some of the stream throught a tube. One guy was kinda dangling from a rope, I couldn´t watch it.

Life!
I´ll keep to myself the comments on how badly the place was managed....

Caroline was pretty excited to try this local delicacy...no much of a delicacy, caramel and other stuff, very hard to chew and got stuck to our teeth, frankly a small nightmare. But the preparation was entertaining.

If you´re afraid of heights, don´t cross this bridge.

Or cord-jumping for that matter. We heard one ozzy wimper like a puppy before jumping and than chant some rugby-warrior stuff while dangling :-)

Banos even has a bug museum. I can´t believe these things can fly, I am pretty sure they would crack my visor if I hit one. Freakin monsters!

We met that evening a very cool guy, a retired professional diver that moved to this town and was riding around with his dog in this chinese contraption that he had modified for 3-wheel operation (He also brought the dog with him.). We spent the evening with lots of wine, fascinated with his life stories. He was definitely a special guy. This sort of encounter makes this trip so much richer, I absolutely love meeting these crazies.

A mini pickup truck! for carrying mini things, I suppose.

Touristic place, cute main plaza, but horrible food. Had the worst pizza of my life, I don´t even want to remember the ingredients (ok, I will: sliced hotdogs, processed sliced cheese, pita bread). Not even university student can come up with this shit.

Took a little drive down towards the amazon (Puyo), and on the way stopped at this big waterfall, Pailon del Diablo.

Safety? Ha! This path led halfway up the fall.

We got completely soaked

Caroline made another friend, this dangerously-looking puppy.

Left Banos late and only made it was far as Ambato. Kinda ugly town, but made up for it with beauty peagent parade.

Here we also bought this little gizmo from a street vendor, you put it in your mouth and make great sounds with it. Well...HE was making cool sounds, like horses and birds and other fancy animals...the following video shows what sounds I can make...





Seeing how we could go up Cotopaxi, we decided to try another big volcano, Chimborazo, which at 6310m is the highest peak in Ecuador, and due to the Earth´s bulge at the ecuator, it´s also the furthest point from the earth centre, more so than K2 in Himalaya!

The 50% admission went nicely in the pocket of the ranger...

Here´s the sign with the numbers.

It was VERY cold by the time we got to the first refuge, so we decided to make a soup.

Soup never tasted so good.

And this poor little soul was heartbreaking!, we fed him lots of biscuits.

Now, for the best pictures!!

You´d think I would have pictures like this from Canada, but no. I had to have them from a high mountain in Ecuador.

That was pretty crazy, I felt so cool!

An Oh Shit moment....

And it kept on snowing, awesome.

On the way down, the peak was covered by clouds, but you can tell how massive this thing is.

The Andes version of deer. Very shy as well.


Another day, another Lonely Planet destination, this one being in Alausi, the dramatically named Nariz del Diablo train. It was supposed to be a hairy train ride on a mountain side with vertical drops and scary moments.
The day started very slow, with the train being late, as everything else in this part of the world. To kill time we found some big bugs, and we started our own show (people started taking pictures of the proceedings)Just try and I´ll show ya´!

Aside from a few notable moments, the train ride was dissapointing, overhyped. We had seen way better places in the last few days alone....

Caroline´s artistic sense takes over.

The necessary picture. It´s actually kinda like a bus on rails.

Maybe the deplorable state of the tracks was part of the ¨scare¨ factor...

Driving with the open backdoor was definitely the highlight.

Running out of alotted time for Ecuador, we rushed towards Cuenca, another well preserved colonial town. Very nice, indeed.

Big and expensive-looking churches.

...with grand entrances.

Old bridge no longer in use but kept as a viewing balcony, nice.

Further down towards the Peruvian border, in Loja, we see a new, fully equipped sister of Caro´s bike, complete with solid bags and crashbars...for twice the money she paid for hers.

After 10 days of great scenery and incredibly dangerous, agressive and outright moronic drivers, we made it to the Peruvian border!

We´ve got mixed feelings for Ecuador, the people were either nice and genuinely curious about our trip, or rude and dismissive like we were stinky and dangerous (Yeah!). The Macho thing on the roads is also out of control, we had many close calls, where the priority is dictated by weight, so we were naturally at the bottom of the food chain. We often felt that our lives mattered little in their eyes...

Next post: Peru