southern Ecuador - Pan American Hwy - who needs backroads¿¿¿¿
Chimbarozzo 5:00 am time exposure
Just can´t stay away from the mountains and snow (even at the equator!)
Riobamba, Ecuador
Laguna Quilota
Parade in Riobamba
Green Parakeets
4800 meters up on Chimborrazo, highest peak in Ecuador
porker in a pan
A day at the market - Hey Joe, I´m feeling a little numb from the neck down....
we use it all
herding sheep in the country
Have been here in Otavalo, Ecuador for a few days now - nice place and a great market. Finally buyint a few things and hopefully mailing them home today. Same as usual though, the mailing costs more than the items in the package. Oh well. Ecuador is beautiful and the people are wonderful. We are just loving South America. It feels so different from Central America. Heading south tomorrow to do some more hiking. Riding is okay here - not as good as Colombia as everyone drives way faster here (could be the cheap price of gas ?), so constantly being passed and very few motos on the roads. In Columbia, everyone drove very slowly - we were the fastest things on the highway believe it or not and there were tons on motos. (Gas there was mucho expensive though)
More to come here at a later date - just lost what I had written - darn computers!!!!
Its been a while since I updated the blog and my memory is fading quickly but here goes! We did some pretty good rough road riding around Otvalo climbing Volcanoes...one piece of advice...Do NOT get a fully loaded SR650 stuck in a big mudhole (unless you have a strong woman along!)
We (or should I say I) sure learned a lesson about wandering off the main Pan American Hwy. in Ecuador! We ended up crossing the equator 4 times...don´t ask- just assume that it wasn´t our best day on the road! However we did get our pictures with one leg in the southern hemisphere the other in the northern! There are NO road signs off the main PA Hwy and way too many roads to ask locals ësta la via a...¨? We then headed out on the Quilota Loop - an awesome dirt road for the first day through some incredible mountain scenery that reminded us of a ¨green¨Copper Canyon. The rural dogs love chasing the MC´s but some geese got into the act and actually chased Lori down the road, honking with wings a flapping! We overnighted at 3800 m at the gorgeous Laguna Quilota and had a great hike happening until the fog set in and Lori (I take no respnsiblity!) got us lost!
The next day we rolled into the gorgeous city of Riobamba and spent a day exploring the town then headed out on a bus to take the famous train ride down the Diablo de Nariz (Devils Nose)...more like the Devils butt! A pretty good ride as the train tackles the switchbacks by going backwards then frontwards! At one point I opened the door and one step out of the train would have been a drop of over 100 feet! I guess it is illegal to ride on the roof (as last year two Japanese tourists were beheaded by a low wire) (unless you buy a cushion for one dollar and the money goes in the conductor´s pocket!!!)
We then headed out of Riobamba and climbed up Volcan Chimbarozzo and climbed to 4800 m on the MC´s (I just about had to push the old 650 up the last few km´s!) then climbed to over 5500 m until we got hit with a major snow storm...yes snow just a few km´s south of the Ecuator (Ecuador..ecuator...get it) We camped overnight at 4800 m and it wasn´t too bad so we are obviously pretty good at high elevation although I admit a crippled slug would have climbed faster than I at 5500m!
Instead of following the Pan American Hwy we then headed into the highlands (as if we were not high enough as it was!) and had our heaviest day of rain to date. She was more than a little cool The people were absolutely incredible and spent several hours running about town getting us some new tires. Lori also discovered broken welds all over her luggage rack (abuse, abuse and more abuse!!! she is a maniac on the rough roads) I ripped the luggage rack off (a pile of pieces, and in literally one minute a local took me to a welding shop. The welder was having a brew but cut off some bolts to use as inserts on the broken pipe and welded up the broken frame pieces perfectly...uno dollar por favor! (we gave him 5 and didn´t say anything about the darn rack costing us 250 dollars in Canada!!!)
The last few days in Ecuador really gave us a taste of some of the untouched jungle that we never got to see when travelling on or close to the Pan Am Hwy. Some pretty impressive thick jungle forests full of birds, a few snakes, lots of corners and clouds and fog. A great time for sure and we were actually sad to see the border! Crossing into Peru was absolutely painless! (as usual in SA..those rip off artists in Central America sure could learn a thing or two about greeting people into their country!!!) The border crossing was slow to say the least! The officials were way more interested in trying (!) to talk to us about our trip, bikes etc. than complete paperwork but they ended up filling out all the required MC forms in triplicate...by HAND (no photocopy machine) which took over 2 hrs. (and there were only a few lines to fill out!) in which time not a single vehicle crossed the border!
Into Peru!!!!!!
Northern Ecuador countryside
Desert Flower
Carved gourds - Otavalo market
Otavalo market color
Otavalo elder
