Ecuador – radrauschen

Ecuadors South

Descansar – Relax, nothing can be better at the end of a cycling day to calm down. Today I stay in the courtyard of a restaurant/beer garden and I hover in the sound of pleasant latin music. I wanted to feet my blog more often, but didn’t happen. So, let’s summarize the highlights.
Cuenca to Loya: Three days, three big mountains. It’s strange, cause back at home 1500 meters of going up with my bicycle would have been a hard day after what my muscles would be aching for some days. In the Andes of Ecuador it became normal. Sure, it is not a piece of cake, but I feel to get used to it. And the outlook into the valleys rewarded myself for the up and downs of the streets. On the last stage to Loja, I followed the suggestion of my navigation system komoot and took after the village San Lucas the road along the identically named river. Although it was dirt road, the shortcut was worth it.

Loja: Cochsurfing or Warmshowers in Ecuador didn’t n seem to be an easy thing, 6 requests and one answer. The couchsurfer offered me to ask a friend, where I could spent the night. I called the friend, as agreed, waited in the park, wrote him again, but he never showed up or answered. On the day I left Loja, I demolished a door out of glas in the cheap hotel I stayed in. Furthermore my heavy bike lost its balance and crashed into the neighbour’s door. After that I felt a bit like a villain, cause they treated me like I did it on purpose. After visiting a nearby workshop I paid 3 times more than the actual stay! On top it rained while leaving Loja. So I guess I won’t come back to this place.

Vilcabamba: So many travellers, I met on my way, told me to visit this little village in the south of Loja. After a short climb, it was going down until Malacatos to crest another hill. In the valley Vilcabamba appeared and surrounded by a beautiful scenery it was really worth to see it. But principally it were the people who make my stay, what it was. Some kilometers from the village I stayed in the garden of a American woman, who have chosen this quit place, to built up her new life. I was not the only guest, a columbian couple and an awesome guy from the states also spent some time at her place. The next day we went to a traditional sweat in the meditation center. Pouring water on glowing hot stones heated up the air and rose the humidity. The guide who leaded us trough the evening was singing songs and praying in a native language. This experience didn’t just feel good, with the procedure it was definitely a highlight of my stay.

Vilcabamba to Macará: Instead of going back to my favourite town Loja and taking the Panamericana, I decided to ride my bike over Gonzanamá to the Peruvian border. 90% of the road is dirt road and before heading to the coast in Peru the Andes show again, that it miss the word „flat“ in their dictionary. And on top there doesn’t exist sufficient word to describe the landscape.

Near the border to Peru, the Ecuadorians produce a lot of bricks of loam to built their houses. Therefor they put mud in mold, dry it and finally heat it up in an oven, which is also made out of loam bricks.

Besides the bricks they crow corn, which they dry next to their houses.

I nearly had a flat tyre in Ecuador and was looking forward to write „puncture – free Ecuador“, but on my two last days I had to patch my tube twice. However, it’s way better than at the beginning.

Over the low clouds I rode the last part and finally down to the border to Peru.

To leave the country I had to fill out a sheet of paper with the usual information. A long cue but just one clerk let this procedure take a while. But finally I could cross the bridge to Peru, where the formalities of the entry took place.

La selva, Andes crossing, Cuenca and the Toreadora Hike

To adjust to the attention span of nowadays and to spent less time with writing, I intend to write shorter but more frequently blog entries. But here I will some up the the highlights of the last few days.

Ecuador can be split in three parts going from north to south related to the different climatic conditions: the warm and rather dry area at the coast, the mountains and the amazonian area with the jungle (la selva).
After we spent most of the time in the mountains of Ecuador, we went down to the amazonian area. After we passed heaps of nice waterfalls on the way down to Puyo, we had to deal with a lot of rain.

Near Tena we stayed at a Couchsurfer, which we nearly haven’t seen. Instead we encountered around 15 volunteers on his eco farm, who ran the daily business. At the same time it was a spiritual place with vegetarian and most of the time vegan food. A certain time schedule including Yoga, some hours of work and a lesson to learn something from the others gave the community their certain framework. The food, usually made by someone else, was most of the time very delicious and on the day we arrived we enjoyed self made chocolate from the Cacao plants of the farm.

Some musicians, some volunteers and the owner spontaneously organized a festival in town with artists from all over the continent, some of them travellers, who just dropped in on the stage.

Due to an infection of Tobias, we stayed one more day in Puyo, so that he could recover, but the sickness returned again one week later and leaded to a visit to the doctor, who prescribed him Antibiotika. Consequently Tobias needed more days of recovering and took the bus to Cuenca while I crossed the Andes alone. Accompanied by rain and fog I started into the climb. After an hour I arrived at the junction to the street in the mountains, where I got warned of a landslide. „Senior, Derrumbe en la vía, no es possible de pasar!“ „Con bici tampoco?“ „Bla bla bla..bla.“ „Es possible de pasar con bici, Si o No?“ „Si“. Well, I think he got as much from me as I understood him. The street upwards seemed to be very calm. Hardly a car, which overtook me and not one car which came towards me. No car? Yes, but I first realized as I bumped into a traffic jam. With the bike no problem to pass by. The first landslide appeared to be possible to pass somehow and so I checked my possibilities under the eyes of around 30 Ecuadorians who left their vehicles to watch the clearing work. It started to rain again and before everybody escaped into their warm and dry places in the bus or car, I found two guys who helped me overcome this muddy obstacle. Just arrived on the other side, the road got totally muddy, followed by another queue of vehicles. A huge ongoing landslide seemed to make a getting through impossible. I collected myself an invitation to sit in the bus, while my bike had to endure the ongoing rain. But it didn’t take long, I was back outside to do what had to be done. Slowly and carefully I pushed my bike through the mud and the last few meters trough the sliding mass of the brown viscous water. Under the cheering of the waiting cars, trucks and buses a went on with my ride to come closer to the top. After a big portion of lunch, how can it be different the next landslide. My shoes already totally covered by mud I heaved my heavy bike to this rather small landslide. The weather didn’t become better, more dense Haze, more rain and falling temperatures. The top still 600m above me, I passed a house, which seemed to be one of a few possibilities to check in to spent the night.

In the next morning the weather conditions were still the same and my shoes as wet as the day before. No other suitable shoes for replacement I had to slip again into the lumps of wet mud. After a few kilometers the top was finally reached, but during the descent to Cuenca the airflow let my feet transform into ice cubes.
Arrived in the hostel, totally alive and so happy about a warm shower I knew that it was exactly the kind of experiences which is worth the travel.

Cuenca is probably the most beautiful city in Ecuador. With its pleasant atmosphere, beautiful architecture from colonial times, vivid culture and a river which flows trough the town it offer a ice place to regain energy for further adventures.

After one day of discovering the city, I took a bus to the nearby national park El Cajas to do the Toreadora hike on around 4000m of altitude. I didn’t checked the level of difficulty of the offered tracks and took by accident one of the most challenging ones. At the same time it was maybe also one of the most beautiful with a wonderful outlook from the top of Cerro San Luis. In the night I was the only guest in the refuge, a quite but also very cold place.

Trough the mountains of Ecuador

At the place of the Casta Restaurant and a beautiful view on the white summit of Chimborazo I will let you know what happened during my first days in Ecuador besides the experience of hiking Cotopaxi.

After we visited the beautiful church in Las Lajas, we had to cross the border to Ecuador. We were still in a group of 4, Tobias, David and Joanne and me. The last view kilometres in Colombia offered us another breattaking landscape. The border-crossing itself was really easy going and with some loud music playing outside the immigration building, it felt like a celebration.

The first town in Equador was Tulcán, not the most beautiful place, but still worth a visit due to the cemetery. First of all, all cemeteries in Latin America I’ve seen so far are totally different from the ones we have in Germany. They show a more friendly face and white is the dominant colour. Heaps of fresh flowers express, that the church is a big topic for the latin people. The cemetery in Tulcán is outstanding, because the gardeners change the hedges into art.

The first night in Ecuador we stayed in a rather expensive hotel in San Gabriel. No hostel was available in the village and due to my birthday Internet connection was demanded. The next day we cycled up and down to the lake of Ibarra. A long part of the street to Ibarra was renewed and closed for transit cars, so we four bikers had it more or less on our own. Most of that part was already done and paved, but downhill we bombed down the gravel road through the road wo works. After we arrived the river, which most of the time indicates the turning point, we had do climb up some hundred meters to arrive at the beautiful lagune, close to Ibarra, where two Germans opened the Finca Sommerwind, a campsite for caravans and tents as well as a german café, which opens during the weekends. Hans and Patricia welcomed us and due to some days with a lot of climbing, we decided to stay one more night at their place. We even got baked a good bread by Patricia, which we enjoyed as well as a barbecue and cooking pasta.

On the road again we passed Otavalo and we’re getting closer to the Equador. And finally behind a corner we crossed the line and entered the southern half of the earth. Two monuments line the streets. One earth – shaped stone, which was built first and is not exactly on the right position, and a sundial, where the non-profit organization Quitsato gave us a very interesting introduction about the place, their work and the alignment of the maps of the world, which they consider to align to the east instead of North, which became common.

The last few kilometers to the highest capital on earth on about 2800 meters above the sea level, Quito, was our next destination. With KALARI chocolate in my mouth and music in my ear, I climbed the last ascent to the big urban area. Arrived David and I looked for the Cotopaxi Tour. Due to the weather forecast we decided to shift the tour by one day, which was the right decision. So the next day was free to discover the old part of Quito, including the highest church in South America, the Basilica de sagrado voto.

After the amazing tour to the Cotopaxi, David and Joanne went to Germany for the wedding of David’s Sister. They took some of my stuff to Germany to reduce the weight of my bike – another blog entry about the topic of redundant equipment will follow.
Tobias and I went down further south, riding on the so called street of the volcanos. Two times we camped in gardens of locals, visited the market in Pujilí before we arrived Ambato. In the park we dried our tents before we took part in a tour through the museum of Juan Montalvo, who wrote the national anthem of Ecuador and became one of the most important writers of the country. His thoughts had and still have a great impact of the development of Ecuador. His corpse is kept in a big hall next to the museum.

We left our bikes in the inner yard of the restaurant next to the museum, where we met Leo, the owner of the Casa de Ciclistas by accident. He just dropped his daughter at that place and suddenly introduced to us. A real big coincidence! He gave us the direction to his house, where we met again. Leo, who started to offer his place to ciclists some years ago. In 2011 he started a guest book, which was very in testing to have a look at. On top he told us some stories about other cyclists, who stayed at his place. He owns a bike shop, in which we set up our sleeping accomondation. On our departure he gave us a medal as a present, I eternalized in his guest book and schwup, back on the road.

The path over Píllaro to Patate was just wonderful, small little villages, lots of agriculture areas and a nice valley down to Patate, from where it is possible to see the before mentioned two volcanos. Currently we are still waiting for the rain to stop, but it is a nice place with partly annoying music, we listen to since we had breakfast.

Today we will head to Baños and then down into the amazonian area next to Puyo.