Into Ecuador

Due to the poor connection on the internet  the photos are a bit all over the place and its taking to long to get them into order, but they go from Northern Peru to Quito.

Time to leave Peru and enter Ecuador. After travelling through Peru’s northern desert it was interesting to see the changes in landscape as we neared the Ecuadorian border. Green forest and cooler climate. We crossed the border in a fast thirty minutes and noticed a difference straight away. No rubbish on the road sides and no putrid smell in the air.


Soon we were into climbing mode with long assents and then long descents with many twists and turns. The roads in southern Ecuador are a bit of a disaster, with cracks, potholes and slips taking away the whole sides of the road.. But Ecuador is in a fast re-road mode with large kilometres of both concrete and tar being laid from one end of the country to the other . This being the case, it takes a long time to go very short distances with lots of road works, most of which is done with shovel and wheel barrow. Again manual labour is cheap. You still have to contend with rounding bends and finding donkeys or goats in the middle of the road and Ecuador has the added twist of finding rocks or mud slides in your path. A problem they have in the highlands during the rainy season. Riding through rising valley mist and swirling flog as it flowed over the mountains was rather exciting in a spooky way.

Another difference from Peru is that there are more private cars on the road and they are all very modern, more so than back home in NZ, even the taxi fleet is up there and there are no tuk-tuks on the road at all. Houses are more modern and mud brick is giving way to more modern materials.

Ecuador seems to be go-ahead even though some commentators are complaining that too much money is being spent on weaponry instead of the people, but then the military is very big in all of South America and Ecuador and Peru don’t get on at the best of times.

The highlands we travelled through have been interesting, if a little disappointing. All of the forest has disappeared and given way to farming, even right to the tops of mountains and it continued like this all the way to Quito. Fires are still seen on the hills as people clear the last tracks of forest.

Our first night in Ecuador was spent in the small town of Catamayo at a lovely hostel and we were the only ones there. It was a night of firsts. First to eat yucca, a plant that looks like sugar cane but tastes like potato (different from the yucca potted plants at home). A first for Annette in eating goat meat with the yucca for dinner. We were in a small town local eatery. Then that night the power went out, as it has every night in the rural areas we have been in, and the first time we have seen fire flies zooming around. A strange sight indeed as they flash when they fly by.

We stayed a couple of nights in Cuenca and enjoyed it’s old city charm as well as the crafts of the metal workers and world famous Monticristo hat makers.

Ecuador’s currency is the US dollar so things are very cheap. Petrol for around $1.90 US a gallon. A large bottle of beer for $2 US.

From Cuenca we rode to the holiday resort of Banos and it’s thermal pools under the volcano, but this now being the rainy season we saw a big fat nothing of any of the local volcanos. So it was a wet ride to Quito and what a very old city it is. We will stay here a few days and get maps for Colombia and get the bike serviced at the local KTM agent and explore Old Quito, view the church with seven tons of gold leaf art work and Annette wants to try out the local skills of the shoe shin boys !!! We have now done 17500 kilometres on the bike and are only a couple of riding days away from the border to Columbia and somewhere in between we will cross the equator.
PS The shoe shin was more like a colouring in job. You had to laugh. Just as well they are only a traveling pair.