Couple things here: First, notice the boxers hanging from Kelly's handlebars. Clothes don't dry quite as quick at 9,000ft, wind-dry method was a smashing success though. Second, we're stopped at a gas station for water and some Powerade to try and rehydrate. Some friendly mechanics came and started asking us about our trip and one went and bought a big bottle of sweet black tea with lime, because "it's way better than that," he said pointing at the Powerade. He was right, it's delicious, and caffienated.
The landscapes here in Ecuador are pretty silly. Mountains, huge rolling hills, and fertile, volcanic fields cordoned by rows of trees. It feels like the pastures of Ireland cranked up to 11. Oh boy does a Murphey's sounds good.
Our first camp spot in Ecuador, outside an Organic fertilizer and grain warehouse. After more than a month in hot, muggy lowlands where the bugs will make you look pox-stricken in a matter of minutes, it felt amazing to get reacquainted with our tent. On this yearlong trip, it's the closest thing we have to a home.
Kelly doing the one pot dinner routine, now with unleaded gasoline as our fuel source. Like a lot of Latin America, Ecuadorian cuisine centers around meat. Rice and veggies may be delicious but cooking our own food is the only way for Kelly to get reliable protein. Here we have some rice, eggs, cheese, and onions. Oh so delicious, and calorific.
Here's the local milk lady rocking the stripped sweater and rubber boots. Good likelihood that the cows in the distance helped fill those jugs.
Campsite at sunset, this will do just fine.
We can't describe how amazing it feels to be so cold in the morning that you have to put a jacket and hat on. Coffee and bread provided by the three guys who work in the warehouse, one of which may or may not have Cerebral Palsy, but either way has a pretty wicked pimp limp. The guys working here were super friendly and just seemed stoked that we were traveling through their country. Fortunately for us, this attitude seems to be the norm here in Ecuador. Makes all the minor difficulties of travel seem pretty inconsequential.
Coming into the town of San Gabriel, doesn't really look like we're almost to the equator does it?
A Colombian family that stopped us to say hi and give us some natural sugar cane candies. The guy behind the camera did his own tour from Colombia to Argentina. The story behind the smile is that Kelly is suffering pretty bad from altitude sickness. Dizzy and nauseous every time she really has to exert herself, which, with the weight she's carrying, is every hill. First time for a long time that we've had to take breaks because Kelly was feeling like shit. Obviously she wasn't a fan.
We knew Colombia had a huge cycling culture but didn't realize that it would continue over the border into northern Ecuador. Seen all sorts of fancy, lycra-clad folk racing along the PanAmerican. After a huge, 3,000ft descent into a river valley, we saw a pack of racers, dark skin, light skin, blonds, brunettes, all of whom were flying towards the hill we'd just come down and rode with the effortless speed of people who pedal for a living. They were all wearing blue and yellow jersey's that looked suspiciously like Team Astana (a perennial power on the European racing circuit). Looks like Ecuador may be the ideal location for a winter training camp.
Anybody wanna come ride a road bike here?
Lunch break and can't be happier to find shade. When the sun is directly over your dome, you need a roof to escape.
View from the church where we spent our second night camping.
The nun who runs this place is fantastic. She decided we should camp under the balcony because it looked like it might rain, opened a dorm room so Seth could use a bathroom without having to go downstairs, and brought us eggs, bread, and coffee in the morning. Oh, and she had a yellow lab named Rocky so Kelly could get her dog fix. Rocky spent most of the evening trying to hump Kelly's leg, but such is life I suppose...
About to descend down into the knot of mountains.
At the bottom we were right back in the tropics. Most of the population down here is African ancestry, apparently way back in the day the Jesuits brought black workers from the coast to tend the agricultural fields in the Chota Valley, and now they're the majority in this one little region of andean Ecuador. Amazing how quirks of migration and geography can have such a big impact on demographics when given a long enough history.
Stopped for a night at a little hotel in the valley because we didn't feel like getting eaten alive by bugs. Woke up to our first flat since Oakland! Of course it was on Seth's front wheel. Luckily it gave Seth the chance to find that his disk brake pad had been ground down to almost nothing.
This was the flat part of the day before the big climb. Again, never, ever listen to the topographical analysis of motorists.
At the top of the big climb, coming into Ibarra.
In Ibarra we've been staying with Graham, an Aussie transplant who runs a nursery here. Amazing, generous guy who offers up his extra room or space on the grass to overland travelers, free of charge. Here we are in the back of his pickup, about to head up to a caldera lake nearby.
The back of a pickup is way better than a bus.
Going for the windswept adventurer look.
Hanging out at the lakeside lodge for a coffee and some empanadas (fried dough filled with cheese). Doesn't get much better.
On another trip today, up the volcano behind Graham's house. These ladies are washing clothes. Most of the indigenous ladies here rock Fedoras, it's pretty sweet.
Miniature version of Crater Lake, complete with fumarole islands.
Not sure what these folks are doing, but they don't have a bad spot to do it.
Getting up in the clouds, topped out at about 3,600meters (11,800ft). Ecuador, so far you're pretty awesome.
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