Roadtripping Through Ecuador

Mentally Ready, Physically Not

Crossing the border was a quick and smooth process. The plan for the day was to first ride to Tulcan, the first Ecuadorian town, where we would meet one of Kacper’s friends who would be riding with us.

We were only planning to ride together for about 10 days, as Kacper and I were both planning to be flying back to our homes from Quito in a week. I was going back for a wedding and to see my parents, and Kacper needed to take a break from his trip to work and save some more money.

In Tulcan, we met up with Kacper’s friend, Rey. Rey was actually from Ecuador, but he grew up in London, which is where they met. Rey had never traveled by bike before, but he was motivated to see some of his country in a new way.

We took off from Tulcan, following the Trans Ecuador MTB route. A popular bikepacking route through the mountains of Ecuador. While I was in Colombia, I mostly rode the main highway route, so it was refreshing being on the quiet gravel roads again.

Ecuador is notorious for landslides and rough roads. Even though we are at very high altitudes (2500m or 8000ft), the climate here is very wet. My guess is our proximity to the ecuator creates very unique climates. The extreme wetness of the area mixed with steep mountain roads will inevitably lead to landslides and muddy roads. Recently, storms and landslides caused all of Ecuador to be without power for a few days.

While it was slow going through some rough roads, the landscape was fantastic. There were hundreds of these unique plants called frailejones.

I was slowly starting to go slower and slower. I was starting to feel the effects of my month long break in Bogota, and also the effects of the altitude. We were climbing to nearly 4000m (13000ft), where the air is much thinner and it is much harder to bike.

As the sun set, I still had nearly 4km to go. Kacper, as usual, was a machine and pedaled on while Rey and I were exhausted pushing our bikes. As it got darker, rain clouds moved in and we quietly pushed through the wet darkness praying that the ranger station at the top was open and we could sleep there.

I always struggle the first few days after not biking for a while. My body is never able to go as far as I remember being able to go. All I want to do is keep pedaling, but my body refuses to pedal any further. At least I’m able to continue pushing my bike up.

After over an hour of pushing through the dark rain, Rey and I finally spot a heavenly light up ahead. A burst of energy comes back and we rush up to see Kacper. We found out that the Park Ranger was here and was looking for the key to let us sleep inside one of the buildings. Camping in the rain is never fun, so it was quite a relief.

We got situated in our little room and cooked up some dinner. The fire from the stove was nice and warm and we took turns warming up by it.

This was a new record for me for the highest altitude with my bike. I would slowly get stronger and accustomed to the altitude, but right now I wasn’t and had a terrible headache.

After a rough night’s sleep, we hiked up to the lakes nearby. Sleeping at altitude is a challenge at first, but gets easier the more you do it.

The views from the top were incredible. Every direction we looked was nothing but remote and beautiful terrain. I had missed this feeling of remoteness so much. Central America is so dense that I had never felt this way, and while Colombia did have plenty of vast remote areas, I didn’t go to them.

My mentalility was slowly improving from Colombia and I was getting excited to explore and be on the bike again. The first day riding in Ecuador had already been better than any day riding in Colombia.

While I was starting to improve mentally, I realized my body wasn’t doing so well. As we started riding, I was experiencing excruciating knee pain. I wasn’t able to pedal at all without sharp pain. Thankfully, it was a long descent to a nearby town where I didn’t have to pedal much at all. During the ride, I realized there was no way I could continue on today.

We stopped for breakfast in the town and I had to let Kacper and Rey know that they would have to go on without me and that I would have to rest my knee and bus ahead to meet them in a few days.

I was pretty upset, as all I wanted to do was travel and explore from my bicycle with these guys, but I knew that I would only cause more damage to my knee if I didn’t properly deal with it. I assumed the issue was from overuse and I had quadricep tendonitis. I think it was weak from lack of riding and would need to be carefully stretched and strengthened.

After two days of resting, I tried to ride to the town we were going to meet up in. Sadly, the knee pain was still bad and I had to take a bus to Otavalo.

I reconnected with Rey and Kacper in Otavalo and we spent a day exploring this cool city. The market was full of ponchos and many other cool souvenirs. When it came time for us to all continue biking together, my knee still wasn’t better. Tendonitis can last for weeks and I knew that it was best for me to not push it and I accepted that I wouldn’t ride until I returned to Ecuador in about a month.

To make matters even worse, I got another stomach parasite and was stuck in bed with awful cramps unable to keep any food or water down. Thankfully, it’s very easy and cheap to go to a doctor and get the medication needed.

I had been connected with a local guy, Juano, who is building a hotel near Quito and he offered to watch my bike while I was gone. He is so amazing and nice, it was great to meet him. He drove me to the airport the next day and I was heading back to the States.

Quick Trip Home

With the timing of the knee injury, it worked out well to go back home to see friends and family while resting and strengthening the knee. I first spent a few weeks with my parents in Florida and I had such a wonderful time with them. While it may have been hard for my parents to accept my dreams of traveling at first, they have since become huge supporters of this. And if they are reading this now, I love you guys a ton, and thank you for everything, I couldn’t do it without you guys!

I had a wonderful few weeks getting spoiled with love, amazing food, and great wine with my parents in Florida. I then flew to Arkansas to see some friends I hadn’t seen in years for a wedding. After that, my parents flew out and we went to spend a few days on the river with my brother and his family and my grandmother, who is also one of my biggest supporters. It was a great time reconnecting with so many people and I needed it a lot. I’m being quick with it as this blog is mostly for my travels, but I thought it was important to include at least a little bit.

A New Hemisphere

As nice as it was to be home, all I wanted to do was keep traveling. Ecuador had slowly started to bring me out of the funk that Colombia had put me in and I had motivation again. When I returned to Quito, I had noticed on the map somewhat of a big milestone, I was now in the Southern Hemisphere.

I returned to Juano’s wonderful place where I stayed two nights with a few other cyclists. There was a couple from Colombia and a couple from Brazil. I spent those two days getting the bike ready and cleaning a lot of my gear. A small bit of mold was growing on my tent that I had to take care of.

My beautiful bike. I love this thing and am very happy with how it has come together. I had to do a little photo shoot of her after I got her cleaned and set up. I plan to make a page on my website soon dedicated to sharing more information about my bike, gear, and setup, so stay tuned if you are interested!

From here, I was headed towards Cotopaxi, a magnificent volcano. I was also talking to an old friend, Aidan, who I was planning to meet up with there. For those who don’t remember, Aidan was the guy who let Kacper and I put our bikes in his car to ship from Panama to Colombia. He seemed like a super cool dude and we had been trying to reconnect since Cartagena. Coincidentally, we had both just returned to Quito from weddings in the States at the same time.

I left Juanos with Camila and Jairo, a couple from Colombia who had been traveling for years on bicycles around South America. They made and sold bracelets and other jewelry to sustain the lifestyle.

I was maybe a little too excited when we rode past this llama. They are very common in the high andes but they are very unique to me and I find them immensely cute and interesting.

It had been a great first day back riding, much better than the other first day in Ecuador. While I was home, I had been exercising and strengthening my knees while also riding my dad’s bike around Florida. I felt strong and confident after this day of riding. It started raining on me as I arrived in a small town and decided to stay in this very picturesque hotel for the night.

The next day I rode to meet Aidan before heading into Cotopaxi National Park. Originally our plan was to spend two nights camping together in the park, do some hiking, and then head on our separate ways.

This is Aidan. He was from California, went to college in Texas, and was recently working in real estate in New York City. Like me, he was also sick of the rat race going on back in the US. He had quit his job and built out his car to spend a few years traveling through Latin America. He knew there had to be more to life than chasing promotions and living for the weekend, and he decided to leave it all behind and go look for it. We had a lot of similar ideas and beliefs, which caused us to get along really well.

Driving into the park, I was a bit worried we wouldn’t get to see Cotopaxi, as it was very cloudy. That turned out to be wrong as we arrived in the park and had wonderful views of the volcano as we drove closer.

One of the great things I realized quickly about traveling with Aidan was that he also loved to take photos. So we stopped plenty of times driving to get shots of the car with great landscapes. Sometimes I feel like I slow people down when I stop to take photos all the time, but not with Aidan. I have to say, I think the bike looks pretty sweet on top with his surfboards (he has four).

We spotted some llamas looking very majestic infront of cotopaxi and had to stop for some photos. They let us get surprisingly close, which allowed for some wonderful shots.

We continued driving slowly through the park until we reached the campground. We spent the rest of the evening around a fire, drinking, cooking, and talking. Car camping allows for a lot of nice extras that make camping much more comfortable, and most importantly, a cooler full of beer.

We noticed the clouds had cleared over the top of Cotopaxi and took a few star shots. We were a bit drunk, so they came out a bit blurry, but still beautiful.

We were hoping to drive up Cotopaxi the next day and hike around it, but the weather wasn’t on our side. We still drove up as high as we could but it was windy and rainy with no visibility. We got out for a few minutes but it was miserable and we got back in the car to adjust our plans. It seemed pointless for us to spend another day here with the weather as bad as it was.

That was when Aidan invited me to travel with him through Ecuador in his car. At first, I was thinking of course not, I was pretty anxious to get back on the bike. Then I was thinking about what really was important for me when it comes to traveling. It had only been two days with Aidan, but they had been so much fun. Traveling with someone is way more fun than traveling alone.

Also, I had heard from other cyclists that while Ecuador had a few highlights, the cycling in-between wasn’t the best and a lot of people took busses anyway. It also would be nice to get to Peru quicker to enjoy more time in the places I really want to be.

So with all things considered, I said “Hell yeah!” and we headed off to our next destination.

Roadtrippin’

Our next destination was Laguna Quilotoa, a massive volcano crater with a lake in the middle.

The drive there was through some beautiful farmland. It seemed like almost all of Ecuador was farmland and there were crop fields scattered all over the mountains.

We arrived in the touristy town side of the lake but we didn’t want to stay here. There was nowhere good to car camp with a good view of the lake and we would have to pay to camp around here. We had seen that on the opposite side of the lake, there was a spot to park with a wonderful view of the lake, but some people had said that the road was washed out a few months ago.

Up for an adventure, we decided to go check it out anyway. At the very worst, it would be a fun drive, plus we had plenty of time to kill.

It was a bumpy but exciting road, and about halfway up we passed a local guy who told us it wasn’t possible to pass up ahead. Since we had come so far already, we had to go see for ourselves. We did finally arrive to the location where there was a washout on the road, but magically it had been partly repaired and we were able to pass it. It was slightly sketchy, with the car being very close to a steep edge, but it was no problem.

We arrived at the top with an incredible view of the lake and we gave each other a solid high five. It felt good to push into the unknown and be rewarded with such an incredible spot.

Getting a fire started at this altitude is no simple task. The lack of air in the atmosphere required us to baby the fire for hours ensuring it would survive. It was practically all we would do once we arrived at our campsite. We joked about how much we enjoyed this simplicity as compared to life back in big cities. Here, we spent most of our time ensuring we had our basic elements of survival. Shelter, warmth, and food.

Speaking of food, boy did we feel like we were gonna be eating like kings tonight. We had planned a “fancy” Italian dinner, even with a liter bottle of wine. Something seemed a bit off about the pasta, the sauce seemed a little too…. sweet. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t amazing either. We were far away from any other food and it was all we had, so we happily ate it all. It would be a few days later that we realized that we used ketchup for the sauce instead of pasta sauce. We had bought salsa de tomate, which sounds like it could be a tomato sauce for pasta, but that’s what they call ketchup here in Ecuador.

As the night got darker, the wind got much, much stronger. I had my tent set up behind Aidan’s car, but it was still blowing a worryingly amount. I got so worried it was going to blow away that I decided it was time to get into the tent and try to sleep to weigh it down.

I don’t think I slept more than an hour. It felt like I was in the middle of a hurricane, I had never been in my tent in such high winds. It was impossible to sleep with the noise of the tent. Once the sun finally came up, we realized just about 30 meters away was a spot that was completely protected from the wind, but oh well.

New Heights

Our next destination was Chimborazo, another volcano, the tallest in Ecuador and also the closest point to the sun. We were both pretty exhausted from a sleepless night, so we opted to get a hotel room and catch up on sleep before going up the volcano.

Now caught up on some sleep, we started the drive up to Chimborazo. It was an interesting drive, as we started at 2500m (8000ft) and ended up at 5000m (16000ft). We drove through a few different climates and a few layers of clouds. We could see a little bit of the base of Chimborazo, but we would have to wait to get a better view.

The visibility was pretty bad at the end of the road, so we went into the refugio to play some backgammon and kill some time, hoping the clouds would clear.

Not long later, we were blessed with some clearer skies and better views of Chimborazo. We setup our camp nearby and yet again spent nearly all night taking care of the fire again. We knew it was going to get very cold at this altitude, so I even opted to sleep inside the car.

We knew it was going to be a challenge to sleep well, as neither of us had ever been this high before, let alone slept this high before (5000m, 16000ft), so we drank all the alcohol we had while we huddled around the fire. While that did help us go to sleep, I woke up feeling awful and with a terrible headache.

Stumbling around in the morning, we noticed that there was a new light dusting of snow on the ground. It was a beautiful sight.

It was pretty cold, so we didn’t waste too much time packing up and heading out. As normal for us, we stopped plenty of times to get some good photos with Chimborazo.

From Chimborazo, Aidan want to go to a town called Baños. A lot of people recommended it to us so it seemed like a good town to spend a few days to do some work. Aidan also has a website he is working on that is like a travel guide for Latin America, so we both enjoyed some time in a town relaxing and working.

From Baños, we only had one more stop left in Ecuador before heading to the border. Aidan had an old friend who lived near Cuenca who invited us to come spend a few days there.

Aidan had mentioned before that he wanted to adopt a dog to travel with, but he wanted the dog to find him. While we were driving through some remote mountains, we noticed a small little lost puppy on the side of the road. We stopped and the poor thing was super skinny and clearly lost and alone. Aidan looked at me and asked if this was the one and if he should keep her. She was so sweet and timid so I said of course. He named her Yuca and we loaded her up into the car. We drove her to a nearby gas station where we gave her what food we had and she nearly choked because she ate so fast. We gave her a quick bath because she was covered in dirt and grime from roaming around. She was so tired and weak that she slept the rest of the car ride to Cuenca.

There is a food that is very popular in the High Andes that Aidan and I had been wanting to try. It’s a bit hard to think about, because these cute animals are common pets back in the states, but here they are cultivated for food. The animal I’m talking about is called Cuy, or Guinea Pig.

We stopped at a roadside restaurant and ordered ourselves each a plate of Cuy, a bit nervous to try it. It really doesn’t help they have these poor things skinned and gutted, with a metal bar through their mouth and ass, rotating over a fire. I love trying as many unique food items while traveling and couldn’t turn it down.

We got it served on a nice plate with some pretty yummy sides. Aidan and I both looked confusingly at our little part of Cuy, unsure of how to start. After a few moments, I picked it up and started eating just like a small chicken wing. And to be honest, it tasted pretty similar to chicken. The meat was pretty tender and flavorful, but the skin was very rough and chewy. It’s such a small animal that it was a challenge to pick around the bones and get a good amount of meat.

It was worth trying, but I don’t think I’ll ever eat it again, especially not when chicken is on the menu. We gave Yuca the leftovers and she happily chowed down.

On the way to Aidan’s friend’s house in Cuenca, he debriefed me on who we were going to meet. His friend, Pete, was an interesting character, to say the least. They had met a few years ago in Panama but Pete had recently moved to Cuenca. Pete is in his mid 30s and to put it bluntly, he had been through some shit. He went into the army at a young age and served in Afghanistan where he did and saw unspeakable things, including losing a lot of close friends. These things have forever left an imprint on him and make living a normal life difficult. Since serving, he has continued in a similar line of work as private security and even as a bounty hunter around Latin America.

We spent three days at Pete’s and he was a great host and a very interesting person to talk to. We had some late night talks where he shared a lot of things and it was pretty tough to see the trauma that war does to a person. He was doing pretty good all things considering.

International Smugglers

Aidan and I were pretty ready to get to Peru after that. Ecuador had been nice, but Peru was a country I had been dreaming of for years. Peru was the country I was looking forward to the most and was a big reason for wanting to do this trip. We left Petes and planned to cross the border that day, we just had one little problem to solve…

Taking a dog across a border isn’t always an easy task. In order to take a dog legally across most borders, you need a lot of paperwork, paperwork that we didn’t exactly have and we couldn’t get. We were planning to smuggle little Yuca across the border illegally.

The plan was simple, Aidan would take care of the car paperwork while I watched Yuca far away. When it came time to drive through the inspection point, we would hide her in the car and pray they didn’t find her or that she didn’t make a sound. The first step was completed easily, then we had to find somewhere to hide her in the car. Aidan had moved some stuff around and stuffed poor Yuca underneath the seat and moved some stuff in front to hide her.

We were a little bit nervous as we pulled up to where they inspected the car. There was a person there who was in charge of importing pets so we knew if they found her we would get in trouble. They opened the car and opened a few boxes and seemed happy enough and let us continue. We acted cool as we slowly drove away, now in the clear. We drove a few minutes away from the border and then stopped and cheered and pulled sweet Yuca from her hiding spot, she was now safely in Peru. Aidan was planning to get all the proper paperwork he needed while in Peru so he could legally cross with her in the future. The problem was she was too young to get any of the proper vaccines and paperwork at the time.

We were heading to a beach town near the border, Mancora. I would spend a few days there with Aidan before it came time for me to leave and begin bicycling Peru, achieving a dream of mine.

Thank you all for reading and following along. I hope you all aren’t too upset with me for not biking through Ecuador. Sometimes I feel like a cheater when I take a bus or hitch a ride, but ultimately it is more important for me to enjoy the journey. It was never about biking every single kilometer for me, it’s all about traveling and learning more about myself and this world. Sometimes the bike is the best tool for me, and sometimes it is not.

Stay tuned for the next post in Peru, all I can say is Peru has blown me away so far and I have never been so excited to explore more of a country.