Sixty Degrees of Latitude…

First presented in preview form here Sixty Degrees of Latitude is here at last and available to order. 132 pages of interesting photography, printed on a very high quality ‘lustre’ finish paper.  It is not a travelog as such, nor is it exclusively street photography. Rather it is just a look at some of the places in between on my cycle journey through the Andes. Of course I’d be very happy if you all ordered a copy.. and you “should”* if you like interesting photography… or are interested in South America.. or bicycles and travel by bike.. and especially if you enjoyed reading this blog as I pedalled my way along through the Andes ;-)

You can preview the book in full below and order directly here

“A journey by bicycle following the spine of the Andes from a latitude of approximately 5 degrees north in Colombia to 55 degrees south at the tip of Tierra del Fuego. These are some of the places in between.”

Sixty Degrees of Latitude by Mike Hayes | Make Your Own Book

Granted it is not dirt cheap, such is the cost of print on demand, but it is a very high quality book and to put it in context.. for £25 you can go and buy 70 pages of rather dull (in my humble opinion of course ;-) photography in the form of Moby’s new book.. because he is Moby.. or you can have this instead <hint>.

cheero!

Cycling in Colombia and Ecuador

This is my final post on my bike journey through this part of the world.. so as a favour (donations are welcome however… :o)* to my cycling readership, a number of whom I already know are interested in heading to Colombia, I’ve put together a page on the basic facts about riding in these countries. It is here, or you can see it in the pages menu over there in the right sidebar.

Have fun!

* note to self, figure out some way of making some ££ out of this…

The voyage home…

Nope, not the Star Trek movie, rather just Bogota to Cornwall. My voyage home was less sci-fi, more black comedy…. The fun started benignly enough when trying to get my bike in a cab to get out to the airport. The cabs in Bogotá are similar to those in Quito… i.e small, yellow and Korean – so they have folding seats so I wasn’t expecting any trouble… how how wrong I was, in Bogotá they run on propane so have a dirty great tank in the trunk/boot*. Thankfully in my experience Bogotá cabbies have an excellent sense of humour, it was needed as our attempts to get the boxed bike wedged into the cab somehow all failed miserably… eventually we resigned ourselves to the fact that the bike was going to have to come out of the box and go in the cab in pieces, the box was stamped flat, folded up and jammed in while I went off in search of more packing tape to put the whole lot back together again at the airport. My driver was brilliant once there, there was a load of construction work going on so the normal arrivals drop off was blocked off, no problem, he parked right by the entrance and with one hand helped me repack the box, and with the other fended off the coppers keen to move us on. We laughed about the whole deal, best humoured cabbie I have ever met. He earned a large tip, and not just because I had  a bunch of Pesos to get rid of anyway…….

Check-in then… Iberia have a rather generous baggage allowance of 46kg(!!) but you have to book a bike separately (which I had done)… however despite the rather obvious fact that somehow Iberia had been happy to carry my bike from London the agent said “nope, sorry, you can’t take the bike” (or words to that effect in Spanish)… I was ready to dump the thing anyway (great excuse to build a new one for the next adventure, mine is well worn). I just looked sad and smiled wearily… the ploy worked, she and her colleague took pity.. spent 10 mins conferring and eventually simply said “OK, have a nice trip”. Sorted.

Chainsaws and cattle whips…. you know it would never have occurred to me that I wouldn’t be allowed either of those things in my handbaggage, just as well the enormous list of prohibited items at security was so comprehensive, you never know… I might one day have found myself travelling with a pick-axe “just in case”….

That should have been it right, nice and easy all the way home….? Nope. Just as the aircraft was boarding the airport police decided I looked particularly dodgy (I suppose), took my passport and dragged me off for gut x-rays just to see if I was carrying anything in there other than the remains of the chicken and mango salad I had for lunch… Even then the Colombian friendliness shone through.. they had a job to do but were most apologetic about it, nice smiles all round though with the flight about to leave my thoughts were elsewhere. It did leave a bit of a bad taste but in my mind it’s not a black mark against Colombia at all, rather just an unfortunate consequence of the state of western society that drives demand for drugs. I made my flight, just… they held it for me.

I really did figure that would be it… however Madrid wasn’t plain sailing either, once again a copper singled me out on disembarkation from the aircraft for a search… heck, I thought I looked pretty respectable… shaved, clean clothes etc etc. The final humiliation was when I wasn’t allowed on the flight to London.. problem with my passport apparently… you see it is a quite new one with validioty beyond 10 years because I filled my other one up and replaced well before it’s expiry date. My new one just has stamps in it from countries that folk expect to be a bit ‘dodgy’ on the narcotic front… India, Morocco, Ecuador, Colombia, Pakistan…. and the Morocco visa is so smudged it is illegible (not my fault, the ink just bled like that)…. Still, I got to London about 5pm Friday afternoon, and home here to Cornwall yesterday (Saturday) afternoon. Tired…

None of it seems real now, I am really not happy to be back, Colombia especially was a fantastic experience despite any potential risk of riding a bike in the rural south. In Villa de Leyva an old lady asked me what I thought of her country… I said “I love Colombia, I really do.” She said in reply “I love my country too….” This is something I noticed all over, Colombians are proud of their country. and justifiably so, it is beautiful, warm, welcoming and so tidy. The contrast with the general scruffiness in Ecuador was remarkable. Riding away from the border towards Pasto honestly did feel like I was in someone’s vast, lush, mountain garden. I have already made plans to head back that way….

p.s. in case you were wondering, or even if you weren’t…. my bike did make it home undamaged :o)

* delete as appropriate depending on which side of the Atlantic you reside.

p.s. final thought for Ecuador

just as a postscript to my post below, this country is ace but Ecuadorian cities have a bit of a bad rap for crime, I was reading one of the national papers over lunch and there was a piece about how the police are trying to improve the security situation down in Guayaquil, which has a pretty bad rap. The figures were about double I think from what I remember of some of the worst US cities (though I would happily be corrected), for 2007 it was something like 450 killings, 250 rapes etc etc (actually not as bad as I expected…) and then my sister mailed from Rio where she is working at the moment and put all that into perspective by saying that something like 36,000 people died in Rio in 2005 from gunshots…. ouch.

Anyway, enough of those cheery thoughts, all being well I will be in Colombia this time tomorrow :o)

Lagunas, montañas y perros!

ah, where do I start…. I left you a few days ago in laid-back Latacunga (ace town, my favourite in Ecuador I think) so I guess it makes sense to start the day after…. On the road to Zumbahua…. I felt reasonable that morning as I pedalled across the bridge out of town heading west with Laguna Quilotoa in my sights… The only fly in my bike flavoured ointment being the climb to get over the western cordillera at around 4400-4500m… what I didn’t expect, given my map only shows altitude every 1000m or so, was that I would have to cross two such passes. This was a bit of a bugger really, folk who are used to taking the bus everywhere have no idea just how nasty a long climb at altitude can be on a bike… especially given that once climbing I realised I was still pretty weak from being sick. Climbing here I think is harder than the Himalaya, the altitudes are less and surfaces usually better but the roads are much steeper….

(climbing up from Latacunga)

(this pic gives me vertigo, about 3700m here)

After 40km of continuous climbing  I came across a police checkpoint on the empty plateau… the lonely copper sat up there with his truck, hut and orange cones (yep, not just a British phenomenen) said “ah, it’s only one hour to Zumbahua…” I was a bit dubious so asked him hopefully if it was mostly downhill, ”sort of uppy downy” (or near enough in Spanish anyway) was his reply. So off I went with a smile while trying to ignore my sore legs. I had to deal with a bit more hard climbing that seemed to never end before the road dropped all the way back down to around 3500m from 4500… and then climbed back up to 4100m…. arrrgh, I honestly don’t know how I did it, feeling quite ill again by now… willpower and stubborness (aka stupidity) I guess, it was a day for truly suffering (still an excellent day tho… like mountaineering in that respect). Made it to Zumbahua in a rather shameful 7hrs (5.5hrs riding, the rest dozing, eat etc etc) for the 70-something km. 

(somewhere around Tigua)

Zumbahua on a Friday afternoon was most excellent,  I like these kind of places… you could not imagine a more desolate one-street town! Bit like Igherm where I was stranded by weather in the Anti-Atlas. Very much wild-west feel with a mix of old wooden buildings and tatty perpetually half-finished concrete block ‘erections’! Dust was blowing in the streets and there were just one or two folk hanging around doing nothing… Brilliant. The setting was fantastic, the village hugs a steep and green mountainside at about 3500m altitude with peaks all around.

(Zumbahua, not my lodgings…)

Found a place to stay, a wonky old wooden building but I had a bed and a window so that’s all I needed really. Was checked in by possibly the most mature ten-year old (I’m guessing) girl I have ever met (she saw me arrive on the bike and came running round the corner after me, all smiles)… all business though I did catch her playing with friends in the street outside later! The kids do grow up so fast here, no choice I suppose. The only ‘problem’ that afternoon was the apparent lack of edible food in town! Post-ride snack was a couple of cups of hot, greasy chips (once again chips=french fries!) drenched in salt from a woman sitting on a wall with a gas burner and a bag of potatoes.. they were ace, followed by a can of tuna I had, some crackers, yogurt and dried fruit. That was around 4pm, I had to go to bed after that, after such a hard day every muscle in my body was aching, even the ones that seem to have nothing to do with riding a bike and especially the shoulder I injured last summer. Stayed in my sleeping bag ’till around 7pm then went out in search of more food.. the windswept “plaza” was empty save for a woman and her cart with a burner selling fried corn (I think… tasted good tho) and more chips. I wandered to the shop in search of icecream (this is the great thing about Ecuador, no matter how remote and flyblown a place you end up in, somebody will have  a dusty and scratched freezer full of icecream!) It was perfect, chocolate and vanilla, the evening got a little surreal then… at the back of the shop surrounded by empty beer bottles were three friends I’d bumped into before. Of all the places….. ready made entertainment.

(the “chip lady”…)

Overnight I had a chance to appreciate the transformation of a sleepy town into a crazy, chaotic bustle of trade… when I crawled into my sleeping bag at 8pm (I know, exciting life I lead….!) the plaza was deserted… Saturday though is market day and from 11pm to 6am outside my room was a hive of activity (not much sleep for me!), when I got up the town had been transformed into a fantastic local market packed with folk from the surrounding farms and villages. Had some bread for brekkie, normally I can handle a lot of local food early in the morning but I think because my stomach was still a bit tender the smells from the steaming vats of sheeps heads and god knows what else were genuinely stomach turning… though as I write now I could quite fancy something meaty to chew on…..

(Zumbahua market)

(words escape me…)

Saturday then I cycled up to the lake, Laguna Quilotoa at 3900m. The crater lake is stunning, in the flesh (water? & sulphurous at that) it is breathtakingly beautiful. The only downer having to run the gauntlet of 6 sets of kids throwing water at everything that went past (it’s the start of Carnival week)… I managed to avoid the first 5 groups with a stealthy approach and then my superior (ahem!) sprint.. The 6th lot however soaked me fair and square! I was quite impressed with their homemade water cannon from a big length of metal pipe and an internal plunger, some serious firepower!

(down the road to Zumbahua)

Despite the difficulty I am loving the mountain roads here. Aside from the views sometimes on the plateaus it is hard to believe you are at nearly 15000ft because the landscape in some places is so soft and rounded with every square inch possible cultivated by the campesiños, even the impossibly steep slopes exhibit a patchwork of small fields. Quite unlike the areas of the Peruvian Andes I have been through. It is a very poor area, the mountains are dotted with the most basic of huts imaginable that just look like piles of old grass dotting the mountainsides. Poignant also are the little white crosses, often with flowers on, that are present on nearly every bend. The roads are dangerous, especially in poor weather and at night with no markings or indications of where the road ends and the cliff starts….The worst bends will have a whole cluster of crosses, all in white with the names of loved ones that died and messages from those left behind. Quite sad…

The dogs out there are real buggers, I can handle up to 3 in one go but enroute to Zumbahua had the worst encounter yet on this trip… 4 really nasty hounds. I couldn’t outrun them uphill so I was off the bike and defending myself with stones and stick as best I could but they circled me. One managed to get in behind before I could whirl round, he didn’t quite get me… rather he collected a mouthful of high velocity boot from me but I collected a deep claw wound on the back of my leg. I cleaned it up OK in Zumbahua, no sign of infection or anything, just made a bit of a mess in my shoe with the blood (lucky I had my black socks on :o) They gave up after that with a few bulls-eyes with stones from me. I never expected to get this much target practice here. Next time I’ll bring one of those little ultrasonic gadgets, I did think about it but I figured the dogs couldn’t be worse than Morocco, there I faced up to 10 in one go but at the slightest appearance of throwing a rock they scarper…! Oh well, just another of those occupational hazards of riding here and if you are reading this and planning a trip don’t by any means let them put you off, just pack a few rocks, a decent 1st aid kit (well you would anyway wouldn’t you….) and a Rabies jab just in case.. :0)

(pics just can’t do this justice)

I have no regrets about being sick for a few days, I have to admit lounging around in Latacunga for a few days doing bugger all was a highly agreeable state of affairs. It’s not something I seem to have time to do at home…. I try hard at work sometimes but my periods of idleness are forever being  interrupted there by well meaning folk with work for me to do…. The locals in Latacunga are great to practice Spanish with and if you are lucky, like I was, you will get collared by a bunch of college girls looking for English practice for an hour or two, and videoing it for their coursework, and if they think you are really nice they´ll buy you a big multicoloured lollipop afterwards…… I only know this because I must be really really nice :o)

What other news… ? Well I also decided to ditch my camping gear, I wasn’t sure how easy it was going to be here without a tent so I brought some real lightweight gear “just in case”… I would have used it on Cotopaxi I think but now I just want to get to Colombia I won’t be bothering (I expect to ride across the border on Tusday evening). The Tiana in Latacunga has links to a local organisation working to improve the schools and so on in the villages around here, so I left tent, stove and waterfilter behind. I expect it will sell at some point to someone heading down to Sangay for example for some trekking, and the $$$ can go to one of the schools. It only weighed around 3kg total but it’s 3kg less I have to lug across all those mountain passes…. and the weight saved means I have indulged in a pair of jeans to wear in the evenings (such luxury!) and to make the most of the life once I get to Cali which has something of a reputation… :o) 

Oh yes, I also have a bit of a black eye tonight… I’d like to be able to say it was an injury sustained while fending off armed bandits with my cycle pump but sadly this has to be one of the silliest cycling injuries possible…. I poked my eye on my bar end while leaning down to fiddle with the computer sensor… good eh! I won’t tell that story in the pub back home….

Hasta luego amigos!

oh bollocks…

Bollocks, such a useful and versatile word… it rolls so nicely off the tongue in it’s well-rounded way, you can talk bollocks (as I frequently seem to do…), something can be a load of bollocks, or you can simply say “bollocks” when things don’t go quite your way…. It’s the latter situation that applies in this case… having got up this morning with a bit of fever, a few aches and feeling devastatingly tired… I guess I picked up a bug somewhere along the way, a risk of bike touring at altitude in big mountains… the body takes a hammering and the immune system suddenly stops working so well. I set off this morning in hope for the 80km to Zumbahua (think that’s how it’s spelt) but 8km up the road I just felt so weak it was very much a case of “bollocks, I can’t ride over the 4000-&-something meter pass feeling like this” so I trundled back to the Tiana, parked the bike, had a mug of their excellent coffee and a home-made cookie and, errm, said “bollocks” a few more times. Que es la vida and all that. I’m not particularly stressed about it, I can’t change the situation, there’s worse places to have to stop for a bit and besides the time “lost” is the perfect excuse to cheat and grab a bus all the way from here to the Colombian border in one go (with a change in Quito) once I get back from Laguna Quilotoa. I just can’t wait to get pedalling the Colombian Andes which by all accounts are stunning.

So.. in the meantime, here’s a pic of one of Latacunga’s squares, it really is a pretty town if you take the time to explore it’s cobbled streets. Full of contrasts too… the campesiños at the market are pretty poor, but in the next street you can watch a new chevy pick-up being wheelclamped… I’m always amused at the supermarket here… wonder what folk would think if Tesco back home had security guards in combat fatigues, bulletproof vests and packing firearms…

One thing I should mention about the Tiana, although there are a couple of Dutch folk working “the front” at least one of them is a student on assignment for his degree it, the place is locally owned, as it’s “sister” hostel in Isinlivi so the money is going back into the local economy… always a good thing. Here’s a snap of the main courtyard, that’s my map of Colombia (route planning!) and that aforementioned coffee and cookie (or rather the crumbs remaining) on the table….

now, what to have for lunch… it’s times like this I crave chips (french fries for you transatlantic lot..), lashings of salt & vinegar, ketchup rounded off with chocolate and vanilla icecream :o) On second thoughts though… marmite on toast would be heaven…

On the topic of food… I’ve been surprised at the abundance of blackberries here, fresh-pressed blackberry juice – yum! … ahhh, memories of my childhood… tramping home on a warm late summer evening with arms scratched to buggery, cowshit all over my boots and a big bucketful of berries collected from the local hedgerows…

struggling to think of a title for this one…

OK, I don’t have much new to show you so maybe it’s time you had a laugh at my expense rather than reading about how much fun I’m having…. so then, a truly ugly pair of legs (mine)… I was in two minds whether to even show you this as you may be reading this while eating your dinner or something… but anyway particularly for my non-cycling friends and readers, here’s what 20-odd years of riding bikes does to your legs, though the effect is slightly exaggerated somewhat after a hard day on the bike… so now perhaps you can understand why I’m often reluctant to strip off at the beach…

So, what news… well, I’m on way back north again. Can’t wait to get to Colombia so I’m back in Latacunga, groovy, friendly little town that so far doesn’t appear to feature much on the traveller radar which is a good thing. I had planned to stay at the same ‘pink palace’ as last time but when I cycled into town they were closed, so rode around a bit and completely lucked out with a very funky little place being run by a couple of Dutch folk. They’ve only been open a few weeks so aren’t known yet but it’s so good I’m going to give them a plug here.. (when I have time I’ll build a page of recommendations of places to stay that were good, places to eat and stuff). They know how to do a decent breakfast with good filter coffee rather than the instant muck that is so prevalent everywhere else, the hot water system is ace and the mattresses good. It’s very friendly and super laid back as you’d expect from a Dutch place… so, here is the plug.. it’s called Hostal Cafe Tiana, they have a website at www.hostaltiana.com and in short it’s brilliant. Latacunga is worth a visit IMO, the churches and squares are quite beautiful, the people are some of the friendliest I’ve come across in Ecuador and there is some really good food to be had.

Just washed my cycling kit (again, I’m not that smelly…) could have built sandcastles with the sand and grit from the road that was left at the bottom of the bucket…

So, from here… well I’ll spend a few days west of here riding around the little villages that surround Laguna Quilotoa, back here for a night then as I’ve ridden the Pan Americana from Quito I’m going to save some time and energy and sling my bike on a bus back to Quito for a night before zipping up to the Colombian border quick as I can, probably spending a night in Otovalo on the way…..

Adios!

Over Chimborazo….

I think I rambled on somewhere in my posts below about the intensity of experience when exploring a country by bike…. yesterday was a pretty intense day… everything good about riding in high mountains (and the bad bits like sore legs…).

So today I am in Guaranda having a day off… “estoy muy cansado hoy” as they say hereabouts… I needed 13hrs in bed last night after a good feed and I’m still feeling it in my legs.

(Guaranda)

Guaranda is a little off the beaten track, it’s a very quiet little hill town at an altitude of around 2800m.. colourful buildings, steep cobbled streets and all those other picture book characteristics with a trimming of ramshackle electrical wires, peeling paint and fadad signs… I like it. Nothing to see as such but I’m happy to just chill here for day, maybe go for a walk in the hills later. The people here are pretty reserved though compared to say Baños or Latacunga.

(around San Juan)

OK, back to yesterday then…. turned into quite a tough day on the bike. I left Riobamba at 8am, I rode to the village of San Juan where apparently you can hook into a network of dirt roads that head to Guaranda.. gave up on that idea eventually after too many conflicting directions from locals so returned to the paved road… glad I did, it was wicked in a perverse, masochistic kind of way. The road climbed continuously from about 2700m (Riobamba) to 4500m/14,700ft (on my altimeter so give or take 100m) on the southern side of Volcan Chimborazo… 50km of continuous uphill riding, not as “bad” as the Himalayas but it kind of puts the Alps and Pyrenees in perspective, it felt like riding up the Col du Tourmalet 3 times in one go.. with a full load. Riding at altitude, like mountaineering, I think is as much an effort of will as it is physical… everytime it gets really hard I think about the times I spent climbing some some of Europe’s highest peaks and then imagine riding the bike across those summits above 4000m. It’s a huge adrenalin rush.

(on the way to Chimborazo)

Although only 96km or so it took nearly 7hrs of effort. The altitude sucks all the strength out of your legs although I am lucky… a lot of folk can barely function at 4500m. I went 1000m higher in the Himalayas but there I was already a long time at altitude, here I climbed 1800m in one go so the altitude hurts more. I am lucky though in that I cope with altitude really well… no headaches or anything… just tired legs.

(Chimborazo)

The views of Chimborazo’s summit at 6310m were breathtaking. Is very wild and desolate up there. It was fantastic actually to climb through the different “ecological zones”.. starting in Riobamba’s scruffy suburbs I climbed into lush farmland and then eventually into pine forest (in the tropics!), then to a zone of very sparse scrubby vegetation and eventually to the barren “moon-scape” (known as the Arenal) of the high slopes of Chimborazo herself. I rode by a small pueblo in the shadow of the mountain, I hadn’t planned to camp so hadn’t brought extra food or stove fuel but figured it would be an amazing place to stop for the night… The locals once they had got over their surprise said it would be fine for me to stay the night but they had no food… none spare I imagine unless they eat dust so I kept going instead. The road was superb, surprisingly good surface but very quiet, I was alone for much of the time to enjoy the delicious feeling of riding a bike up there.

(excuse my untidy bike parking, I was hungry..)

The descent was on the western side of the mountain, I was well above the clouds in the valleys to the west and it was fantastic to watch the clouds boiling up from the cliffs below on my left, it was quite an exerience to descend into cloud in this barren, desolate landscape and then about 30km later pop out of the bottom of the cloud into a beautifully lush, green valley with fields, orchards, grazing animals and litte homesteads… with thicker air and warm!

(descent into cloud)

There is a tour outfit in Riobamba that takes people up the mountain so they can just ride down on mountain bikes (lazy… :o), I crested the top of the road over Chimborazo just as the truck had dropped off a couple of tourists with bikes… the guy in the truck stopped and got out to shake my hand! {warning, smug content coming… please forgive, I have to feel good about something in life…!} He was very impressed I had ridden all the way up there, he also said he had heard about me from some people who had seen me on the bike a day or two earlier on the eastern side of Chimborazo… my reputation precedes me!! This happened in India too… in the wild mountains of Ladakh I met 2 Germans on motorbikes… they were going same way as me but faster so after that every place I came to the people had heard all about me and wanted to come and talk.. lots of fun. Last night in town I stopped by a little street stall to buy some fruit, got talking to the lady about various things and I mentioned I’d cycled over from Riobamba… she looked at me and said (in Spanish of course) something along the lines of “no way… on your bicycle?!” so I showed her a pic of me and my bike up on the mountain on my digital camera…. she just looked at me. Was funny also when a tourist minibus went past with folk on a package tour I imagine… all the faces were pressed to the window looking at me… probably thinking “look at that twit” or “idiot” ….

(above Guaranda)

Only had one bad experience (aside from the dogs…. trying to sprint a loaded bike after 7hrs of riding really hurts….) coming into town when a bloke riding on top of a truck threw a bottle of full bottle water at me… lucky I was wearing my crash hat for the descent – it hit that and I managed to stay in control.. was doing 50km/hr at the time…. I don’t think (hope) it was particularly malicious, just someone being a dickhead…..

I was so so dirty from the road yesterday, it was very very windy and dusty up on the mountain and the sun was fierce but the air very cold. Love it….

going off(on) the rails….

“The Plan” this morning during my stay in Riobamba was to ride the 50km round trip to Cajabamba and Laguna Colta (which is supposed to be rather pretty), ideal I thought for an easy day to loosen the legs after the last 2 days of climbing….. but as is so often the way I ended up doing something completely different that turned out completely brilliantly :o) About 20km outside of Riobamba enroute to Cajabamba, near Calpi, the road crosses the railway line… this is the famous “Devil’s Nose Railway” (you can read about it here). It´s apparently very spectacular but is now mostly run just for the tourists 3 days each week, departing at 7am as it did this morning with a great blast of it´s whistle… I was happily still in bed feeling the effects of last night (more on that in a mo..). Maybe I´m just a jaundiced old tw@t but I’m really not bothered about the ride, I’ve travelled so much that people and experiences are more important to me now than “doing the sights” if that makes sense and besides being on a bike is such an intense experience anyway, plus of course I get to see stuff that regular tourists don’t. I have been on some spectacular railways around the world so don’t feel particularly as if I’m missing out, and have no real desire to sit in a little box car with a bunch of other visitors… hang on, I digress…. where was I…? oh yeah, Calpi.. well when I saw the railway disappearing off down a narrow canyon I couldn´t resist and ditched The Plan in favour of riding my bike off down the railway line… it really was rather fun as it descended into a very secluded and beautiful canyon with some cultivation in the bottom below the railway line. It wasn´t a bad trail, in places there was a narrow track alongside the line, in others the sleepers were either half buried or missing completely so it was 99% rideable apart from a couple of groovy wooden bridges. I only rode a few km down the line as I wanted really just to loosen my legs rather than get even more tired… Along the way I came across a group of “campesinos” in traditional dress digging on the embankment by the line, drainage or something for the crops I imagine… needless to say they were a little bemused by the arrival of a gringo on two wheels. Broke the ice with the packet of biscuits in my backpack and spent apleasant few minutes chatting. I gave up trying to explain the concept of actually wanting to ride a bike round South America… my Spanish isn´t good enough though even if it was I doubt the message would have made sense anyway… so we stuck to the usual questions like where am I from, where am I going, do I like Ecuador, am I married, how much did my bike cost (always an awkward topic, I have to fib… I can´t tell them it´s worth $3000… ). So yeh, that was my morning… wonder if any of the folk on that train had a chance to sit down and share a snack with a few locals on a railway line in the middle of nowhere… it´s why I so love travel by bike. They would have made a lovely photo and I did ask as I was leaving but they looked so uncomfortable with the idea I let it drop. Stupidly though (yes, I have my moments…) I forgot my digicam so only had my Leica so you can either wait 7 weeks more for the pics or go here.

I’m feeling pretty knackered this morning, the last couple of days have been hard work, I would have been OK but my early night plan was sabotaged once again when I hooked up with Swiss Shawn from Baños (think he’s stalking me.. :o) and the two girls I met in the hot springs that evening (this was a good thing…) so we went out for dinner and few beers after… it wasn’t actually that late a night as those 3 were all on the train at 7 to Alausi before heading on down to Cuenca. This is the only bad thing about travel… the continuous goodbyes. ho hum.

I’m “resting” this afternoon, there is an old sofa kicking around on the patio at the place I’m staying so I’ve commandeered that, it’s now right outside my room in a quiet corner just out of the direct sun… I shall be back there horizontal shortly I think. I’ll maybe upload a pic later…

Before I go though I thought it might be fun to write down exactly what I ate yesterday.. it’s always like this when I’m touring in the mountains…. just hungry all the time so in chronological order starting at 6am… entire 300gr box of cornflakes and litre of yoghurt, two peaches, 4 bananas, packet of biscuits, 3 course set Ecuadorean lunch, 4 oranges, giant cookie, tuna sandwich, packet of raisins, big avocado and ham salad, steak with chips, rice and beans, an apple…. and I still woke up at 2am this morning ravenous :o)

I have a dilemma now for moving on tomorrow. Originally I planned to ride the dirt roads, about 70-80km and up to 4300m, across the southern slopes of Chimborazo to Guaranda… but I would also like to visit Cuenca. The only flaw with that is that Cuenca is 250km down the Pan Americana with bugger all between here and there. I don’t have time to ride the round trip given I want to spend as much time up in Colombia as possible, I could ride one way and be there by Sunday, spend a day or two and bus back to Riobamba….. this is a toughie. I have a feeling I will pass this way again before too long on my “must do before I die” (meaning maybe next year…) ride down the whole length of S America to the tip of Tierra del Fuego and barring earthquakes or volcanoes Cuenca ain’t going anywhere…. I’ll sleep on it .

Anyway I just picked up some mangos at the market so if you’ll excuse me it’s sticky fingers time :o)

Adios!

p.s just a late update, I decided that instead of a pic of a scruffy old sofa with me on it (even tho I am very nice to look at.. ahem) you’d rather see a pic of Chimborazo.. so here it is:

Riobamba…

OK, so Im here resting my legs with a coffee… after yesterday’s climb (see below) and having now experienced the road from Ambato I’m glad I didn’t press on all the way to Riobamba yesterday… I totally underestimated the climbing, there was me thinking it would be a relatively easy 60km cruise down to Riobamba…. It wasn’t… The road climbed to just under 4000m on the eastern slopes of Chimborazo, it was a bit of a bugger really, I climbed for almost 2hrs solid to get out of Ambato, then dropped a few hundred metres before climbing back up to 4000m. The final 15km were simply a plummet into Riobamba. It was beautiful up there though, I left Ambato at 7am to beat the traffic so had a nice low sun much of the morning. Typically for mountains at this altitude the sun was baking hot but the air in the shadows was icy cold… Sadly aside from a few brief moments Chimborazo’s summit stayed in the cloud, it was nice to see the glacier on the north eastern slopes though as I passed. With a bit of luck I will have a clear day when I ride the dirt roads across her (yes, Chimborazo is a volcano…) southern slopes to Guaranda on Saturday….

Riobamba is a pleasant town, nice and colourful with a cool patina of delapidation to the pastel coloured buildings.

I haven’t done much this afternoon… my legs are pretty tired to be honest. Food is good here though… and there are loads of bananas at the market :o)

uphill all the way….

It became a bit of a standing joke really amongst my friends… my seeming inability to actually leave Baños despite having the bike packed and the best of intentions each night to leave next day…. it just happens that way sometimes but the reality is that all my attempts to leave were sabotaged…. On Monday morning it was the appearance of a Swiss nut guy who detained me for a few hours over coffee until all motivation was lost and the bike unpacked… and then yesterday morning it was the hangover from multiple shots of the local sugar cane liquor while halfway up a volcano at around 11pm at night… I didn´t ask for the continuous refills. This morning´s attempt to keep me in Baños failed eventually but I it took me a while to track my front wheel down… the buggers had hidden it on the way back from the bar early this morning… (yes, somehow despite my best intentions to get an early night to make up for the preceding days of craziness I somehow found myself in a bar till gone midnight drinking Pisco Sours… how that happened I have no idea. Perhaps I´d better go back to the beginning, or rather since I last wrote… Monday.

It´s been great actually, kind of the holiday I needed for a few days after leaving work in December. Monday then was just one of those rare days when a number of independent folk happen to bump into each other while travelling and develop a terrific synergy… Plans for horses on Monday failed miserably when it started raining so after a leisurely lunch the herd dynamic eventually saw us all exploring a canyon just outside of town for a few hours. It was actually rather good… a few hundred feet deep with a raging torrent at the bottom. Soaring basalt walls with a black sand beach at the bottom and dense thickets of bamboo. It was on the road out past the zoo (yes there is one.. albeit tiny), or rather the “animal prison” as it´s labelled on one of the local maps.

The evening is something of a blur, you see you can get very very good red wine from Mendoza here for not too many $$$, and it goes so well with a big feast cooked up back at the hostal. It was around 9pm I think that some bright spark thought it would be  great idea to climb into (or rather onto…) a shonky old truck for a ride up the precipitous dirt hairpins of a mountain directly opposite the volcano to see if there was any action going on… there was, a bit, but of more interest given I´ve stood on erupting volcanos before was that I discovered the lighter I bought in Quito has a blue LED light in the bottom… not much use except for being a twit…. which comes naturally of course. (photograph courtesy of Daniela). It´s also at this point that the local firewater comes in, it was a very cold night and the liquor was hot….

So Tuesday then, yeh I had a thick head first thing and I actually ditched any idea of pedalling back up the mountain to Ambato before I had even got out of bed. The prospect of a few leisurely coffees over breakfast was far more attractive. It took a while for the day to actually take shape but eventually 6 mountain bikes were hired for the others and the 7 of us took off down the valley east towards Puyo. The whole point of the exercise being to see the fab Cascada Diablo at Rio Verde. It´s only 20km away and downhill but somehow it managed to take 3hrs to get there… all highly amusing and the picnic stop was leisurely to say the least. The falls are spectacular, thunderingly powerful as they plunge down multiple cascades in the forest. I´m not going to show you a pic, you have to visit yourself and besides no pic could ever do them justice. The challenge on the return leg, given that I was “the cyclist” was to beat the truck that the others loaded their bikes into back to town (though Shawn and Susan opted to ride back much to their credit)…. I had a slight headstart as they loaded the bikes but I was caught at the 5km to go mark… I thought it was good going, I turned myself inside out to do it, uphill most of the way so I rode it like a timetrial… on my touring bike. It felt great to really open the lungs again but the heat and humidity kind of left me with an exploding head feeling. I made just as they finished unloading the bikes… despite losing the race they were all suitably impressed and I was suitably smug in return :o). The only true comedy moment of the day was riding at full speed intoa  road tunnel only to find that due to it´s length and curve it was absolutely pitch black… with no lights this is a somewhat disorienting experience… the situation was not improved by removing my sunglasses…

(spot the idiot Brit..)

Tuesday evening then… this went slightly pear-shaped too… it started well enough with a couple of hours cooking in the volcanic hot springs… Shawn (mister Swiss guy) had brought a couple of eggs to see if he could cook them… but broke one in his shorts and kept taking the other one in the icy cold pool every 20 mins so predictably it didn´t cook.. I offered to take custody of it at times in the hot pool but I think he´d lost trust in me earlier having got to know me… :o) The springs were great actually, my lean, super toned (ahem) cyclists physique was something of a novelty judging by the attention… most agreeable. You can probably figure it out….

Dinner was yet another massive affair, I´d planned that early night but as you already know it never happened…

This morning though, despite the missing front wheel my resolve was rock solid, if a little late in getting up. The climb out of Baños wasn´t so bad… well, actually it was but I´d like you to think I´m just ´ard. I climbed about 1200 m in total to get to Ambato… which is where I arrived some 40km, 3.5hrs, 4 bananas, hañlf a packet of biscuits, a coke and 5 litres of water later… It was a hot and humid climb under heavy clouds, I really didn´t have the legs to keep going to Riobamba today… that road descends and climbs a further 500m or so I think.

(the road out of Baños)

Ambato is a town I´ve decided is notable only for the bonkers traffic, the apparently arcane street layout and difficulty of actually navigating to the center…  maybe it was just me but I´m sure it´s not ideal to have to negotiate a series of steps on a 25% grade, downhill, on a bike with a trailer. Still, I made it…. I found a place to stay for $7, it´s OK, clean but dark and it ain´t Baños… but there is great pizza in town and tomorrow I´ll be in Riobamba anyway. Plan to stay there 2 nights.. (heard that before…) I´ll have time to look around the town tomorrow afternoon and then make a day trip on the bike south east towards the Sangay volcano on, errm, Friday… (it is Wednesday today isn´t it?)

By the way, did you know they have a bird in Ecuador called the Cock-of-the-Rock… which makes me wonder, I imagine it´s very much the case here that when talking about birds then a Cock in the hand is worth two on the rock… might be fun to test that theory…

Adios!!

(Tungaruhua hiding in the clouds)

´stuck´in Baños…

well I never expected to still be here but that´s just the way of it sometimes… you know, you meet some nice people, you get talking, share beers and dinner and all of a sudden it get´s harder to move on… so I guess I am ´stuck´but in a nice way. Very much exercising the right of the independent cyclist to do absolutely bugger all whenever I like :o)  The bike was all packed and so on ready to leave this morning but it´s so laid back here, and facing a long climb I guess I had one too many coffees over a leisurely breakfast hoping to be talked into staying a day longer… one of my German friends did the honours in that respect, which I´m quite happy about, and despite the mist and rain today I think I´ll be exchanging 2 wheels for 4 legs later today as we rent some horses and head up into th mountains…. I´ll ´catch up´ tomorrow and make a big push all the way to Riobamba. … honest I will!

Must admit, there´s not a lot new to report…. had  a bit of a sore throat yesterday so just went wandering on the trails in the mountains, getting nicely muddy, enjoyed some more of the local brew and talked…. a lot. The guys have been working on volunteer projects down in the jungle… somewhere I have no real desire to go… been there, done that, got the mouldy clothes and fungus in my shoes to prove it…. besides… the bugs, ugh! Daniel is sporting quite the collection of scars from where various ´things´have had to be removed… the stories are good though.

so, that´s about it… I´ll leave with a couple of views of Baños and a flower that this morning struck me as particularly amusing… can´t think why :o)

p.s in case you are wondering.. nope, no major action from the volcano yet… :o(

blissed in Baños…

I´m not sure where to start really, or even if I have the energy having spent a thoroughly agreeable {oh, ok, it was muy fantastico…} morning being oiled and rubbed, pulled and pushed and so on by a very nice latina girl… I so needed it…. (the massage that is). I told her I was a cyclist so she gave my lower half a darn good going over before moving onto the rest of me. I wish I´d thought to shave actually, I didn´t know she was going to do that to my face :o) Well worth $25.

OK, back to yesterday then… it felt great rolling out of Latacunga under clear skies in the early morning cool, the snow capped peaks of Illinizi, El Corazon and Cotopaxi keeping me company with the cone of Tungurahua spewing it´s ash cloud on the horizon. I had good legs and a tailwind for the first couple of hours yesterday too, I often wonder what the locals think when a guy on a bike goes past like a train at 40km/hr … I´ve not seen any ´cyclists´in Ecuador… very much a poor man´s necessity it seems.

Getting around Ambato was pretty ugly, it´s a big town with the usual collection of shitty ´burbs to negotiate on ugly roads… but still managed to have some fun with it racing some truck drivers up the long and steep climbs… they were in their crawler gears… as was I so we spent some time yelling at each other up the slopes… Quite interesting though to see all the market garden type enterprises around the town… the smell of coriander was thick in the air at one point.

Leaving Ambato behind was great, also waved bye-bye to the Pan American for a while now which is good news. Small roads and sub-tropical countryside formed the backdrop for the next couple of hours of very pleasant, if hot, cycling. I didn´t even mind the few extra km detour thanks to a landslide near Pelileo. Just beyond Pelileo (incidentally this is the jeans centre of Ecuador… the main drag was all jeans for sale..) the road was closed again for surfacing but the chap with the flag waved me through with a smile and I had a good few km of road all to myself. this was nice ´cos it was all downhill on a new surface… I cruised on down to the cheers of the road crew! Thinking about it, everyone on the road yesterday was in good spirits… I can´t ever recall having had so many waves.

Beyond Pelileo then was all downhill for the final 25km to Baños… bit of a bummer because I have to go back up tomorrow (or the day after, we´ll see…). The views of Tungurahua though were stunning though…. the pics aren´t great as it was midday and very contrasty light but I´ll get better when I leave here in the early morning… assuming it´s not cloudy as it is now. She is really doing her stuff at the moment and a it seems a big eruption is expected any minute… check the national paper below.. it´s been on CNN for Latin America too. The whole area is on alert right now… there was a terrific explosion at 6 this morning that rattled all the windows and doors in my guesthouse… all rather exciting! Just as an aside it´s quite interesting to see all the signs for the evacuation routes painted on the buildings in town.

The final few km into Baños were on dirt, the road is regularly destroyed by the volcano so it seems the locals just keep a few bulldozers handy for such occasions. When I arrived here the girl that was at the guesthouse laughed at me when I showed up on the bike… I had no idea why until I caught sight of myself in a mirror… wearing a solid crust of volcanic dust, welded to my face by a 90km of accumulated sweat and sunblock…! It was more of a scrape than a shower to get clean… I´ve decided not to show you that photo unless you ask nicely. I have to wear a lot of sunblock at the moment, Im using an immune supressant to control the eczema on my face and it makes me much more sensitive to UV. I imagine the dust makes a bloody good sunblock too, I´ll collect another coating of it for sure as I leave town.

It´s pretty warm down here, I measured 29 degs C in the shade yesterday afternoon… beats the english winter for sure. The downside is that I´m now 1000m lower than where I want to be next… and when I leave I have to get all that back in the first 30km or so… Sadly the direct road to Riobamba really is out of the question, I checked in the town office here and also rode past the sign… or what was left of it 3/4 buried by debris from the volcano. Bummer. It means that Riobamba is about 100km away and mostly uphill. I think I´ll take it easy and break the journey if I feel as tired as I did this morning… I arrived a bit dehydrated and hungry yesterday… a situation that steak, beans, rice, bananas, water and a few cold beers didn´t do an awful lot to rectify… the beers were soooo good though, never has a cold one been so welcome!

So, what else… well Baños is a very laid back little town set in a deep, green valley complete with gushing river, it´s all down hill from here to the jungle. I´ve been for a spin in the mountains around to loosen up my legs (before the massage) and I suspect I will be spending the rest of the day in the rather funky little cafe round the corner. I have no real desire to go rafting or anything right now… I´ve done it before and I get my fill of adventure just riding my bike here…. besides, riding here is hard enough work as it is.

OK, that´ll do for now… I´m off for a tropical smoothie. Wouldn´t mind another rub actually but that would be a bit indulgent…. you can paypal me the funds however if you like… it is my birthday soon…. :o)

p.s gawd it would be so easy to stay here forever… I fear if I do not leave tomorrow I never will… the burritos, the beer, the girls… ahem!

a small change of plan :o)

OK, so I´m still in Latacunga and the usual afternoon thunderstorm is just about to break outside. I was all set at 6.30 am this morning to head on down to Baños on my bike when, while having a coffee, the owner of the pink palace (it´s not really, it´s called Hotel Tilipulo) reminded me that Thursday is market day in the nearby village of Saquisili… it´s famous through Ecuador apparently for the size and íntensity´of the market… so a quick change of plan and by 7.30am I was in a taxi with 3 new friends from Arizona for the 20 minute journey. I could have cycled I suppose but it´s better not to have to worry about the security of the bike while wandering around a market.

(ooops, just been told off for bashing the keyboard too hard… !)

The weather was glorious first thing, lovely and fresh after a night of heavy rain. Cotopaxi looked magnificent 30km away. I hope she is like this when I come back this way. In the other direction the cone of Volcan Tungurahua was visible on the horizon spewing forth her column of ash… that is where I´m headed tomorrow but more on that in a minute.

Back to Saquisili (typing quietly now…)… the market reminded me very much of the Sunday Market in Kashgar, not as ancient and without quite the same ethnic diversity (or the camels!) but still very colourful, busy and interesting – very much a local market with everything from cattle to bananas to kitchenware on offer, with only a small area of tourist goods. I was using my Leica with a pocketful of film so you´re going to have to be patient with regard to photos, but I did snap a little bit of colour just to wet your appetite so to speak.

I´m quite happy to have the afternoon now to relax, I didn´t sleep well last night and I´m more tired than I expected. I´ll be in Baños tomorrow instead. I might go back to that cafe in a mo and see if they have any more teabags :o)

From Baños I want to head west to Riobamba where I can spend a couple of days exploring around Volcan Chimborazo. There is, or rather ´was´ a direct road from Baños but last info was that it had been closed due to volcanic activity, landslides and so on. I´ll ask in Baños, I´d like to try and get through on the bike rather than have to backtrack to Ambato and then go south to Riobamba. Heck, I can usually get a bike past stuff that stops anything else bar a mountain goat… and it makes things more interesting for sure…

So, that´s it for today… I only have one small bit of bother on my mind and that is what the heck was I thinking when I packed a white pair of cycling socks! I have 2 pairs of socks, one black (sensible), one white…. Very soon I think it will be one black and one grey (if not also black). I should have learned by now…!

p.s in case you are wondering why volcanos are always a ´she´in my writing… well think about it, take Cotopaxi for example, right now things are pretty frigid up there but with neither warning or reason she´s quite capable of spitting fire and brimstone when you least expect it. Female all over if you ask me….

leaving Quito etc etc

OK, where to start… I have about an hour I suppose before I really need to go and find something interesting to eat… Right now I´m in a friendly little town called Latacunga, south of Quito… more on that in a minute however as the past couple of days have been quite fun….

Monday then…. got on my bike at 7.30am but the traffic was already horrendous, was a little nerve wracking navigating my way of the city, but only one incident when a cab driver (isn´t always… if it isn´t a bus or a BMW…) turned right across in front of me & I ended up with my front wheel in his door and the trailer at 90 degs to the bike… I was OK, made a face at him, he laughed and apologized so that was OK… he didn´t know about the small dent in his passenger door at this point…..

Quito is a long, thin city set in a basin… it took about 2hrs of mostly uphill riding through the city streets, in bonkers traffic, trying to avoid the broken glass and potholes to actually break free of the built up area. I was never really sure of my navigation thanks to the absence of signs so when I saw that big sign “Pan Americana Sur” it felt great. I love the moment on every trip when I feel I have finally broken free of all the bollocks and have nothing but adventure to look forward too… on Monday this point was on the crest of the pass above the city, just before descending onto the Pan Americana… the view of the mountains wreathed in clouds as far as I could see was my much needed adrenalin rush.

Mondays ride itself was a bit of a yawn, with no immediate option but to head down the Pan Americana it was just a case of trying to have as much fun as possible.. It wasn´t busy, the surface was good soI thought it might be easy going south down to the main entrance to Cotopaxi National Park… it wasn´t. It was nearly all uphill… I climbed 50km with another 10km of steep descending and some flat… I think. The truck drivers were good as gold, always ready with a friendly toot on the horn and in exchange for a silly grin and wave from me I´d get a wave and good blast of the horn back…. Part of the highway is a toll road, I knew I wouldn´t have to pay on the bike but I was in one of those silly moods so rolled up to the barrier slowly, smiled laughingly at the girl inside and said “¿Cuanto por gringo loco en bicicleta?” she laughed and sent me on my way to the amusement to the coppers standing nearby… made me happy ´cos it must be such a miserable job.

I had to stop after about 50km for a coffee, very much feeling the climbs in my legs.. there are plenty of roadside shacks (for want of a better word) along the Pan Americana… sadly coffee was a pretty poor word for the barely drinkable ´stuff´that arrived though I guess I was spoilt in Quito, sugar just about made it palatable.. it clearly had caffeine in it however so it served its purpose… that and a cheese sandwich cost the princely sum of 25 cents, yup US$0.25.

What else happened… ah yes, I stopped on one particularly long climb for a breather so was sitting on a log by the side of the road with a packet of biscuits when a local Indian woman came trudging up the road… took her by surprise I think when I offered her a handful of biscuits, we exchanged a few words and a smile and she went on her way… munching. She would have made a wonderful photo in her bowler hat and green velvet embroidered dress, I didn´t ask though… past experience says the locals don´t really like it and I´d rather leave her with a pleasant memory of the skinny gringo on the bike with the packet of biscuits…

Found a very cool place to stay after 80km, about 2km off the highway, down a little dirt track, right opposite the dirt road that leads into Cotopaxi. Very beautiful Hacienda type place.. all old wood beams and floors, fireplaces and white stucco. Friendly people too so depite being the only guest we had some fun with my Spanish and a beer or two….. Excellent thunderstorm after lunch too… actually I´ve enjoyed a good thunderstorm every afternoon since leaving the city… well it is the wet (or rather “wetter”) season after all.

The trailer handles brilliantly by the way, very different from riding with panniers. The only ´bother´ I´ve had really is that it can feel a little nervous descending faster than 50km per hr but I suspect that is just my unfamiliarity with its dynamics.

Tuesday I left the trailer at the hacienda, strapped my day sack to the rack and rode 25km on rough dirt tracks right up the side of the volcano to 4300m altitude. Didn´t bother going up to the refugio at 4600m because I was already in cloud at 4300. It was quite hard going, basically 25km straight up (2 hrs), shallower gradient at first on very loose surface of volcanic sand and gravel – hard going. The steep sections were easier, despite being around 15-20% in places the surface was harder so easier to ride, good fun too negotiating the rocks and gullies. Although Cotopaxi herself was hiding in the cloud, with just occasional and admittedly very exciting glimpses of the snow cone, the scenery in the park is spectacular, Can´t be bothered to describe, you´ll have to go see for yourself (or read about is here). Stopped at about 3900m at the park centre.. sat by the log fire, drank coffee and scoffed a couple of good chunks of bread and cheese courtesy of the proprietor. Felt a bit surreal really… I did have a very smug moment when a couple of mountainbikers showed up on a day trip from Quito.. they were being driven up the mountain so they could ride down… I looked at them and thought “lazy buggers”, they probably looked at me and thought “silly bugger”… though of course I would like to think they considered me as some sort of athletic god riding up there :o). I am lucky though in that I do adapt to altitude really well, it was fun to think that in the Himalayas I was riding my bike at the same height as the summit of Cotopaxi.. which in itself is a bit of a mountaineering challenge (but not a technical one) for most folk (sorry, I just needed that litte ego moment…:o)

From there it´s just about another 100m of loose dirt to a fantastic high plateau with the snow cone of Cotopaxi on one side, a lovely lake (Lago Limpipungo) and a bunch of other peaks on the other side. I spent ages up there exploring the vastness and enjoying the profound silence of the environment, before riding on up to the cloudbase. Around midday the clouds started to look really threatening so it was time for a high speed (well as fast as the terrain, surface and balls would allow) descent down the mountain with a thunderstorm snapping at my heels. Made it down with just a few tense “sand-trap moments” and back to my lodgings as the first heavy raindrops started to fall. Top stuff. It´s a shame about the cloud but I will pass by the northern access to the park on my way back north to Colombia so if the weather looks promising I´ll cycle in that way and camp up there.

This morning then was just an easy 30km down the highway to Latacunga… of course the sun was shining and Cotopaxi was clear of cloud… Only for a bit though so I didn´t feel too bad! It struck me as I was hammering down the road just how good this bike is… It´s the same every time I travel on it but to have a machine that can cope happily one day in offroad terrain I´ve seen mountainbikers struggle with, and then on the next day cruise quite happily at 45km/hr down the asphalt (I had a slight tailwind this morning… :o) without even a change of tyre pressure. Feels a bit like a freight train at speed with the trailer on!

Arrived here nice and early, it´s a very colourful, bustling little town. Found myself a very pink place to stay for $10 and have spent my day chatting to the locals and just wandering really (and writing to a couple of folk and a muppecita back home… OK, this is an inside joke, but I figure muppecita would be the spanish diminutive for muppet which is my general purpose word for, well, I´d better be careful here, “useless idiot”… but in the nicest possible way of course). The folk here are very nice, easy to talk to and friendly. Even the old lady at the market I bought fruit from was happy to exchange a few words (my Spanish is all coming back nicely now). This afternoon I simply retreated to a funky little cafe, asked the (very sweet and chatty..) girl for tea… it took a while, she said they didn´t have any but would see what she could do… took about half an hour… I suspect she went out to buy tea especially :o)

Onward plans then.. tomorrow I´m heading off to Baños south east of here, looks to be somewhere between 80 and 90km so I should be there by lunch though there areone or two villages on the way where I plan to stop for a brew. Baños, as the name suggests – and sitting right on an active volcano, has hot springs…. plan to spend a couple of days chilling there, making some day trips out into the mountains on the bike before heading SE to Riobamba and Chimborazo which is where the real opportunities to lose myself in the mountains will come. At last I feel totally at home again. Feel no particular desire to head back to the UK right now……. as my sister so delicately put it “get your lean, weathered ass on that bike and just ride…!”
Buenas noches…
p.s apols for poor image quality, no real editing facilities here… it´s a bit of a creaky old PC with half the characters on the keyboard worn off…

the equator… yawn!!

OK, so I did stick around an extra day, have been feeling a bit rough and besides this is a kind of a fun place to hang out. I have been good today though, it was time for a warmup on the bike… you know, get the blood going and open the lungs (and subsequently fill them with traffic fumes…) so at 7.30 I was on my bike and pedalling my way north through Quito’s streets towards the equator (a 50km round trip). The city is something stupid like 50km long north to south so it wasn’t  a particularly interesting ride…. but the idea of riding to the Equator kind of gave the ride some reason. Nothing to see as such, just a tacky monument but at least I can add bicycle to the modes of transport I’ve crossed the equator in or on (aeroplanes don’t count, but hiking boots do… and flipflops….). I left my 14 inch banana behind by the way, pocket not big enough……

Sunday has been a good day for spin in the city, the roads are reasonably quiet though navigation gets interesting at times, the road signs are bollocks, mainly because there aren’t any to speak of … I did have one ‘moment’ when i found myself in a  really poor and shitty looking part of town but the locals were really good with giving directions so that was OK.. I think they were just amused that I was even there in the first place, and stupid enough to be on a bicycle. The drivers in general seem pretty respectful of a cyclist, even the cabbies and bus drivers who tend to be the worst breed of motorist back home… of course there’s the occasional prick but it is the same the whole world over.

I must admit I did feel the altitude and last few days of travel in my legs on the outbound trip… but found my legs for the return so was able to have some fun racing slightly bemused drivers down the main drag at 30mph… I couldn’t keep it up for long  but was quite amusing. Best way to get the drivers to pay attention to you is to hog the lane you’re in…. and they were so well behaved bless ‘em! Having the cloak of ‘stupid gringo’ to hide behind is very useful at times too…. I rode about 5km the wrong way up a one way street simply because I really couldn’t be bothered with navigating the proper route… the pavements are pretty wide too so is easy to hop up onto the sidewalk when faced with a bus head-on, no one seemed bothered if ran a few red lights as well.

Tomorrow’s plan is to ride about 80 or 90km south to the entrance to the Cotopaxi Parque Nacional… there is a hostal about 2km off the highway that’s only a few $ a night and apparently a friendly place. I may stay 2 nights, leave my gear and spend Tuesday riding the dirt roads up the slopes of the volcano before heading further south on Wednesday. I’ll try and get away by 7.30am tomorrow before the traffic gets too mental in the city.

Oh yes, in case you’re wondering… right now i’m sitting in a cafe called papaya.net, drinking filter coffee and listening to Queen on the stereo…. culture eh?! (by the way… if you spot any typos it’s because the keyboards are mostly knackered…. but at least they have regular characters on them, the Arabic/French ones in Morocco were a real mind bender….)

Hasta luego amigos…..

a 14″ banana and other stuff

hey look at this… OK it´s not really a banana, it´s a plantain but flippin´heck if it was a banana it would be a cyclists wet dream, in my case that is from an eating point of view but depending on what you’re like you may have other things in mind… i won´t go there. Big isn´t it……

OK, other stuff… i’m still feeling thoroughly wasted today. Yesterday I was running on adrenalin, today I just have the combination of jetlag, fatigue and altitude (Quito is at almost 10,000ft) to deal with… i really can’t face riding a bike just yet so have decided to stick around for an extra day… it’s a bummer because the quiet Sunday traffic would have been nice for riding out of town, emotionally i just want to get going too…. Quito really is just another big city with a lot of tourists so not particularly friendly to the single traveller, i feel much more at home in small or wild places. Logically I have nothing to lose by sticking around, I have the racing cyclist’s nagging conscience that says I have been off my bike too long but the reality is that on a trip like this I need to be rested before I start and the extra day of adaptation to the altitude will be handy before getting on my bike.
I’ll be beginning my journey on Monday by heading south out of Quito on the Pan Americana. Mainly because I can´t wait to check out the giant volcanoes of Cotopaxi and Chimborazo. They are a whole order of magnitude bigger than the volcanoes I climbed and hiked all over in Indonesia so I guess I´m pretty excited. whether or not I´ll try and get my bike all the way up to the Cotopaxi refuge remains to be seen – it´s kind of early in the trip from an acclimatisation point of view to be going straight up to well over 4000m… after all Quito is only at 2850m….

I must confess as well I briefly felt slightly unnerved last night… having been reminded of the problem they have here in Ecuador of highway banditry…. and dogs… not sure which I´m more scared of. I’d already rationalised the risks away before arriving.. logically a bloke on a bike is more of a curiosity than a target and plenty of other folk have cycled round here. However chatting in a bookshop last night an English expat of 20 years I happened to mention I had my bike with me… he stared at me like I had suddenly grown horns or something, said something about stupidity and muttered “better watch yourself” as I left. Ah well nothing like being scared to make you feel alive… nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that…… The reality is that as a gringo, probably much wealthier than the local poulation and probably driving a nice car, he would be a much more obvious target than me and would do well to be careful I guess…… well, that’s what I’m telling myself! Heck, I’ve survived some very hairy situations in the past so if the worst happens then so long as I avoid getting shot then it’ll be just one more story for the pub on my return :o). Reality is that the highlands where I plan on going are supposed to be reasonably friendly, I have no intention of going down into the lowlands where apparently (I´ve been told) the risks are higher. I´m dead excited…

OK, now a local recommendation.. if you find yourself in Quito then the Ecuadorian potato soup at cafe papaya is to die for. Really thick and spicy, loaded with cheese and chunks of avocado. Top stuff. I met a couple of Americans in there travelling with all their white-water kayak gear.. including the boats…. & I thought lugging a bike around at times was hassle! I have to say they were a proper stereotypical pair of Northern Californian ´dudes´… this was actually a good thing from a conversation point of view mainly because they hate George Bush and are in tune with their ´gaia´if that makes sense (and if it doesn´t then tough luck).
OK, that´s it for now. I´m going to go and start sorting my gear out. I may leave tomorrow after all… I just can´t wait to get going.
Hasta luego….

Hola from Quito…

gawd what an arse of a journey…. I finally got to the hostal here in Quito about 8pm last night dead on my feet, right now it´s about midday local time and I still feel like dogpoo. On the bright side it´s about 26 degs and sunny here :o) 

so the journey then…. well 5hrs drive to stay with a good friend near Heathrow, 3hrs kip and then getting up at 2.30am to get to Heathrow for 3.30am to return rental car and check in on early flight to Madrid, then 3 hrs delay in madrid before the 11hr flight to Quito… so today is a do nothing day and I might stay here Sunday too before getting on my bike and riding out to the west. I booked myself in a nice place for these few days… my little bit of luxury before putting on my Indiana Jones hat and making a move. This morning I just got some chores out the way… have bought 4 weeks worth of doxcycline for malaria, she wouldn´t sell me the full 58 tabs i needed but no matter, i´ll pick up more in Colombia. It may have been becuase it´s not used here for Malaria, rather it´sa standard treatment for STDs and perhaps she thought there´s no way I could be that ´clapped out´if you see what I mean :o) Saved me a wedge though, 4 weeks only cost $5….

Back to the flight then.. I´m not flying long haul with Iberia again unless I really have no option (I could have flown via the US with United or American but they´re crap too in my experience, and arrive at midnight…) The aircraft was an A340 but with quite a dated cabin spec so no decent entertainment except a couple of big screens down the middle… I just curled up best I could and retreated into my music for the full 11hrs (this is the first time I´ve really appreciated the rather amazing battery life on my iPod Nano). Found myself sitting next to a  chap from a country I shall not mention lest it perpetuate the stereotype of all Germans as big fat arrogant folk with nothing to say. Doh!. OK, this is not true, I have some brilliant friends in Germany.  The food was pretty dire.. normally i can eat anything anywhere in the world, even raw buffalo liver on the Lao/China border many years ago… however this was the first time I have ever encountered something that genuinely turned my stomach… it was meant to be some sort of crab pate with a chickpea salad but both were just.. ugghhh! I think for my flight home from Bogota I´ll take my own grub on board. Bagels and marmite would be nice but doubt i´ll find marmite in Bogota…. :o) I suppose the only good thing about the journey was that at Heathrow my gear was so bulky it wouldn´t fit on the scales… so the chap checking me in just took me at my word on the weights and couldn´t be bothered to charge an excess despite being blatently over the 20kg limit with the bike. I´d bundled the trailer and dry bags containing my gear into one big package, wasn´t sure they´d accept it and I don´t think any of the other passengers did either judging by the “you stupid tw@t” looks I received in the queue :o)

Arrival in Quito cheered me up, aside from the stunning views of a giant snowcapped volcano poking above the rainclouds I felt instantly at home in the familiar chaos of a developing nation. My bike and trailer arrived OK too which was a relief and my room at the hostal is now a chaotic tip of gear. I always get nervous about being able to get the bike downtown on arrival somewhere new. It´s irrational really because I´ve always found a way and nothing a few extra $$ in the right hands can´t fix.  Quito was easy…. I bought a taxi token and was able to get rid of one of my $100 bills – the locals are really suspicious of them because so many forgeries around, as a result you only really see $1, $5 and $10 bills here… the taxi was $6 (we stuffed the bike and gear in somehow) so in return I had 2 $20 bills and 54 one dollar bills. It reminded me of being in Cambodia during the troubles in early 90´s when inflation was something stupid like 1000%… I´d change just $10 at a time and receive a 4 inch thick wad of Rial in return. I was also a little worried about being picked up by customs because the law here is max of 10 rolls of film and one camera that you can bring in… as you may know I´m a bit of a photographer so had almost 40 rolls of film, about $8K worth of leica M plus lenses and my digicam for snapshots that I decided not to declare… my bags were xrayed on arrival without even a raised eyebrow… not like in Pakistan where the rules are similar… the customs guy was coming after me so i grabbed my gear and ran into the crowd outside…..

I´ve been chatting to an American couple over brekkie this morning… she asked me where I was from… Cornwall… it turned out her ancestors were Cornish farmers that emigrated a couple of hundred years ago, and I asked where they lived… answer was upstate New York… so I said “oh, Adirondack area by any chance?¨”.. to which answer was yes and how did i know about it.. well I spent so many weekends playing in the Adirondack mountains when I lived in Montreal that I know the area really well. so there was a double connection, quite a nice coincidence I suppose…. They were suitably in awe (though perhaps it was a look of pity….) when they found out I was travelling by bike :o) Stating the obvious like everyone else… “oh, you must be fit/brave/stupid (all 3 apply in my case i think…)

Having fun with my Spanish too… it´s good enough to get by now, and will improve massively i think.. but French comes much more naturally to me so I keep tripping up and inserting the odd French word much to the bemusement of the locals…. I´m just a stupid gringo I guess….

OK, that´s it for now……

Adios amigos…