Month: May 2013

An amazing country with so much to see and do, and I only scratched the surface while there. I only stayed in the Andes while the Amazon jungle laid to the east and the coastline and Galapagos laid to the west. Cheap too (aside from the Galapagos). On the downside, crime is definitely a major problem – which hampered my ability to move around as a solo traveller. Between witnessing a street shootout and hearing first hand reports from other travellers getting mugged, the place forced me to be very cautious. I never walked around with any more than $20 cash in my pocket, leaving my wallet, camera, and phone back at my guesthouse most of the time.

I had a few meals at one of Quito’s most recommended restaurants. Oddly, it was located a bit off the beaten path but just a few blocks from my guesthouse. The front door was always kept locked and you had to wave through the window to get them to open up for you. Once inside, they would lock the door behind you. While dining there, I would gaze out the window at a watch dealer across the street who operated out of a small tin shack. A seemingly endless string of young Ecuadorians would stop by to get watches evaluated / bought by the shopkeeper. These clearly were not owned by the kids selling them (one tried his watch on and it remained loose to his elbow. They were obviously acquired through thefts.

Most Ecuadorians I met were very nice and honest, of course, and trying to make a legitimate living, but it was unfortunate that crime was such a problem. I asked my driver on the way to the airport whether he thought the country was getting safer, more dangerous, or staying the same and he said he felt it was staying the same. He had only suffered two incidents in his life, he said, but took a lot of precautions.

Aside from the crime problem, Ecuador was an incredibly beautiful (naturally and architecturally) place that has tons of potential for earning good money from tourists if the place could be made a bit safer.

My last full day in Ecuador and it was time to do all the things I didn’t get around to earlier in my visit. First up was the Teleférico, or cable car, that runs up the mountains next to Quito. Having fond memories of riding the world’s longest Teleférico in Merida, Venezuela back in the 1970’s, I was always keen to check it out – but the weather never looked very optimal so I kept procrastinating on it. This being my last day, I knew it had to be now or never. I hopped into my first Quito taxi and headed up the hills to the base station.

There were a number of mountain bikers at the station all dressed up for a ride. I noticed that it was possible to get all day passes for bikes if you wanted. Some of the gondolas had racks for bikes. Not sure exactly where they were planning to ride, but it sure looked fun!

Unfortunately for me, the view at the top was pretty hazy. I hung around for a little while hoping for things to clear, but it never really happened. I also bumped into one of my fellow horse riders from yesterday and just chatted with him for a little while. He was originally from Philadelphia but was living in New Hampshire and working as a journalist.

I decided to head back down the slope and hop on the Quito Tourist Bus for the rest of the day. The bus is a double-decker with open top, so that’s where everybody sits. It does a big loop around the city over 3 hours and you can hope off it wherever you want. The only downside is that you need to wait another hour for the next bus, so you don’t have time to stop at all 12 stops.

One of the things about it that appealed to me was being able to shoot pictures off the top in areas that you would normally not want to be waiving a camera or mobile phone around. Snapping away on the moving bus with my iPhone, I wasn’t expecting many of the pictures to turn out due to the constant motion. Fortunately, I was quite happy to see the results when I got back to my guesthouse.

Today is horseback riding day. That is, I signed up for a day of horseback riding at a ranch that sits in an active volcano crater that is smack dab in line with the equator. As with my mountain bike trip, they pick you up near your hotel and transport you to the location of your activity. Except, instead of picking up some interesting people from a funky cafe, like mountain biking, the horse ranch picked us up at the 5 star JW Marriott Hotel.

And the people? All a bit odd in some way. There were ten people packed into the van, which included six United Airlines stewardesses, all dresses in formal horseback riding kit, and four blokes (including myself) dresses in street clothes. The airline stewardesses talked non-stop for the entire drive and joked about how they couldn’t live without their makeup for the three days they were planning to ride. The guys were all a bit quieter and only there for the one day or riding.

The crater valley was beautiful and full of farms. The drive in was half on paved roads and half on a very bumpy dirt road that repeatedly switchbacked to get to the bottom of the crater. The ranch itself was very nice and owned by a Dutch woman who had been raising horses there for 18 years. We were each teamed up with a horse that suited our experience level and sent off in two different groups. The airline stewardesses all seemed to be quite experienced and many seemed to own horses back in the U.S., so they went off on their own. The rest of us were of varying skill levels, so we went out together – perhaps on some easier trails.

My horse was named Sam. Sam was good for the most part, but would lag behind from time to time until I kicked him to catch up. He also seemed very keen to cherry-pick his favourite plants for snacking along the way. On the whole, however, he was a much better horse than any I have experienced before. He did get spooked and bolted for several meters at one point. Not sure if he was startled by the black dog following us, named Shadow, or by stepping on something. I thought the quick bolt was rather fun, but the two young Scandinavian backpacker guides we had kept asking me if I was okay.

We followed dirt roads for the first half, until we met up with the stewardesses for lunch. Bland Dutch lunches aren’t as tasty as spicy Ecuadorian lunches. after lunch we followed some really neat trails that plunged down from a lava cone we were up on top of. The terrain was very green and dense and the trail very narrow and steep, which made the ride quite fun and interesting. We trotted quite a few times for about 50 meters a stretch, but that was something that didn’t quite agree with my butt. I guess I have to work a bit on a better technique. I’ve noticed the pros bouncing every other trot when I find myself hitting the saddle with every trot.

All in all it was a nice experience, but I can’t say I enjoyed it as much as mountain biking. Perhaps if the horses were faster? Not sure.

For our last day of the three day bike tour, we gathered early once again for breakfast, and then pile into the truck and get a ride most of the way up the world’s tallest mountain peak, Chimorazo Volcano.

That is, tallest from the center of the earth and closest to the moon – due to it being located close to the bulging equator, which make it actually 2.1 kilometres higher than Mount Everest. Although we did not go up to the very top of the mountain, we did slowly scale the few hundred meters from the parking lot to the base camp at 5000 meters (16,400 feet) above sea level.

My GPS watch claimed it was actually a little higher, but I will take their word for it. No easy fete, nevertheless, and we were pleased to find the hut served hot chocolate. We all enjoyed a cup while we sheltered inside away from the cold wind and chatted around a table.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimborazo_(volcano)

There were quite a few clouds around, but the skies would open up from time to time and you could see the top of Ecuador’s highest peak not that far away from where we were standing, covered in snow. A fox hung out nearby, evidentially looking out for a snack from the tourists, but there was scant else for any animal to eat at that elevation. Further down the mountain, packs of beautiful vicunas (a relative to the alpaca) could be found grazing what little scrub they could find.

We descended from the hut to return to the truck and gear up for was was going to be a 2000 meter (6561 feet) drop and 70 kilometers to the city of Ambato. It was very cold and very windy, but the descent was steep enough to keep you going through the headwinds when you met up with them on the switchback dirt and a bit too corrugated road.

It was a very exhilerating ride back down off the side of the mountain. Once we got back down to the national park’s entry gate it was decided we were running way behind (probably due to too much socializing), so we piled back into the truck to skip the next 15kms – which were purported to be slow, uphill, and full of strong headwinds, anyway.

We got to a junction with a smaller side road and got back on our bikes to ride about 15 kms through a beautiful rural valley for the stop for lunch. There was a headwind most of the way, but I was able to draft behind our leader and have a much easier time peddling. Drafting was something we both enjoyed and used to get through most of the rest of the trip.

After our scrumptious tuna lunch, we got back on the road for the long final stretch of our ride. This was a particularly gorgeous and exciting section that followed a good smooth road along a glacier-melt sourced river through a deep green canyon that meandered from side to side of the river over small bridges as it passed through farmland, forests, rocky canyons, and villages from time to time.

Everyone would arrive at each catchup point with huge smiles on their faces from the experience. Numerous carrot farmers were found along the way washing their bright freshly harvested carrots in the streams and gutters running into the area. That’s right, gutters. Make sure you wash your veggies before eating them! Lots of us thought the circuit would have made for an excellent GoPro video, but unfortunately, none of us had one on us at the time.

By the time we reached our destination, 70 kilometres from where we started and 2000 meters closer to sea level, the temperature had warmed to a very comfortable early summer / late spring day. We all took final group photos, piled back into the truck for our ride back into Quito, and stopped along the way for ice cream at a town famous for selling homemade ice cream all over the place. We all got a kick out of looking into car and truck windows of other vehicles afterwards when we got back on the Pan American Highway to see every single person eating the same ice cream. Obviously it is known as an obligatory stop on the drive through Ecuador!

We woke up early to gather for breakfast and plot the days activities. Us being a more adventurous group were keen to try tackling every proposal thrown to us. We slept at a level higher than any of us has slept before, 3900 meters (12,800 feet), which made sleeping a little difficult, be we felt good enough to try anything.

The plan turned out to be making the short walk from the guest house to the rim of Quilotoa Crater Lake and then follow the steep, sandy trail to the bottom to check out the lake. It was 300 meters down to the water surface, which, of course, meant a gruelling oxygen deprived 300 meter climb out afterwards! We were given the option of renting mules to get us out afterwards for $8, but any such hiring was required before we were to start our hike – and we were feeling a bit too confident.

The view of the crater from the top was beautiful, with snow cover volcanoes in the rear distance and steep green walls that plunged 300 meters down to the lake surface that were said to extend a further 300 meters below the surface to the bottom. This is an active volcano that still comes to life from time to time, but it was pretty quiet for us.

After our long, endless trek to the bottom, which reminded me somewhat of The Grand Canyon, we arrived at a hostel with a collection of new double fibreglass kayaks available for rent for $2. Our guide mentioned the existence of warm vents from hot springs bubbling to the surface that we could potentially investigate, so me and one of my fellow mountain bikers, a physician’s assistant from Oklahoma City, hopped in to see them for ourselves.

The water of the lake was mostly cold and salty, and the springs bubbling to the surface didn’t really feel warm at all, but we eventually found a hot spring spewing out from the cracks of a big boulder along the banks that confirmed the existence of thermal activity happening below.

After our short paddle, we made the long oxygen deprived steep climb back up the the rim to rejoin a few of the crew who decided not to make the entire trek down. Our ride today was from our guesthouse down a freshly paved smooth asphalt road through a number of old villages and eventually ending up at a small town.

Most of the ride was downhill and cruisy, but we did have the occasional dog obstacles to contend with. We were warned about them before the ride and assured that if we only slowed down and passed them quietly, their chase would become too boring for them to pursue and they would leave us alone. Sure enough, as intimidating as it was to slow down to let a vicious looking dog in hot pursuit catch up to us, the trick seemed to work every time and the dogs just retreated to their farms.

After another nice lunch of traditional tasty Ecuadorian beans with meatloaf and avacodo sliced rolled up in a tortilla, we hopped back into the truck to get a ride up to a ridge overlooking the central valley of the Pan Pacific Highway. Once on the ridge, our truck pulled up a dirt road to unload us for the steep descent through beautiful farmland down to the valley floor. It was another great, exhilarating and beautiful ride to finish up the day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riobamba

That evening we drove into the city of Riobamba and our hotel for the night. Seeing as we were all getting along so well, our guide took us out to a very nice Ecuadorian restaurant for dinner and we stayed up chatting until late before walking back to the hotel to rest up for our final day of riding.