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.
Chimborazo 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.
Base Camp Elevation
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.
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.
The Fox
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.
The Descent
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.
Traditional Ecuadorian Dress
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.
Valley View
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.
Crater Beach
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.
Ecuadoreans in 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.
Ecuador Landscape
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.
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.
Our first day of a three day mountain biking excursion had us meet up in a restaurant before it even opened in time to be piled into the back of a Toyota Land Cruiser with a rack of decent mountain bikes up on top. The group of seven all seem nice and predominantly American with one guy from Germany. The guide, an Ecuadorian, speaks excellent English and is very nice, very enthusiastic, and seemingly very knowledgable of all things Ecuadorian.
The ride out of town sees us battling with rush hour traffic while we snuck through back roads, cobblestone streets, and switchbacks down steep hills reminiscent of San Francisco as we aim to get on the famous Pan American Highway and head south.
Today’s ride starts near the top of Cotopaxi, an active, snow covered volcano. We’re driven up to around 4300 meters (14,000 feet) above sea level. I certainly have been feeling the effects of the altitude, but have been pleased to find them diminishing. After a few dizzying moments getting geared up and admiring the peak.
Start of Cotopaxi Ride
The plan is to ride down the switchback road we drove up on until we find a small four wheel drive track shoot off on the right. Our guide, Fernando, rides out in front to ensure nobody missed the turn while our Land Cruiser drives behind us to make sure nobody needs support or to bail due to problems adjusting to the elevation. It is quite cold on the ride down, but not as windy and cold as usual, so we’re all rugged up in pretty warm gear and full fingered cycling gloves that could almost pass for Michael Jackson’s jewel studded gloves from a distance.
Down from Cotopaxi
The ride downhill is lots of fun and very enjoyable, but the sweetest part of the ride came after we got off the main road and on to some very nice cruisy four wheel drive trails that led us up along a creek to the source of a underground freshwater spring. It wasn’t a steep incline to get there, but the elevation made it very difficult to gasp for enough air. From there we cycled on a very nice path down to see some archeological Inca ruins, eat a scrumptious furnished pasta (carbo-loaded) lunch, admire Cotopaxi and the view over the plains of the national park with its wild horses and lost cattle that weren’t supposed to be there.
Cotopaxi Ride
Most of the riding was either level of downhill on this trip, but every time I came to the slightest incline, I really struggled to get enough energy to climb it. I will chalk it off to a combination of being out of cycling shape and not quite fully acclimatised to the elevation. Our guide told us that full acclimatisation normally takes about 21 days, which made me feel better!
Cotopaxi Archeology Site
As is typical of Ecuadorian weather at this time of year, the morning was beautiful, but the rains came in during the afternoon. Fortunately, we peddled just far enough around a major thunderstorm to miss it completely before piling back into the car at the end of the day.
From Cotopaxi we drove another few hours to get to the site of our next day’s ride, near Quilotoa Crater Lake. Unfortunately, a few hours were added due to construction along a new highway that had us sit in traffic for a bit longer than we had hoped. Although most of Ecuador’s major roads appear to be in excellent condition, they are still working hard to put in others in some of the more remote parts of the country.
Once we arrived at our guesthouse near the rim of the Quilotoa Crater Lake, we gathered for a big Ecuadorian meal around a long candlelit dinner table. The candle lighting was nice, but the result of a long power outage that only seemed to let up for a few minutes at a time. Due to the lack of power and most of us being knackered from a long day of oxygen deprived cycling, we retreated to bed fairly early that evening.
Still awaiting my 3 day bike excursion, I headed out for another long walk to the old part of Quito to visit the Museo de la Cuidad (Museum of the City), which has been highly recommended. The building housing the museum is an old hospital that has been preserved to recognize its own history as well as the history of Ecuador. There were lots of very interesting dioramas depicting life in the region from indigenous times through the Spanish colonization and up to more recent times. There were also displays of how the hospital was set up with cramped infirmary wards and the horrifying surgical and medicinal tools used during the period.
Afterwards I had a local feed of chicken, rice, and beans at a nearby family restaurant. I think Ecuador is probably the first country I have ever visited in which I have been perfectly content eating only local food. I usually will have at least one local meal every day and alternate with more familiar fare, but perhaps I have just grown too comfortable with South American food.
I’ve had my eye on Quito’s Teleferico for a number of days now, but every time the weather is looking good over the city, I turn my head to see a lot of clouds smouldering the mountain tops. One of these days I will get up there when the skies are clear, but until then I am running around town doing a few other things and trying to do some planning for my last week here.
In lieu of the cable car ride to the top of the mountains, I decided to head to the financial and cultural district of Quito to see a few highly recommended museums. Interestingly, there were two combined museums of modern art and musical instruments in a huge round cultural building that were pretty run down and neglected, but charged an entry fee ($2!), and another modern, well presented, well maintained archeology museum next door in the same building that was free. Go figure.
The musical instrument museum housed many indigenous musical instruments from South American countries as well as from many other countries around the world. It also had very old artefacts of prehistoric musical instruments made out of bones and other similar materials. It was quite fascinating, but a bit dark and neglected. There were plenty of school kids there, however, so it wasn’t totally forgotten.
Upstairs in the same museum was a collection of dusty modern art from Ecuador that included, among other things, some impressive and intricate designs made from thousands of nails being hammered into a plywood canvas. I couldn’t help but wonder how much they weighed!
Just a short walk around the building was a far more impressive archeology museum full of artefacts from around South America. It explained the cultural histories of three major regions in the area: The Amazon, the coast, and The Andes mountains. Included were dioramas depicting sacrifices and head shrinkages. Good stuff.
In one particular section there were many displays of gold metalwork in the form of masks, jewellery, and other items used for religious purposes. There were also extensive displays of historic maps from early days of European settlement that were quite interesting.
Having had my cultural fill for the day, I proceeded to head back towards my guest house, but not before taking a shortcut through the Hyatt hotel to remind myself how sterile, cold, stuffy, and corporate my accommodation could have been.
As soon as I stepped back out of the building and onto the street, I started to hear a few gunshots ring out. I’ve heard many loud noises that sounded like gunfire in various city around the world that turned out to be cars backfiring or other false alarms over the years, but these sounds had everyone on the street in the area freeze in their tracks and then dive for protection. I couldn’t see exactly what was going on, but I knew it had to be gunfire and so did everyone else. The shots were being fired just 10-20 meters down the street and behind some bushes on a corner I was heading towards. I took refuge behind a big cement wall next to the Hyatt along with several street vendors.
After about 5-10 shots and some screaming, it became quiet again and people began to start slowly moving – many towards the shooting location to investigate what had happened. An English couple I crossed paths with immediately afterwards said they were sitting at a cafe just across the street from the incident. They said that a man had been shot in his leg and the gunman fled down the street (out of my view) afterwards. By the time I got up to the scene of the crime (which I had to pass through to get home, anyway), a huge scrum of 50’ish people swarmed around a man talking on his mobile phone, possibly as he made a call to the police, to eavesdrop on his conversation.
My feeling was to just get out of there and not hang around, but I never did hear anything more about the incident. I mentioned it to my hosts at the guesthouse and they seemed genuinely alarmed, which I guess is a good thing because it shows this sort of thing doesn’t actually happen around here very often.
After another nice breakfast and a visit to a few tour operators down the street to try and nail some things down, I decided to heel it to Quito’s Old City district to check out the fabulous historic Spanish architecture. There were endless cobblestone streets along rows and rows of beautifully preserved buildings and massive cathedrals.
Old City Quito
Unfortunately, for me, finding English translations or speakers has been a bit difficult to find around Quito. Yeah, sure I took Spanish in high schools years ago, and many words are beginning to come back to me, but it isn’t a language that gets much airtime in Australia. There were some nice exhibits in some of the cathedrals, but not a word of English to help me understand exactly what I was looking at. It’s one of those experiences I’ve had while traveling the world that make you realise that you are possibly on the back of a sleeping giant that is too big to really care much about what us in the 1st world think is important. This sleeping giant being South America. The experience reminding me of my visit to India in 2005 – where the focus in the media was primarily on themselves with rare mentions of what was happening in the U.S., Europe, or Australia.
On my walk home from the Old City, I was drawn to a massive Basilica on top of a big hill overlooking the rest of the city. Not knowing whether it was something you could see the inside of. I finally found a guy selling tickets near the side who told me I could climb to the top of the spire there. Sounded pretty cool to me, so I forked over my $2 and headed up a stone staircase hat lead up a corner of the building through windowless channels. There were a few floors to stop at on the way up that gave views looking down inside over the cathedral interior, along with some intermediate external views, but I kept climbing as long as I could find stairs.
Quito’s La Basilica
Thinking I was at the top, I found a creaky plywood board walk that lead directly over the top of the length of the church over the ceiling but below the roof that led to a steep staircase up to some daylight. I kept going, thinking this must be it, only to find a few more scary looking steep steel staircases proceeding up to the very top of the spire. Or at least to it’s highest platform. A few people were going up and down, but I had to wait a few minutes to psych myself up for the last bit of the journey.
Final Staircase
From the top you could see the entire punchbowl of Quito, surrounded by volcanoes and snow-capped mountains on another beautifully clear, sunny day.
After arriving at Quito’s new airport at midnight via three flights from Philadelphia (including a very tight 35 minute connection in Panama City), I was greeted by the son of my guesthouse manager for the long drive into town. Perhaps I should have been a bit more concerned when he asked me whether I would mind if he drove fast. I just shrugged my shoulders and said fine, thinking “as opposed to what? Slow?”
Well, I think I won’t clear that request again. The roads were mostly empty at that hour, and it seemed he was keen to put his Chevy through its paces. With his girlfriend in the back seat and me in the front, he reached speeds of around 140 kph on a number of stretches along the mostly new but twisty and hilly highway. Numerous cops were passed along the way who gave no response as my driver turned what was normally supposed to be a ninety minute drive into fifty minutes.
Upon arrival at the guesthouse in a trendy restaurant district on the far side of town, a large metal door slid open to reveal a secret, secure, small compound surrounding a nice little two story house surrounded by high cement walls embedded with broken glass on top. The compound was just big enough for him to reverse his car, Bat Cave style, before the gate rolled shut again. Ecuador has a bit of a crime problem, you see. He quietly led me to my nice comfortable room upstairs and showed me the things I needed to know about staying there. Among the quirks was a shared coed bathroom with two toilets and two opaque glass showers facing each other.
The guesthouse is run by a very friendly hard working family who go out of their way to make sure everyone is happy and comfortable. For a mere $20 a night, which includes a generous and tasty home cooked breakfast every morning, the accommodation is easily better than many places I’ve stayed in that have charged a lot more money.
My first day on the street in Quito was consumed with finding tour operators who could speak English well so I could investigate what options I had for doing tours around the area. The Galapagos Islands were always high on my list, but I was a bit put off by the high prices that didn’t even cover all the expenses – an 8 day tour blitzing the total expenses I have had in every individual country I have visited so far. And these prices were 30% off last minute ‘bargains’!
Seeing as I was already getting my body acclimatised to the 2800 meter elevation of Quito and really enjoying the perfect humidity-free and mosquito-free sunny climate, I thought it might be wise to work my way up The Andes rather than down. There are quite a few day tours out of the city that I could do, but a 3 day mountain biking excursion up around a number of very high volcanic and snow covered peaks sounded like the most fun. So far. Still seeing what’s out there.
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