Leaving Quito provided an even greater drama for my father and me. We started with fresh power in our legs and the further we got south the more glimpses could we get from the nearby Cotopaxi volcano.
For my dad the departure was a pure nightmare: dirty city, even dirtier traffic and almost no opportunities to visit restrooms. The streets were filled with cars, many busses and trucks that let us back in dark black congestion clouds and all the head aches their honking caused - I suffered at least as much!
Eventually we escaped somehow after this Quito ordeal and dropped down 200 meters in altitude, all on paved road. The traffic jam to our left advanced at almost the same speed as we did on the tiny little shoulder the road provided. At a turn off towards Cotopaxi I was of two minds for a short time as the imagination of following this traffic for the rest of the day didn’t provide that a nice outlook compared to climbing up empty dirt roads, approaching the 4000 m mark towards this volcano. But we had only shortly talked about that option and dad was already programed to suffer under and survive the traffic, to not give up.
So we climbed up another pass for an hour or two, and fled some heavy rain showers under the roof of a fuel station. Afterwards a long downhill brought us to the Ambato city where a good Chinese restaurant relieved our hunger.
“Quito, Quito, Quito!”, that’s what woke me up the next morning, together with non-stop barking of neighboring dogs. A bus driver or his assistant promoted the Quito bus for all to hear even though for me let alone the thought of returning to that big and congested metropolis caused a strong feeling to get even further away, fast!
So we started out, climbing up through Ambato city, a long, 1.5 hours ride, passing a really chaotic market and always watching out for the volcano east, a very active one that caused a lot of people in a nearby town called Baños to flee.
We should maybe have had a closer look into our maps because in the west a big volcano, 6310 m high Volcano Chimborazo, was hiding behind grey grey clouds and we could have taken a different route coming closer to this massive mountain from Mocha. So we passed Riobamba quickly, definitely the town with the most garbage beside the road, a total shithole, and camped some kilometers later on a hill beside the road. I had cooled out way too much and was happy about the early end of our cycling day and that I could jump into the sleeping bag two hours earlier.
Dad on the other hand had a lot of spare energy - I don’t know which black hole shared with him that evening. But the results he brought home (into the tent) were more than I could have wished for: wonderful pictures of the magnificent Chimborazo volcano in orange evening clouds which I unfortunately didn’t get to see with my own eyes at all.
The following morning kept a bad surprise for us: After cycling for two hours we went to a small restaurant and ordered a desayuno (breakfast) just without meat. But instead of just serving us the plate all the guests at the neighboring tables got, we got every ingredient, the rice, the egg and vegetables on a single plate. I already thought that they were playing a game on us and was proofed right when we asked for the “la quenta” (bill): for four portions of rice, tiny ones, they charged 2 US dollars … that’s almost twice the price you have to pay for a typical 2 course lunch (almuerzo) or breakfast including a fresh juice. So from now on we were alarmed again and ensured ourselves to always ask for what they’ll charge before ordering - not that we were greedy but we just want to pay the fair price, everywhere, not the “gringo”-price.
Now we cycled a long almost flat stretch, I would almost call it a tiny high plateau, towards Cuenca, the next bigger city heading southwards. But heavy winds slowed us down and also cooled down our bodies.
We had to put on more layers of clothes, I put on another long arm jersey and Elmar prepared similarly for the coming downhill that brought us after a few villages with a few smaller ascents in between to El Tambo, the village where a lot of tours to nearby Ingapirca ruin depart from.
But cycling long distances on a daily basis is not peanuts, so instead of planing an early morning trip to the ruins the coming day we relaxed for a few more hours and started out towards Azogues and Cuenca. What made cycling and life even harder for my dad these days was the loss of his sunglasses and only a short time afterwards the intrusion of a small particle into one of his eyes. He couldn’t get that small beast out for 3 days in a row and cycling got more dangerous, the nights less reviving and therefore life much harder.
Actually we didn’t intend to cycle into the city of Cuenca at all - there was no necessity and whenever you can avoid heavy city traffic that easily by just following the main road it’s probably the best choice for (touring) cyclists. But we arrived far too late, passing a hospital close to the city center at dusk. I told my father jokingly that we could spend the night in the hospital, they should have a few spare rooms, when my father answered that he prefers not to spend the night in a hospital and prefers not to be injured or ill. Just half a minute later a tiny field of gravel, almost not visible for the human eye in these low light situation, appeared in front of a roundabout and Elmar rode into it and fell down to the left, lying in the middle of the road while a few cars were approaching from behind at a rapid speed. I reacted quickly and tried to get all the attention of the cars by waving my hands and almost screamed to my father to get off the road.
So now we seriously thought about a room in the hospital or at least a small spot to camp on the fresh mowed lawn. But when we met the security guards no they didn’t negotiate with us at all, not even after dad told them the whole story of our tour. Sometimes it’s helpful to talk with people to minimize the distance and remove hurdles, but in this situation the man in charge didn’t move the breadth of a hair!
The exhaustion was big and this evening we were pretty discouraged. It’s these situations when you’re really happy to find another person who saves your confidence into the people of a country and we didn’t only find one who helped us to find the hotels in town but also the really friendly hotel staff and later on the fast working waiter and friendly people in the El Paraiso vegetarian restaurant.
Exiting from Cuenca I put on Rage Against the Machine … usually this kind of music is not my thing on the bike, much too aggressive and fast, but in this situation it just fits! I can’t stand the cars, the noise and congestion they create, the danger they put myself into and I also want to minimize the other distractions (people trying to get our attention, especially the attention from my father on the recumbent bike). So with “Freedom”, “Take the power back” and “Know your enemy” I managed to bring us out of town fast and alive.
We consciously enjoyed the riding in the green countryside outside of this big city again, the fresh air, the nice road following a valley towards the south of Ecuador. Climbing up to 3400 m I realized that today was not Elmar’s day - he still had the small particle in his eye and I was worried. When he started pushing the bike I knew we should call it a day pretty soon. My kilometer counter showed a total distance of 33 999 km when I pitched the tent next to a not finished brick house using some of the bricks to fix the tent. In this situations it’s not a luxury any more but provides real health benefits when you can prepare a warm tea in the evening, something that helps your body to regain the lost warmth and tranquilizes the mind somehow, too.
Cycling further towards Loja we came across a new street building technique of the Ecuadorians: blocks of concrete, half the width of the street and maybe 5 or 6 m in length. In the core they had steel bars that also dangerously stood out at the side. In some cases the concrete was quite fresh and the road workers put on massive rocks to prevent vehicles from driving on the blocks. Well, for the two of us this had quite some benefits traffic wise: Sometimes the road was closed for traffic for hours and locals already made a business of that, selling their goods to the waiting car drivers, to the waiting rich. But as cyclist you can pass and you can also use the blocks with stone on them.
In Loja I wanted to put some time into writing a new posting, putting pictures online and updating some parts of the website. That’s what I wanted. But the Ecuadorian system somehow didn’t want me to: 3 hours of work in the morning resulted in 10 uploaded pictures! And then the connection got lost, not only in one internet cafe but in the whole town - damn! So me, too, I had to slow down, get used to the South American speed. But in a way it’s pretty frustrating: You want to do your work well, you want to keep your family, friends and all the other readers updated but there are these constant problems with the quality of service in terms of hardware and also in terms of connection quality. And back then I didn’t even know that it could get worse!
Probably with a more powerful machine in the cycling panniers I could do 90% of the work offline, but so I’m limited to writing on the laptop and backing up the photos. But I and my father, too, told myself to keep cool, DON’T PANIC and that made vida en America Latina survivable for me.
What looked like an easy 2 days ride along a river revealed itself as a continuous up and down with often 10% steep climbs on a pretty bad dirt road: The way to Zumba and border village La Balsa. One of the big disadvantages of only having the information from a 1 to 4 million map and the often even worse information from locals who seldom travel or don’t travel at all and if they travel, they take a ride in a car or bus and have no idea about distance whatsoever.
One of the highlights in this pretty empty part was the meeting with a French archeologist in Palanda in the evening. We were surprised to see a blond and long haired man in the hostel we just negotiated the price with the owner. He also seemed to be happy to see a foreigner and immediately told us that we had the choice between two hostels, one worse than the other. But this had the benefit that the owners don’t ask you whether you want a room with cat or without.
So we decided to stay at the same place he stayed and he filled our evenings with sometimes eye opening and sometimes almost unbelievable stories about how the social system here works, where the money that makes some 50 times as rich as others comes from, that we’re riding along the main drugs smuggling route from Ecuador to Peru and even harder stuff.
Where did he know all that from? He’s been living here for more than 3 years, a total survivor mentality and adventurer of a special kind, paid by France or Europe to survive in a sometimes quite masochistic way, I guess. They must have called him the French Indiana Jones in a recent newspaper article and in town he’s the biggest employer, paying his workers about twice the normal rate: 10 US $ per day.
But he was not the only very motivating thing in this hostel: We found the following picture hanging above the toilet bowl pretty motivating - that´s how you do it! 
In parts the last part of the road towards Zumba got even worse: Freshly evened road surface with sometimes big rocks and other times deep loose soil your tires can perfectly sink into only topped by gradients with 15 and more percent in corners. The quality factor of these roads was really low but therefore the adventure factor really high! And come on, that’s what we’ve set out for, right?
Our archeologist friend predicted a 5 hours ride of 50 km and what did my bike computer display in the evening: 48,6 km with 5:04 hours of riding time. Damn, how could he predict that precise, definitely the winner of all the information according distance and travel time so far!
In the evening the next story almost unthinkable except in these parts of the world: In almost all the tiny roadside shops you can buy pasta. But in the restaurants you can never buy pasta! And even the plates listed in the menu are not available … the most heard answer these days: “no hay” (I don’t have it). So our new strategy: Buy in the shops, bring to the restaurants. We gave them spaghetti, tomatoes, onions and garlic and explained in detail how they should prepare it. The woman took the stuff and disappeared in the kitchen. Then a long time passed, probably an hour or more and the first woman left the kitchen, then the restaurant and only two minutes later the other woman followed. Who can be left in the kitchen, I asked my father. Then I went to check: All the ingredients still in their plastic bags lying on the table. First try unsuccessful!
But we didn’t give up that easily but went around town asking other restaurants to cook for us. One of the women we asked replied that, yes, it’s possible for her to master this extremely demanding job of cooking spaghetti with a tomato sauce for us but that she closes her little restaurant at 9 p.m. and that it’s already 8:30 p.m., so, no, she won’t cook it for us this evening but we could come back the following noon of course.
Impossible! We ended up cooking the stuff in front of our room, the last meal in Ecuador. At least we didn’t get sick or diarrhea from this evening’s food - I already had it from the dinner in a Palanda restaurant.
(entry in the guestbook: Gringos!)
With these sensational experiences we headed towards the border crossing to Peru in La Balsa and were really happy to not have any more of these experiences before leaving the country - there’s a healthy amount of everything and for us this amount had been more than fulfilled already. So after a bit more than two weeks in the country we didn’t loose a tear crossing the massive concrete bridge to Peru, but of course only after getting our departure stamp from the Ecuadorian immigration first and chatting with two French women, coming from the Peruvian side. Elmar almost crossed the border without the departure stamp from the Ecuadorians, I had to call him back from the bridge. The French girls also forgot to get the stamp and later came back to the Peru immigration office
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