30.0 Exit this way

Having failed to persuade that nice Ecuadorian Immigration official to allow us more than ten days stay in his country due to the ongoing troubles - of which we have heard, seen or felt none of - we have to plan our Ecuadorian exit. Of the ten days available to us we spent Day 1 crossing the border to Loja and Days 2 and 3 in Cuenca.

We spent Day 4 heading north to Riobamba which was roughly half way to Ecuador's capital, Quito. The route was lined with volcanoes of which you could see very little, as it seems clouds are magnetically attracted to the tops of volcanoes be they live or extinct. Apart from being roughly half way between Cuenca and Quito there is very little to say about Riobamba as far as we are concerned, except that for the first time in a number of days we had HOT water at our accommodation; not tepid or lukewarm but HOT. It was worth the extra... And that clearly the town had a clothing issue as one of the squares was full of people sat at treadle sewing machines waiting for the next repair order to come their way.

We can't work out the climate here. We are not always warm when riding. It could be due to the altitude - we are always between 2,500 and 3,500m. It might also be due to there not being distinct summer and winter seasons here. We don't think that we can transpose our European ideas of seasons on to the climate here; it's more about it being the dry or the rainy season and we haven't been rained upon that much at all - just been a bit damp (and cold) when riding through clouds. The locals say it is winter and that they have flowers in their gardens all year round, albeit with more in the summer. There is also an abundance of fruit available in the markets and it's not a question of it being imported from elsewhere. In Argentina and Chile the children were definitely on summer holidays from Christmas to March, ie now. Here the children are still at school because it is winter. A tad confusing for us.

So we moved on to Quito. Going to Quito used up Day 5 of our allowance. Cotopaxi, the volcano outside of Quito is probably the symbol of Ecuador and we wanted to see it. All that was visible of the volcano from the route to Quito (our Day 4) was a signpost - so we booked ourselves on a tour for our Day 6. We spent a very enjoyable day on the tour with two American chums, Doug and Tim who were both exceptionally well-travelled and have given us various tips for the future, both short and long term. We also met Carmen who led us on a merry little dance...

We were exceptionally lucky to be able to see Cotopaxi without too many clouds being stuck to its summit. We were also a bit jealous of Doug who, because he had flown in and therefore didn't have a restricted visa, was laying down plans to hike up to the summit during his stay in Ecuador. That and the Galapogos...

The follow-on to Cotopaxi was a visit to Lake Quilotoa which was a near perfect lake in a caldera. Again, we were very lucky with the 'winter' weather. It was very difficult to judge scale with the crater and the lake but we were told that the crater lake was 3km wide and the rim was over 400m above the lake; we didn't walk all the way down, and the lake itself was 250m deep and pretty chilly all year round, be it winter or summer. On the return to Quito we had a great view of another volcano, Chimborazo, which we hadn't been able to see because of clouds at Riobamba.

Having burned 60% of our visa we headed north from Quito on Day 7 to Mital del Mundo to celebrate the equator. We sometimes find it hard to get away from our accommodation in the mornings as people start chatting with us. We had lovely accommodation in Quito and the owner, in exchange for a photo sitting on the bike, gave us lots of tips on things to see in Ecuador. At Mital del Mundo there is a monument to the equator, and, as we live in Greenwich and have done the thing about having one foot either side of the Meridian line, we had to do the same thing with the equator - except, unfortunately, the monument and line are 250m out of position according to modern GPS technology... It was the French that got it wrong! Never mind, the thought was there.

We finished Day 7 in Otovalo. Doug and Tim were also travelling to Otovalo;  we had a couple of beers and dinners and swapped even more stories with them. Otovalo is home to one of the biggest markets in South America and one way or another we spent all of Day 8 in and around the market. We made some stall holders very happy by not doing the 'gringo' bartering thing. 

Ecuador is very colourful. It's a 'hat' country. In Peru, also very colourful, it was the women who wore the hats. Here it is everybody. Françoise was the only female in Peru with short hair. It's the same here in Ecuador but the men also wear their hair too in a plaited ponytail hanging from below their hats. In Otovalo we stayed in more expensive accommodation than usual. Françoise chose it. However we were very happy to learn that the accommodation is a significant supporter of the local population, whether it is in profit share arrangements, the funding of education or in education itself. Françoise is forgiven.

We had previously remarked how tall Françoise was compared to people in Peru. This is totally out of hand with Ecuadorians. It is also the build up to carneval here which, due to the lack of compassion from our very nice Ecuadorian Immigration official, we will miss. 

The big thing about carneval here is to spray everyone with shaving foam and the children, armed in some cases with cans bigger than themselves, were getting a lot of practice in. Very similar to the State of Emergency poster.

We are not sure what it is about us. We are obviously not South American but everybody seems to know we are from England without us saying anything.  Why couldn't we be French or German or even American for that matter? But no, everyone calls us out as English when all we are doing is walking along the street. Anyway the latest example was us being accosted by a group of school children in the street needing assistance with their English homework... Paul had his little success...

Day 10 is when our Ecuadorian visa runs out, so we need to be at the Colombian border with all necessary paperwork. However, there is no paperwork, as everything has to be online and we have to upload a copy of Paul's passport with the Colombian Immigration entrance stamp onto the Colombian Customs website at the border before we can clear the bike through Colombian Customs. We have put extra money on our Ecuadorian SIM card, otherwise we just hope there is WiFi. We only have one way out of Ecuador too, if we are to follow FCO advice: Tulcan -Ipiales. The rest of the border with Colombia is far from being recommended.

What is missing is Day 9 of our Ecuadorian sojourn. Well we went for a walk in a National Park and had a day to relax! Another caldera lake. We didn't take the boat ride as we felt we needed the walk but apparently the volcano is not extinct as you can see gas bubbles breaking the surface.

There have been a number of questions as to how we share tasks on our trip. Clearly Paul rides the bike and Francoise is the happy pillion always ready to take snapshots of what comes along the way, averaging a photo per km. And some of those photos find their way into the Blog. Paul prepares an initial draft of our Blog and we finish it together. We share clothes washing duties and we load and unload the bike together which can be a pain if our accommodation is on the third floor and there is no lift... We try to choose accommodation together so that Paul doesn't go too cheap or Françoise too expensive. And Paul sets the route taking into account things Françoise might have identified as worth seeing on the way if we can.

Just in case you wondered...

29.0 Ecuador

We have had concerns about Ecuador for the last three weeks after the troubles broke out there - drug lord missing from prison, storming of live TV broadcast, police and prison officers held hostage, explosions, shootings, army called in to guarantee order, State of Emergency etc. It's all on the BBC. A further measure was introduced presumably to keep out members of drug cartels who might want to test the army and President 's resolve and that affected us directly. All foreigners wanting to access Ecuador by land from Peru or Colombia had to have a document from their government showing a clean criminal record for the last five years. Not only that, it had to have an 'apostille' from a recognised legal entity confirming it to be correct. And, according to the UK FCO, it also needed to be translated into Spanish.

Clearly we didn't have any of this - just our passports and driving license.

The FCO also declared the Ecuadorian coastal areas to be a red zone and, of course, that was the route we were planning to take because it's nice to be by the seaside.

So our plans evolved and we found ourselves staying the night in nowheresville 18km from the Ecuadorian border and a good 2 hours from any other place in Peru. The accommodation didn't have all the facilities you would expect from a hotel and we shared our room with a large number of relatively small insects, probably due to this being quite a verdant part of Peru. But the garden had peacocks, parrots, a llama, wild pigs, deer and lots of other things. Quite Dr. Dolittle. Eating out that night was a mutual affair. We ate the inevitable chicken and chips but certain things also took a few bites out of Paul.

We also equipped ourselves with digital photographs of our Basic DBS certificates thanks to Herve back home. These we managed to print out at A4 and annotate with yellow highlighter.

Armed with these we were at the border for 0930 in the morning. We were the only 'customers' in the joint Peru-Ecuador border facility. It took nearly two hours! Impossible to contemplate what it would have been like if there were three or four vehicles or, God forbid, a queue or even a bus/coach. But we are now in Ecuador, however we are only given ten days to get to the border with Colombia, instead of the usual 90 day visa.

It's quite chilly here too. Possibly because of the altitude. It's also relatively hard work riding even if the roads are generally good, give or take the odd landslip. A 200km ride is non-stop bends and involves about 5,000m of climb and the same in descent. We don't understand all the greenery which seems to grow on electric overhead cables - we have been seeing it for some time now. Because our progress is quite slow due to the winding roads, our ten day visa is going to be quite tight to make it across the country and still have some sightseeing opportunities.

First stop in Ecuador was Loja. A couple of nice churches and an old gate to the city.  Not much else, but it was where we could find accommodation after the border. However we have been told that the best coffee in Ecuador comes from Loja. Ecuador gives the impression of being more prosperous than Peru. There are expensive coffee shop chains in town and it seems generally cleaner everywhere. But these are first impressions.

As for the curfews there is no sign of them in the areas where we are. We were stopped once at a checkpoint between the border and Loja, but that was just to check our papers.

It can get quite chilly and hotels don't seem to have any heating, having said that we travel on a budget.  The hot water in the showers doesn't even get to tepid, let alone lukewarm. Sinks in bathrooms have shrunk to a miniscule size and only have a cold water tap, so it's getting more and more difficult to do our washing - we have to hunt for 'by the kilo' laundries with a turn around during the day at any place where we stay for a couple of nights. And if we can't find anywhere, we'll it's on to the next place and stay smelly for a couple more days. In some respects, lucky the temperature has dropped from the 30°+ on the coast to 16° in the mountains.

We are now in Cuenca. Cuenca is another of those places, like Trujillo, where there is an equivalent in Spain. Here the historic centre has 52 churches. The Cathedral is unfinished because the foundations couldn't take the weight of the two spires. It was as finished as it is ever going to be in 1967. They have regular earthquakes as we found out on the roads Showing the same Geological Fault roadside signs as in Peru exist - and similarly, they are not repaired. Here in Cuenca they don't really count as earthquakes unless they are above 7.0 on the Richter scale; there was a 7.0 one last year apparently. No damage to anything.

So there are churches, a historic centre and earthquakes, but what Cuenca is famous for is Panama Hats. Panama hats are actually Ecuadors. It would seem that when the Panama Canal was being built, the workers wore theses straw hats from Ecuador to protect them from the sun. When Roosevelt came to inspect the works, he saw the workers in their sombrero and wanted one for himself. He was photographed by the newspapers wearing his 'Panama' hat, made in Cuenca, Ecuador. Paul has had, and mistreated, a number of genuine Panamas. He took his latest one to one of the Cuencan manufacturers to ask about possible repairs. They were appalled at the state of it, but not as appalled as when he bought a replacement and told them how he would have to fold it up to fit it on the bike. It would seem the stories about rolling Panama hats to carry them are urban myths to sell them to foreigners.

Motorcycle culture is quite distinctive in most countries especially with bigger bikes. There are not so many big bikes here - or elsewhere so far in South America to be honest. The market is dominated by Chinese imports with a myriad different brand names but all fundamentally the same. Most of them look pretty good too. So, you would imagine, would the shops that sell them - especially as so much time has been put into styling the bikes. But no, it's not the case. It's a bit like Curry's. You buy your motorbike along side fridges, washing machines, kettles etc. Ah well, better swap the leather jacket for a pinny...

Cuenca is actually very nice. Plenty of other things going on here. The pharmacy selling a hangover cure drink that has people queuing up in the mornings. The nuns selling their 'have a good day' drink 'agua de pitima' made from rose petals, tea and valerian. The flower market. The food market - hog roast and black puddings, fish soup and coconut juice. We have to move on now as we have already used 30% of our Ecuador visa.