Made it to Colombia!

Day 15 & 16 (268 Km)

      Monday was our day to explore Quito as a tourist and left the bikes untouched @ the hotel and took city buses to the "Mitad del Mundo" to get the photo, that we have been at 0.00 latitude on the equator in Ecuador. The place was a complete tourist trap, but that was expected  and left soon after the photo shoot and went back to the old historical part of Quito, what was quite interesting and had there a local 3 course lunch for $ 2.25 and that was including a drink as well!


                                         
    
     After visiting the Basilica and the small 
streets in the old town, we took a taxi to the "teleferico" that would bring us 4100 meters above sea level, so about 1300 meters above Quito! The view was great, but it began to rain and soon after that we returned to the hotel.





  Later that evening we had Chinese food in a real Chinese restaurants full of Chinese tourists , so the food must have been good, all these Chinese eating there!

               

                                           
     Tuesday, we left for Colombia and were making a side trip to the biggest arts and crafts market of South America, named Otavalo, about 100 km north of Quito. The place had some narrow busy streets  and after having spend an hour there, we took of for the border another 2 hours away through some nice valleys with a winding road running between 1500 meter and 3300 meters. Some where half way there was some construction and delayed us an hour or so and finally around 4 pm we reached the Ecuadorean side and had a little delay because there was no electricity, but an half an hour later, we checked ou and crossed the bridge to the Colombian side.

   It took me an hour or so to do all the unnecessary paperwork, changed some Us money into pesos and left the border to the first small city of Ipiales, about 5 km away and checked into a cheap hotel downtown around 6 pm, had a few beers and pizza and called it the night!

Quito, another capital in S.A, 2850 m high.

Day 14 (213 Km)

         The hotel, we stayed in was a lousy one, no hot water, no internet and room was moldy, so glad we left early to see if we would make Quito. After 30 minutes we saw a fancy Hosteleria on the side of road and decided to get a proper breakfast instead of the usual chicken soup with rice and what else they had left over from last night! The breakfast was a buffet with all the stuff available, you can think about and finally after an hour I was full, probably for the rest of the day.

  Another 3 hours on a beautiful paved 4 lane and 6 lane road, we reached Quito and 5 minutes later we found a good hotel downtown in the the new section of town, where most nightlife, bars and restaurants are. We decided to stay 2 nights to catch up with our maintenance of the bikes and reorganizing our wet stuff.

Ingapirca, Inca ruins in Ecuador

Day 13 (298 Km)

   Drizzling again this morning and 7 am we had to get the moto's out of the parking lot, otherwise we had to pay $ 1.00 each hour more, so we left around 8 towards some Inca ruins about 60 km north. Reaching the turn off the road started to get confused, but an half an hour later we reached the sight and had a tour in Spanish. It was interested, but couldn't come close to Cusco. 

 
      We had some lunch and the owner said it would be about 3 hours to Riobamba and 2 pm we left and from that time, we only saw drizzle and thick fog. You could not see 2 meters away and it took us hours to get through this @ 2500 to 3500 meters and it was cold as well and everything wet! Not much fun and we did not see the scenery as well, which supposed to be spectacular !

      6 pm, I gave up when I saw an hotel in Cajabamba, about 20 km before Riobamba, we checked in, but the hotel, allthough new, was in bed shape and to make things worse, the hot water was not working @ 3000 meter high and I was still frozen and wet from the last 4 hours. All this made the day not any better. Dinner we had in the only chicken stand we could find and had to drink hot beer again, I still can not believe these people here, that they won't put beer in their refridge to cool, but then put fresco's in it, nobody drinks!

We took the old road by mistake to Cuenca

Day 12 (217 Km)

    It was raining and foggy when we wanted to leave Loja, but decided to go anyway to see if we could make it to Cuenca about 200 km down the road. This road supposed to be the most scenic road of Ecuador and we made a more scenic by taking the old road by mistake on a small narrow bush road full of potholes through the mountains and valleys.

      Of course we were the only traffic and 2 our later we joined the main paved road and soon hit the 3500 meter with gorgeous views, twists and curves.Around 2 pm we reached Cuenca a big colonial town with a very busy center with lots of cars in a traffic jam and it took me 2 hours in this chaos to find an hotel and accommodation. 

Ecuador, whole different country and high up in the Andes again!

Day 11 (348 Km)

     Left early Sullana to get to Ecuador and an hour later we were there already, but ended up being on the wrong border! Eventhou my GPS said more or less we were going the right way, on the end we were not and this beautiful paved road went basically to an isolated border post "Alomar". The custom guy said it is between 12 and 16 hours on terrible road to Loja, the town I wanted to go to, but I could not believe him and on the end I ignored him eventhou the young guy looked "smart"

  After finishing our Sol's on a ceviche breakfast, we continued to the Peruvian immigration to check out and he was making up a story the border of Ecuador had no system and told us, we had to go all the way back to Sullane and then take the "right" road to Macara, where Ecuador had system.  I told him I was not going back and reenter the bikes into Peru again and told him I will deal with the Ecuador immigration and customs, just give me my exit stamp. After arguing a while he gave me the stamp and we left full blast on a perfect road into Ecuador. No police, immigration or customs insight and after about 20 km finally we saw a police and he said: don't worry just drive through Ecuador to the other border place and do your paperwork over there and around noon we reached Macara and within the hour, we had all paperwork done and were legally in Ecuador.

   The road from Macara to Loja was 200 km but it was a beautiful one and soon we hit 2500 meters again, but it started to drizzle and thick fog was all around, but on the other side of the mountain pass it started to clear up and descended into the first valley to 1200 meters and after leaving, we climbed again to 2600 meter and leveled of in Loja @ 2000 meters. Loja is an old colonial town and was quite big and a lot of people on the street. Soon found an Hotel in the center and had a few beers for only $ 1.50 a medio liter! and a good meal to celebrate we left Peru. In Ecuador there local currency is the US Dollar, but you can not spend notes bigger as $ 20.00 and they do not use one dollar bills, but use one dollar coins and there local coins!

Gas only $ 1.48 a gallon, I start to like this country more and more.