At last, at last, the bikes cleared customs on Monday afternoon just
before 5pm. Where did I last leave off anyway? No doubt
whining about being in Quito for a few more days, and getting over
food poisoning. I remember, it was Saturday, the day the Patriots
blew out the Jaguars. On Sunday Mike stopped by, a friend of
Dick's from Colorado. He's been in Quito for 3 months with his
Honda XR600, and had just got back from a trip into Columbia.
Also on Sunday, and fresh in from Columbia, we hooked back up with
Glenn and Sheila from Canada. Columbia sounds like it was a
lot of fun, though at times a bit eerie. I say eerie rather
than scary, since no one had a FARC experience. The eeriest
sounding experience was Glenn and Sheila's first ride out of Bogota,
into the fog, and there were soldiers with guns posted every kilometer
or so for hundreds of kilometers. They had some great photos
of the spectacular countryside. One of the photos was them covered
with white powder. Yes, I know what you may be thinking, covered
in white powder in Columbia, what's up with that. Well there
was this festival, and for whatever reason this festival has a tradition
where everyone throws talc at everyone else. In some places
they threw water too. Mike had been knocked off his bike after
someone threw several gallons of water at him. Glenn and Sheila
just ended up looking like ghosts covered with this talc powder.
Or at least pale Canadians in South America. Sounds interesting
but I'm not sad I missed this particular festival. Glenn isn't
liking the Corbin seat on his KLR650, he said something like "you
know when you are travelling and you wake up in the morning and it
takes like 5 seconds to figure out where you are. Well my ass
hurts so much that I sometimes think I'm in prison." Enough
said.
On Monday we retrieved the bikes. It took all day. We
were told to show up at 2 but we showed up at 11 to make sure they
were working on them. They were, but they had questions.
In particular my plate, SPENCH, never, ever, ever travel with a custom
plate. It was an issue at Aduana (Customs), the lady there refused
to believe that a plate could be anything but a number. Eric
heard her say something like ¨numero en todo del mundo¨ or
¨numbers everywhere in the world." Somehow she was
eventually made to believe that a word can be on a plate. When
we got the bikes, mine had 2 front tires, and someone had reset the
trip odometer so now to come up with trip totals I'm going to have
to do *math*, ewwww!
The good news was that my bike started right up. I was a little
worried about the 2850 M elevation. It's been higher since,
with still no problems. On Monday we left to the south.
We immediately lost Dick, he took a left through a red light, but
we'd already discussed going straight through the light to get to
a main road out of town. We found him 2 hours later waiting
for us at a gas station just north of Latacunga (or something like
that). This town is the beginning of a loop through the Andes
that was reported to be quite spectacular. It was. The
Cotopaxi Volcano was just east of the Panamerican, and some snow was
visible on the south flank, the fist snow I've seen in two and a half
months. The loop is to the west of the Panamerican, and we decided
to take it counterclockwise. We immediately got lost.
Dick was in the lead and took a road out of the town of Sicquilla
(or something like that) which headed generally the right direction,
but had no sign. It quickly turned to cobblestone, and went
on like that for many miles, crossing a hill and dropping into the
next valley. We kept asking locals directions and it soon became
apparent that they were steering us onto the loop in a clockwise fashion,
via minor tracks through the dirt and some mud. I saw my first
llama. And goats. Chickens. Some pigs. Donkeys.
A horse. More llamas. Finally we got on a paved road and
went over a 3900M pass to the town of Zambahua (or something like
that), and from there took a rather long, rocky, and increasingly
muddy (it started raining) dirt road to Chugchilán, where we
stayed for the night. In Chugchillán I realized just
about the worst possible thing had occured in my trunk - my 1 liter
bottle of Amarulla had broken open, the cap had just torn off, and
every last drop was swishing around in the bottom of the trunk.
This is how I organize my trunk, on the bottom is all my important
paperwork. On top of this my day pack. Cushioned on the
daypack are my portable hard drive, my portable powered speakers with
my iPod, and my camera. My extra visor is worked around them.
My shoes on top of everything, and usually my pants too, but I was
wearing them under my pants shell because it was cold out. Despite
the general devastation, strong smell, and sticky *everything*, some
small miracles did occur. The most important piece of original
paperwork, my registration, on got wet on one corner. My color
copy of my title was tucked into it and didn't get wet at all.
My newest paperwork from Ecuador was generally salvagable, but all
the older stuff had to be tossed. My notebook with all my Spanish
lessons was destroyed. My backpack was soaked, and like a sponged
had absorbed much Amarula. One "l" or two, I forget.
My speakers have spots on them now. My camera was fine.
The extra visor is, and will be for a while, sticky. My shoes
were in a plastic bag and are fine, but I need a new plastic bag.
I spent an hour or two cleaning but still need to get my daypack into
a real washing machine some time, and the visor bag probably needs
it too. The speakers have "character" now. Oh
yeah, the hard drive was in a drybag, thankfully. Never again
will liquids go in that trunk, today I started carrying my water bottle
in my tank bag, which is easier to get at anyway.
This morning we rode from Chugchilán out to the Panamerican
at Lacagunca (or whatever). Dick and Eric wanted to backtrack
and ride up the Cotopaxi Volcano, but I refused to go with them.
Aside from not liking the pure offroad stuff all that much, the mountain
had been in the clouds all morning, and I was watching them build
into thunderheads. I was going to head to Banos and let them
catch up tomorrow. Instead we came up with a new plan, they
would ride up the tallest volcano in Ecuador to about 5000M, and I
would decide when we got there whether or not I wanted to go up to.
And they were going to camp up there, which sounds a bit cold.
We rode down to Riobamba and had lunch and asked directions to the
volcano (yeah, I can't remember the name right now, hey, it's only
the tallest mountain around). On the way down I saw another
volcano that is actively erupting huge clouds of black ash into the
surrounding storm clouds, I think it starts with a "T" and
is over near Banos. When we came out of the restaurant with
directions to the big Volcano in hand, there were a pair of thunderstorms
moving in. I was ready to check into the nearest hotel and let
them go up the big volcano, but the town wasn't that interesting and
we had been told there were some places to stay just outside the park.
We immediately ran headlong into one of the thunderstorms, and waited
it out under an awning at a shut-down gas station. It was a
good storm, lots of lightning and thunder. When it abaited we
headed up the road, and good thing we had those directions, the way
was not obvious, and the volcano was in the clouds. We went
up and up and up and finally came out into this moonscape terrain.
I'd really like to know how high we were. None of the bikes
were running well. However we never found a park enterance,
or hotels, so we followed the signs to the town of Guarara (or something)
where we are now. The road down was just as spectacular, and
in 17 miles we went from moonscape to green farms up the steep hill
sides. They'll farm anything down here. Most of the mountains
are completely deforested. Ecuador is the most densely populated
country in South America, and looks it. I guess that about catches
us up, more from Further South later!
Wednesday January 11, 2006 - 04:53pm (PST) |
