September 9
About 20 km out of town we came to a dead stop. The best we can figure is that it has something to do with horses. Rodeo kind of stuff, as that was the only commotion in town, and the roadblock was clearly in town. We were parked on the highway for a little over an hour, but luckily it wasn’t hot (in fact, it has gotten chilly). Ernesto had a truck driver chat him up for a good 20 minutes, and because our headsets were on the entire time I got entertained as well (and helped translate once or twice). Other than our delay we had an easy, cloudy, high and dry 200 km to Cayambe. There was a little sugarcane, but no other crops (the soil is very sandy). Very little trees, and mild topography. It is nice for sure, but unfortunately for Ecuador it has a hard act to follow…
We have to pay tolls in Ecuador. Boo. $.20 each, so a total pain in the ass to deal with coins and change and receipts and gloves… After the second toll we stopped at the booth to try and buy an “Easy Pass”/ pre-paid something. This was all possible, but not at this particularly toll booth. He old us exactly where to find another, but I didn’t understand… While we were gearing back up to head back on the highway a small version of Ludwig went out of his way to pull up next to us in his white pickup truck. “I am Hans!” he said enthusiastically. He runs a campground in the next town if we need a place to say, as he caters to Overlanders. And if we do not need a place to stay, maybe he will tell other Overlanders about him. He was very kind and welcoming, and if we hadn’t already had a booking we likely would have followed him. He said two other USAmericans arrived today on motos. Rad.
We are staying on the southern end of Cayambe at a nice and cheap hotel/hostel whose claim to fame is surely the gaggle of adorable white rabbits they have on site. Ack! It is possible that the pedestrian gate as well as the locked gate for the parking area are entirely for the rabbits and have nothing to do with the security of the guests/guest vehicles. We are right next to Cayambe’s large city park with a pond (including paddle boats) and some serious jungle gym action. Even Ernie and I participated in the slide-swing thing. I went first, and before I actually swung myself over the ledge I asked the kid next to me, “Es seguro?”. He laughed and as he was laughing said “Si, es seguro”. It was very reminiscent of the boy that lied to me about the pool in Guatemala.
Tomorrow we ride to Tababela, which is just a few kilometers south of Quito’s airport. Why? We are headed to the Galapagos for a few days :0 We fly there Monday morning and come back late Thursday. This was not the plan for next week, but after just a little Googling we found some very cheap last minute flights and hotel, and the final piece was where to leave our motos and then that worked out with amazing grace… all the signs pointed to DO IT. Yes, it is off season there and it will be cold (too cold to snorkel??). Yes, we will only be going to one island and only for a few days. Yes, this is NOT the way to do the Galapagos; a proper visit would require a boat that went when and where I told it to for 20-30 days. But that trip is not coming anytime soon, and for how cheap we got our truly last minute deals (we booked just a few days ago), we decided to do it. Ack! My wish list is (in alphabetical order): booby, iguana, penguin, and tortoise.
September 10
After a morning of making coffee with the bunnies, my blonde struck hard today. I knew the equator was in Ecuador, but I never put it together that Ecuador is actually named after the equator, as this is the only place along the equation where they have the space and topography to have understood the rotations and cycles of the Earth and Sun. Like, oh my god, like, that is wow... groovy. Like wow. There are three equator “places”/ monuments in Ecuador: two north of Quito and one just south of Cayambe. The biggest and most famous one (one of the ones North of Quito) is the one built in the wrong place (in the 30’s or so), and now there is a second ~100 meters or something away from that original one. Today we visited the one South of Cayambe, which is no frills. It is basically a giant sundial, made out of cobblestone, and then a bathroom named “The Fake Equator Museum” to make fun of the other facility that put their enormous, expensive monument in the wrong place. This attraction/sundial was built in 2005 by a non-profit research group who kindly requests/demands $2 each to enter. We could have paid $10 bring our motos in for a photo op, but we both felt that was over the top. Despite our loathing of the canned spiel, it was actually quite informative. They have a mission to revision the globe; since the Earth spins East to West and that “North” actually means “left” (as in north is to the left when you look at the sun rise), they want to see maps of the world flipped 90 degrees to the left. The “Global Left” instead of the “Global North”. Cool.
By 1 pm we were at our hotel and host until post-Galapagos. This suburb of Quito is very flat and very quiet - we are kind of unsure what everyone else is/does around here. The hotel itself is very quaint, very lovely, and they have everything we need. Our bikes and gear are secure under a shed, and we have transport to and from the airport. We had a nice chat with an Aussie who is here ready to depart for home after nine years here in Ecuador. He answered our questions about the weather, as Ernie and I have both been surprised…. It is a few weeks shy of the solstice, so Ecuador is getting a lot of sun. We are high, but not that high (few thousand feet). Why is it so cloudy, cool, and chilly? We knew Ecuadorians rocked the sweater thing, but we thought it was that Harry-Met-Sally kind of “they are cold when it's 72 degrees”, not a real 50-60 degree cold. Our Aussie friend explained to us that here the weather moves East to West, so Ecuador gets all the moisture from the Amazon rainforest. Like, oh my god, like, that is wow... groovy.
After we checked in and got all our gear put away, we walked around “town” (i.e., a quiet five block radius - so quiet you could have heard a guinea pig fart in a field). We found some pizza (at a really cool little restaurant), a mini-mart run by a friendly and chatty young man, and we are currently all packed and ready for an early morning flight to Isla Santa Cruz. Bueno.
The jefe (as the staff calls him) of this hotel is a young fellow named Dom, and based on Ernie’s last interaction with him, we think he is a big time stoner. In addition to many other curios not normally offered by a hotel this size and this far off the beaten path, he offers cash in exchange for PayPal payments, so we took advantage of that for our upcoming travel. After doing the payment on my iPad, Ernie went to the office to collect the cash.
“Yeah”, Dom says, “That's good... Yeah… it went through.” He takes out a stack of 20’s. “One…”, and slowly tosses a 20 bill on the counter. Pause. “Two…”, and slowly tosses a second 20 bill on the counter.
20’s are slowly moved from hand to table. With a few hundred in this deal, Ernesto’s patience comes in handy.
Ernie says “What's with the soccer game outside? Does that happen often?”
Dom says, “Yeah... That goes on.”
Pause.
“You can play if you want”.
Ernie says, “It does look like fun”.
“Yeeaaaahhhh.”
Dom might have been the most interesting human interaction of the day, but Jenny of Miami gets that prize today. As soon as we arrived to the equator attraction there was a family in a white SUV, with Ecuador plates. Ernie is ahead of me on the gravel road and I can hear a woman talking to him in English through our headsets, so it was all a bit surreal. She is saying things like “It's you! I’ve been following you! I can’t believe it!”. Ernie starts talking with the husband and father and I talk with her and her sister/friend. Over the next five minutes I learn the following (in no particular order): she is a writer who has come to escape the hurricane, she rides motos as well, she has been inspired by us, she has two young boys and as soon as they are old enough she wants to be an overlander too. I was getting my picture taken with her before I even got off the bike. She was so very sweet and I really enjoyed her energy. However! I am still convinced we are not the droids she is searching for… I think she mistook us for another couple. She said I was on Instagram, and we are not Instagramming. I told her as much, but she said repeatedly it was me - she was confident based on the bike and what I looked like... What are the odds there is another female adventure rider doing this trip on a blue Triumph Tiger? She said she was going to email me and I really hope she does. First so that I can verify that I am not this interweb person she has been following (ha!), and second so that I can nag her every so often over the next 10 years to be getting ready for her trip from Miami to Ushuaia. You go girl.
About 20 km out of town we came to a dead stop. The best we can figure is that it has something to do with horses. Rodeo kind of stuff, as that was the only commotion in town, and the roadblock was clearly in town. We were parked on the highway for a little over an hour, but luckily it wasn’t hot (in fact, it has gotten chilly). Ernesto had a truck driver chat him up for a good 20 minutes, and because our headsets were on the entire time I got entertained as well (and helped translate once or twice). Other than our delay we had an easy, cloudy, high and dry 200 km to Cayambe. There was a little sugarcane, but no other crops (the soil is very sandy). Very little trees, and mild topography. It is nice for sure, but unfortunately for Ecuador it has a hard act to follow…
We have to pay tolls in Ecuador. Boo. $.20 each, so a total pain in the ass to deal with coins and change and receipts and gloves… After the second toll we stopped at the booth to try and buy an “Easy Pass”/ pre-paid something. This was all possible, but not at this particularly toll booth. He old us exactly where to find another, but I didn’t understand… While we were gearing back up to head back on the highway a small version of Ludwig went out of his way to pull up next to us in his white pickup truck. “I am Hans!” he said enthusiastically. He runs a campground in the next town if we need a place to say, as he caters to Overlanders. And if we do not need a place to stay, maybe he will tell other Overlanders about him. He was very kind and welcoming, and if we hadn’t already had a booking we likely would have followed him. He said two other USAmericans arrived today on motos. Rad.
We are staying on the southern end of Cayambe at a nice and cheap hotel/hostel whose claim to fame is surely the gaggle of adorable white rabbits they have on site. Ack! It is possible that the pedestrian gate as well as the locked gate for the parking area are entirely for the rabbits and have nothing to do with the security of the guests/guest vehicles. We are right next to Cayambe’s large city park with a pond (including paddle boats) and some serious jungle gym action. Even Ernie and I participated in the slide-swing thing. I went first, and before I actually swung myself over the ledge I asked the kid next to me, “Es seguro?”. He laughed and as he was laughing said “Si, es seguro”. It was very reminiscent of the boy that lied to me about the pool in Guatemala.
Tomorrow we ride to Tababela, which is just a few kilometers south of Quito’s airport. Why? We are headed to the Galapagos for a few days :0 We fly there Monday morning and come back late Thursday. This was not the plan for next week, but after just a little Googling we found some very cheap last minute flights and hotel, and the final piece was where to leave our motos and then that worked out with amazing grace… all the signs pointed to DO IT. Yes, it is off season there and it will be cold (too cold to snorkel??). Yes, we will only be going to one island and only for a few days. Yes, this is NOT the way to do the Galapagos; a proper visit would require a boat that went when and where I told it to for 20-30 days. But that trip is not coming anytime soon, and for how cheap we got our truly last minute deals (we booked just a few days ago), we decided to do it. Ack! My wish list is (in alphabetical order): booby, iguana, penguin, and tortoise.
September 10
After a morning of making coffee with the bunnies, my blonde struck hard today. I knew the equator was in Ecuador, but I never put it together that Ecuador is actually named after the equator, as this is the only place along the equation where they have the space and topography to have understood the rotations and cycles of the Earth and Sun. Like, oh my god, like, that is wow... groovy. Like wow. There are three equator “places”/ monuments in Ecuador: two north of Quito and one just south of Cayambe. The biggest and most famous one (one of the ones North of Quito) is the one built in the wrong place (in the 30’s or so), and now there is a second ~100 meters or something away from that original one. Today we visited the one South of Cayambe, which is no frills. It is basically a giant sundial, made out of cobblestone, and then a bathroom named “The Fake Equator Museum” to make fun of the other facility that put their enormous, expensive monument in the wrong place. This attraction/sundial was built in 2005 by a non-profit research group who kindly requests/demands $2 each to enter. We could have paid $10 bring our motos in for a photo op, but we both felt that was over the top. Despite our loathing of the canned spiel, it was actually quite informative. They have a mission to revision the globe; since the Earth spins East to West and that “North” actually means “left” (as in north is to the left when you look at the sun rise), they want to see maps of the world flipped 90 degrees to the left. The “Global Left” instead of the “Global North”. Cool.
By 1 pm we were at our hotel and host until post-Galapagos. This suburb of Quito is very flat and very quiet - we are kind of unsure what everyone else is/does around here. The hotel itself is very quaint, very lovely, and they have everything we need. Our bikes and gear are secure under a shed, and we have transport to and from the airport. We had a nice chat with an Aussie who is here ready to depart for home after nine years here in Ecuador. He answered our questions about the weather, as Ernie and I have both been surprised…. It is a few weeks shy of the solstice, so Ecuador is getting a lot of sun. We are high, but not that high (few thousand feet). Why is it so cloudy, cool, and chilly? We knew Ecuadorians rocked the sweater thing, but we thought it was that Harry-Met-Sally kind of “they are cold when it's 72 degrees”, not a real 50-60 degree cold. Our Aussie friend explained to us that here the weather moves East to West, so Ecuador gets all the moisture from the Amazon rainforest. Like, oh my god, like, that is wow... groovy.
After we checked in and got all our gear put away, we walked around “town” (i.e., a quiet five block radius - so quiet you could have heard a guinea pig fart in a field). We found some pizza (at a really cool little restaurant), a mini-mart run by a friendly and chatty young man, and we are currently all packed and ready for an early morning flight to Isla Santa Cruz. Bueno.
The jefe (as the staff calls him) of this hotel is a young fellow named Dom, and based on Ernie’s last interaction with him, we think he is a big time stoner. In addition to many other curios not normally offered by a hotel this size and this far off the beaten path, he offers cash in exchange for PayPal payments, so we took advantage of that for our upcoming travel. After doing the payment on my iPad, Ernie went to the office to collect the cash.
“Yeah”, Dom says, “That's good... Yeah… it went through.” He takes out a stack of 20’s. “One…”, and slowly tosses a 20 bill on the counter. Pause. “Two…”, and slowly tosses a second 20 bill on the counter.
20’s are slowly moved from hand to table. With a few hundred in this deal, Ernesto’s patience comes in handy.
Ernie says “What's with the soccer game outside? Does that happen often?”
Dom says, “Yeah... That goes on.”
Pause.
“You can play if you want”.
Ernie says, “It does look like fun”.
“Yeeaaaahhhh.”
Dom might have been the most interesting human interaction of the day, but Jenny of Miami gets that prize today. As soon as we arrived to the equator attraction there was a family in a white SUV, with Ecuador plates. Ernie is ahead of me on the gravel road and I can hear a woman talking to him in English through our headsets, so it was all a bit surreal. She is saying things like “It's you! I’ve been following you! I can’t believe it!”. Ernie starts talking with the husband and father and I talk with her and her sister/friend. Over the next five minutes I learn the following (in no particular order): she is a writer who has come to escape the hurricane, she rides motos as well, she has been inspired by us, she has two young boys and as soon as they are old enough she wants to be an overlander too. I was getting my picture taken with her before I even got off the bike. She was so very sweet and I really enjoyed her energy. However! I am still convinced we are not the droids she is searching for… I think she mistook us for another couple. She said I was on Instagram, and we are not Instagramming. I told her as much, but she said repeatedly it was me - she was confident based on the bike and what I looked like... What are the odds there is another female adventure rider doing this trip on a blue Triumph Tiger? She said she was going to email me and I really hope she does. First so that I can verify that I am not this interweb person she has been following (ha!), and second so that I can nag her every so often over the next 10 years to be getting ready for her trip from Miami to Ushuaia. You go girl.