San Agustin to Quito, Ecuador
28/12/09 to 12/1/10 663 kms
After an extended Christmas break in San Agustin with good food, good company and time for my horse-riding wounds to heal, it was time to get back on the road again. Saying goodbye to La Casa de Ciclistas in San Agustin and Paola, Igel, Rambo, Costena and Teo we headed towards the department of Putumayo and it’s capital Mocoa which was a few days riding before tackling the notoriously bad dirt road over the mountains back towards Pasto.
We left Mocoa at 700m elevation riding through tropical forest at the gateway to the Amazon before the road veered upwards towards the mountains that had been looming to the west. At the military checkpoint, the soldiers laughed at us when we suggested we wanted to ride to Pasto. “the road is terrible, it’s much better by motorbike. But good luck and happy new year!” So on new years eve we were climbing over a thousand vertical metres on a bad gravel and stone road, so narrow in places that only one truck can pass, up to El Mirador. The road is an engineering marvel, carved into the steep sided mountains of the Cordillera, winding it’s way back over itself, over waterfalls, creeks, along cliff faces where only ferns dare to grow.
All day long we had glimpses of the road beneath us where we had ridden 2 hours earlier, or even worse glimpses high above of trucks laboring up the narrow stone ‘highway’. But it was absolutely spectacular, through lush green cloud forest, waterfalls streaming down gullies, and the grey clouds clinging to the hidden mountain tops. After 35 climbing kilometres we ended up camping out the back of a house with a young Colombian man underneath a microwave tower at El Mirador. This is where we spent our new years eve 2010. No parties, no beer, no music, just some Colombian television, surrounded by cloud forest and an early night. We did however wake up to a spectacular sunrise over the Amazon basin to welcome in 2010!...
The road from El Mirador continued in a similar vain, broken briefly by a short descent, it then continued in it’s upward trend, following the contour of the hills into waterfalls then climbing again along impossible mountainsides, and through unbroken green forested slopes. This road between Mocoa and Pasto was one of the hardest dirt roads we have ever ridden, but also one of the most beautiful.
We were lucky with the weather, blue skies and no rain which would have made climbing on the steep rocky roads a lot more ‘interesting’.
We crossed over 3200 metres and the paramo twice either side of the Valley of Sibundoy and the Laguna de la Cocha before dropping down into the valley of Pasto. Anyone contemplating this ride from San Agustin should definitely do it. It’s remote, it’s challenging, but it’s more than worth the effort to see unbroken forest in the Andes, to drink straight from the waterfalls and to ride this isolated stretch of dirt mountain road.
Fiesta de los Negros y los Blancos in Pasto
The ‘Fiesta de los negros y blancos’ stems back several hundred years to a tradition where for one day slave owners would paint their faces black, then the following day the slaves would paint their faces white and they would share a dinner or a party at this time. Well 300 or so years later it culminates in a 5 day fiesta in Pasto, one of the biggest in Colombia drawing people from the far end of the country and from Ecuador to partake in the festivities which involves covering each other in white talc powder, shaving foam, black, green and red paint in some sort of street battle. Well we hadn’t necessarily planned on being here for it, but there we were riding through the streets of Pasto on our fully loaded bikes being smashed with cans of shaving foam in our faces trying to find somewhere to stay. Not the best introduction to the festival.
I’m sure some people found it fun, but after the first few times someone covered us in a bag of talcum powder or sprayed foam directly in our eyes and mouths, it began to wear fairly thin on us seeking refuge in our hotel room from the war-like scene of powder covered streets that awaited us outside. There were parades of music and floats, endless food stalls, stages for live music every night, apparently celebrating the culture of the region, but we just couldn’t enjoy it for the constant attacks of powder and foam and paint. I’m sure as foreigners we were targeted for our fair share. We weren’t ‘armed’ with anything to fight back with, but that didn’t stop them thinking it was a whole lot of fun. When we objected by saying “ya basta” (enough already) or by grabbing their spray cans from under our mouths, they responded aggressively with “what’s wrong, don’t you like the fiesta?”. Some party we thought. Where you violate everybody’s personal space, and lose respect for people’s right to space, clean air and enjoyment of a festival. But it did seem that the majority of tourists and Colombians were enjoying this strange expression of a festival.
The thing that really made our time in Pasto was meeting a film crew from Medellin who were making a documentary on Colombian festivals. They wanted to film a segment on two foreigners in the department of Narino, and their impressions of traveling to Laguna de la Cocha, visiting the Sanctuario de las Lajas, enjoying the festival in Pasto and last but not least eating ‘Cuy’ or ‘guinea pig’ (as you might know it), in Ipiales. Well as you all know, Anna is vegetarian, and I am not a huge meat eater, and we both have a love for animals and pets, but (and that is a big BUT) in the name of ‘art’ we agreed to try this south american andean delicacy for the cameras!
Alejandro (with the sound dog), Paola, Hemel and Jorge (behind the lense) from the University of Antioquia in Medellin
Well let’s just say some things should be tried once, and once only. The small pets were roasted on a stick over the hot coals until they were nice and crispy and then served up with boiled potatoes. The taste was somewhat between greasy rabbit and chicken, very bony with very little meat and a crispy thin skin, like pork crackling. Luckily I was able to wash down the grease with a cold beer, and the film crew were happy with footage and our interesting reactions. At that point the lady at the restaurant presented Anna with two baby cuyes as little gifts, squeaking like little squeezy toys ‘cuy, cuy, cuy...cuy, cuy, cuy’ (hence the name). I’m not sure if this helped with the guilt of having just eating one of their fellow creatures, but as Anna cradled these two little cuties, I think we both swore never to eat cuy again!
Thanks to Hemel, Jorge, Alejandro and Paola from the University of Antioquia for the good times, the food, the travel, the conversations, the friendships and for making our time in Pasto. The baby cuyes were named ‘Tinto’ and ‘Panela’ like two of Colombia’s famous food and drink items.
From Pasto to Ipiales near the border was a spectacular ride through a preview of ecuadorian like landscapes, steep sided hills, patchwork fields of potatoes, corn and beans and an amazing canyon ride under huge multi-pitch waterfalls, steep red cliffs dotted with agaves, and the narrow winding highway.
It was on this dramatic stretch that we reached another big milestone, 20000km on the road from Alaska. How many more km’s to tierra del fuego? Somewhere between 12000 and 14000 we think, but we’ll only really know closer to there.
For the first time since leaving the hospitality of the United States, we were genuinely sad about leaving a country, this time Colombia.
At our last police checkpoint the soldiers posed for photos and chatted with us for a long time, at our last roadside hotel we ate beautiful trout, warm sancocho soup and filled in the senoras well kept guest book of other long distance bike travellers and walkers who had stayed there. In Ipiales we returned to the Cuy Restaurant to return our adopted children and chat with the friendly owners. (Unfortunately life on the road in a handlebar bag and hotel showers wasn’t going to be easy for 'Tinto' and ‘Panela’, but in hindsight would probably still have been better than a return ‘home’ to the backyard of a popular Cuy Restaurant!).
Amazing the fear that the rest of the world has for Colombia. One year ago, we had serious doubts and fears about riding there. I can’t even tell you why. Fears and doubts based on nothing but the ill-informed international media. Every traveller that has been in Colombia told us it was an amazing place, every person who had never been there would tell us “watch out in Colombia!”. Sure Colombia can be dangerous just as any other country in the world can be, but we felt safer there than in all of central america. The people were amazing, and for the first time in latin america we were meeting and talking with educated young people. As the local tourism campaign goes ‘The only real danger in Colombia is never wanting to leave’.
Well to help with this 'danger' our 60 day visas were almost up, so with a real hint of sadness we crossed the border into Ecuador at the Rio Rumicachi saying ‘adios a Colombia’ and wondering what was in store for us now that we were in Ecuador.
Stories of crazed rabid dogs, closed unfriendly people and terrible food preceded us. But the entry was easy, 90 days stamped in our passports, and before we knew it someone was passing fresh baked bread into my hands from a moving ‘bakery’ station wagon. Bienvenidos a Ecuador!
The backroad into Ecuador and paramo wonderland
From the border town of Tulcan, after only 5km on the Pan americana we took the turn-off at the church with the statue of the man holding the gun, and immediately hit a muddy road which began to climb towards the Reserva Ecologica El Angel. It turned out to be one of our most amazing days on the bike, and one of the best routes for solitude and nature. Once we had ridden through the agricultural land and reached the open paramo, we only saw 2 cars in the whole day, and one motorbike. On the motorbike was the park ranger, one car was a family from Tulcan out fishing for trout, and the other a group of tourists. But otherwise we had this road and paramo wonderland to ourselves - windswept, cloudy, drizzly paramo, low forests of grey ‘frailejones’ (a large member of the daisy family found only in the paramo of Colombia, Venezuela and northern Ecuador), glistening in the rain, standing like sentinels for as far as the eye could see in all directions.
We had seen these plants in small patches of Colombian paramo, but nothing ever like this. This was incredible.
A few waves of drizzly rain blew in and out during the afternoon, but the endless paramo glistened golden in the light, and dark old volcanic peaks defined the horizon under the grey brooding skies. It was a tough road that got rockier and steeper towards the summit at 3,700 metres, and in the thin air the breathing got harder, and simple efforts became breath sapping huge efforts. But while the air was breathtaking, the landscape was awe inspiring. Apparently they have deer, the andean wolf roaming the paramo here and condors soaring the skies. But most impressive is that this is the largest protected area of this ‘frailejone’ paramo anywhere in the northern andes.
At the summit we decided to take the breath sapping walk to the lookout over the ‘laguna el voladera’. The view from the top almost brought tears to our eyes (although maybe that was the effect of the altitude), standing on or near the top of the world we are treated to a 360 degree of endless paramo, highland lakes and eroded volcanic peaks.
But like all amazing high riding adventures, we were merely visitors in this high altitude landscape as we were not yet acclimatised to spending the night at 3700 metres. We descended very quickly on a bad cobblestone road for 17 km, back down to around 3000 metres and the village of El Angel, the paramo quickly giving way to dairy farming and cattle, fields of beans and then the outskirts of town. If this is what Ecuador has to offer us, we feel we are in for a real treat.
Once again the rewards are in the hard back roads to out of the way places on difficult roads. This is the big difference between just bike touring, and adventure bike touring. Our bikes can take us to places where very few people can visit, let alone stay for a while. If people say that it’s impossible to ride your bike on ‘that’ road, then it usually means we can, and that we will have it almost to ourselves and it will lead us to amazing people and landscapes.
Back into the desert
Anna had just asked me the day before “when do you think we will be back in the desert again?” and I had responded “I’m not really sure, but maybe by northern Peru”. Well wrong again! Descending from 3000 metres from El Angel to the river valley and the Pan americana highway at 1600 metres in a morning, the landscape changed from patchwork volcanic farmed slopes into dry white canyons, golden hillsides of cactus and prickly mesquite trees and the dry desert heat. Amazing that in the space of 35 km of riding we went from the grey drizzly highland paramo of the day before, into the dry and hot cactus filled desert canyons, such is the altitude range and variety of landscapes over such short distances here in Ecuador.
Desert flies bit our legs as we took a toilet stop in among the opuntia cactus, dry air filled our lungs, and the hot desert sun began to cook our skin. Not only that, but the people changed dramatically too. Black people waiting for buses, selling tropical fruit juices by the roadside and music from the coast blaring from houses. Amazing the change not just the environmental diversity, but the ethnic diveristy too. It was time to keep moving, and in usual Ecuatorian style after 20 km or so in the flat hot valley, the road pinched upwards through a series of switchbacks and soon we were climbing back above 2000 metres towards the town of Ibarra and then Otavalo, the home of the largest craft and artesania market is south america.
Otavalo market on an off market day.
Crossing the Equator - into the southern hemisphere!
From the moment we had left the BP security checkpoint at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, we have been heading south towards the equator line, counting down the degrees on the maps. We crossed the artic circle on the Dalton highway at 66 degrees north, crossed 28 degrees north at Guerrero Negro in Baja California, started in the north of Colombia again at 12 degrees north. And then, on the 12th of January 2010 with Volcan Cayambe’s glowing icecap accompanying us, we crossed the equatorial line.
After over 20000 km of riding south and a lot of riding east, we were finally in the southern hemisphere! 12th of January 2010.
And just for nostalgia - us at the Artic Circle at 66 degrees north on the Dalton Highway way back in June 2008.
Volcan Cayambe at 5790 metres - the only snow-capped peak in the world that lies on the ecuatorial line
We arrived in Quito, well close enough at the Casa de Ciclista in Tumbaco with our host Santiago and his welcoming family and friends including the Vogels ‘The Family on Bikes’ and joined in the celebrations for Davy and Daryls 12th birthday.
Arriving in Quito is a big milestone for us. It had always seemed like such a long way away. An icon of South America, the second highest capital city in the world (at 2800m) only La Paz in Bolivia is higher, a colonial gem, a travellers must-see destination and the point where many people skip across to south america or start or end their cycle tour adventures from.
At our lowest points in central america, we had often thought of just flying straight to Quito, avoiding the long hot stretches of central america, and skipping the potential dangers of Colombia, but we are glad we didn’t. We were privileged to experience two amazing months in Colombia, an amazingly beautiful country, modern, developed and educated in the cities, wild and untouched areas of natural beauty in the highest sierras, and a lively culture from the caribbean coast to the highlands of Pasto and everything in between. Muchas gracias a todos las personas que nosotros encontramos en la ruta que hacian nuestro tiempo en colombia increible. A big thanks to all the people we encountered along the route in Colombia that made our time their incredible!
Now from Quito the rest of the South American Andes stretches out before us, central and southern Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. The ‘dreaming maps’ that we have carried for so long are now turning into a adventure bike touring reality. It promises to be an amazing journey and we look forward to you enjoying the next phase of South America with us.
Happy pedalling
Hasta la proxima vez
Ali and Anna
