My gps has decided that I am finally man enough to find my way around a Latin American country without its help. The country? Equador, my 9th.
Up until now, my navigating has been via a Garmin GPS, a paper map, an amazing off-line App called Maps.Me that I was told about in a chance meeting with some Dutch motorcyclists, and a holistic approach, which I will go into shortly.
The GPS has basically been the backbone of my trip, as it has allowed me to venture far away from main routes with the safety net of at least knowing where I am 'lost'! It has its failings though, and the main one is cities. Basically it is unaware that EVERY Latin America city is a grid of one-way streets, and it happily advises me to turn into streets I can't, or to do left turns across mult-lane carriageway that you cannot - for miles! Initially this really frustrated me, but now I just settle into the maze and guess which one-way streets will take me the right way. Sometimes (Panama City) I have spent upwards of 30 frustrated minutes orbiting the destination icon on the gps looking for the right combination of one-way streets. On that occasion after being sucked onto a Toll road and being advised to do a u - turn across 16 lanes (8 each way! Which I did!!) I ended up just going down a one-way the wrong way, and then resorting to riding on the pavement to get to my hostel.
One of the other big challenges I have faced, especially in Central America, is that main roads arrive at a town or city and then, like a river into a marsh, just loses its defination and turns into a morass of tiny streets - mostly one-way of course. More often than not, after a confusing and long, slow, hot crossing of this urban maze the main road will turn up several streets parallel to the street where it came in!?
This brings me to my holistic navigation. Basically I try and guess what vehicles are transiting through like myself and I tag on behind. More often, now I will try and string a few of these together, so I don't have to sit in traffic. Sometimes it works ...
If all else fails, random people appear out of nowhere and help if I pull over, or some times even if I am just riding along slowly, shaking my head - like in a small town in Nicaragua where a guy on a motorcycle spotted me, rightly assumed I was lost, did a u - turn then rode next to me and beckoned to follow, then led me to the main road several turns and blocks away.
So what's the deal with GPS in Equador? Of all of South America it has decided not to show anything but the main roads of Equador for some reason, and often it will not even acknowledge that I am even on those, placing me miles away on a blank backdrop.
Luckily for me, Equador not only believes in road signs (unlike it's brothers to the North) but also the roads tend to skirt the major towns too.
So am I ready? Maybe. It'll be fun either way.
