Day 59: Merry Xmas from Ecuador

Happy Holidays to all from Ecuador! For Christmas, we are treating ourselves to the largest hotel room we’ve had yet on our trip. We are spending three nights in a town called Riobamba at almost 10,000 ft. We miss not being with our kids and grandkids for Christmas. Appreciate and enjoy whichever friends and family you are with!! We are thankful that we can share the day with each other.

Today, on Christmas Eve Day we went for a ride up through the Sangay National Park which took us through high mountain towns and down the other side into the beginning of the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle basin. The highest town was holding a rodeo which we stopped and watched.

One of the way Ecuadorians celebrate Christmas and New Year are frequent small parades every day in the neighborhoods. People dress in elaborate costumes and dance down the streets. It is lovely to watch! We saw about twenty santas riding police motorcycles in one parade.

We’ve been in Ecuador for a little over a week now. Moto riding in Columbia was like skiing off-piste, tight trees …. fun, but at times slow and requiring constant focus. Moto riding in Ecuador is like making high speed GS turns on groomed slopes. In other words, the roads here are very easy to ride… wide with well-engineered curves.
We are traveling down the Andes spine in Ecuador from north to south on the Pan-American highway. The Amazon jungle is to the east and the Pacific coast to the west. We are avoiding the heat by primarily staying at altitude. The altitude of the towns we have been staying in has ranged from 5,000 to almost 10,000 ft. The mountains are getting bigger and craggier as well as the leaves in the amazon jungle areas!

Ecuador is a land of contrasts from humid tropical forests to volcanic rock to high alpine ice-covered peaks. Even in one area, we can see verdant green fields alongside dry desert looking patches. We have taken several great side road diversions into small mountain towns….one to a thermal hot spring,

another to a beautiful lake in a volcano crater….

then to a deep valley waterfall river town near the start of the jungle.

One of our favorite rides of our whole trip was in here in Ecuador. We rode up to the flanks of the highest peak in Ecuador, Chimborazo, which is over 20,000 ft. high. We rode up to over 14,000 ft. on our motos. Because of making a mistake in setting up our GPS route for the day, we ended up on a really awesome back road that was gorgeous and felt very intimate with the local indigenous peoples on their farms as we climbed up to the pass. MB saw her first Vicuna in the wild! Can you see them in the pic below?

Some of the Ecuadorian indigenous people are very distinctive because of the unique black or white hats that they wear.

We spent three days in Quito; a large Ecuadorian city set at almost 10,000 ft among the mountains. The historic city sits in the narrow valley while the rest of the city grows up the flanks of the surrounding mountains. Some of the streets would compete with San Francisco in steepness! We made new friends in Quito. Juan and Sol (translates to “sun”) are a charming young couple who live in Quito and enjoy mountain biking and mountaineering. They took us under their wings and escorted us out to a restaurant on a hill overlooking the city followed by a tour up into the 134-foot-high Virgin Mary statue overlooking and protecting Quito. Their friendship was heartwarming to us vagabonds.

We were quite excited to reach the ecuator! Now that we have crossed the line, we are officially heading into summer.

We plan on crossing into Peru in a few days.