Into Ecuador

Ecuador. The name alone evokes hot steamy jungles dripping with poisonous snakes, face-slapping exotic bugs and palm fringed white beaches. My reality might argue with this as I sit here in a fog that that is more chowder than soup, and temperature that has me wrapped in thermal underwear I didn’t think to see at least until the higher latitudes of Patagonia. And I’m on to my 3^rd roll of dunny paper for my leaking nose.

But I digress. We crossed the boarder into Ecuador with little challenges. After a 5 day marathon in the purgatory of Peruvian customs to get the bike I approached this first boarder crossing with something close to reservations. Short of having to stand by while the Ecuadorian fellow finished his lunch, a frighteningly quick inspection of the bike and we were through. The customs fellow almost signing the last paper from his car window, he clearly had a hot date lined up.

Once into the country we plotted our next leg. I had heard of a great ride from the boarder  north and away we went. The twistys began and the clouds fell in sync with the rain. From 1000kms of boring straight  Pan-American highway this was my personal sliver lining that wasn’t to be. The fog got so think it was hard to even get close to the posted 40km/h. 

Soup on an otherwise great road

Above the clouds

Up until then the road was a brand new ribbon of freshly laid tarmac, winding its snake like way through the densely jungled, steep sided mountains of the lower Andes. Nothing but a tease to my rear braking ways. But things got pretty exciting pretty soon as the fresh road disintegrated into muddy slush, newly churned by the road workers currently taking shelter in last gas station for who knows.

Not happy in the wet weather gear!

Now a small admission might be due here. I’m not so good on the dirty stuff. I like the fast corners, late braking cheap thrills of the black-top and the plan was to slowly ingratiate myself into the muddy stuff, especially with a fully loaded bike complete with a wife suffering my abuse at the road through the helmet intercom. The next couple of hours turned my pristine brand new motorbike into something I am kind of proud of, a real touring bike!

But cut to the chase, we had an appointment to keep that we now had to hustle towards. The result was the need to stick to the torture of the E25 main Ecuadorian highway north. A heady blend of carbon monoxide, crazy overtaking techniques and my own personal game of traffic frogger with the overloaded trucks. 3 days, numerous rain showers and uncountable close calls later we finally start the climb into the cloud forest where we had organised a week or so volunteering in a bird sanctuary/lodge. I should have taken more notice of the adjectives, ‘cloud forest’. We met the man in the small quaint, rain soaked town of Mindo who gave us directions to the lodge. What followed was a road that made the previous muddy track feel like a German autobahn. Once upon a time it was the main road from Quito, the capital of Ecuador. This would have been around the time of the Romans I think. Now it was a slippery, muddy goat track skirting precipitous drops into the wet depths of Hades. At one point I think my training as a whitewater rafting guide came in handy.

I am happy to report that the score of Mark vs gravity is still well in my favour. What I didn’t count on was the cold, both temperature and that expelling itself from my body. For the last 10 days we have been doing odd jobs around the lodge, mine mainly focusing on marketing the property strangely enough. Carlie has been busy in the kitchen and teaching English while every chance we get we get out to checkout the amazing bird life. What the owner dosent know about birds either isn’t worth knowing or would be boring enough to comatose David Attenborough. And he is a great photographer, so good in fact that even I managed to snap a couple of worthy bird shots in his company!

action shot!

some of the guys!

one of three sorts of toucans

a romantic shot

Finally the weather has turned enough to inspire us to head onward. Carlie has booked us a couple of tickets to the Galapagos where we will spend a week or so in the footsteps of Darwin, whose weighty tome I have now made myself a challenge of to digest in readiness. So the bike has copped a clean, a minor service and a stern talking to in preparation of the road out of here. Or maybe it was me that got the stern talking to, I really have to learn to turn the intercom off on the dirt roads!

moto taxis = no lanes

my next steed?

in sunnier times!