Chapter 15 Ecuador

Start: December 29th, Panama City, Panamá, Stop: January 14th, Piura, Peru
Distance: 1966 km, Total Distance: 34070 km [Map]

We finally entered South America in Guayaquil, Ecuador. We made it through the customs and had a new continent ahead of us. A stumble on the road shocked and rocked us a little, but then the adventure took over again. New Years Eve in Quito, market in Otavalo, high mountains and wonderful nature was waiting.

To Carnet or not to Carnet

The flat coastal plains north east of Guayaquil, where houses were built on stilts.

The flight to Guayaquil, Ecuador lasted only a couple of hours. Outside the airport it was hot and humid and a million grasshoppers flew and crawled everywhere. It was the summer, they said, and we tried in vain to ignore their random movements, even when they landed in our hair. A short and expensive taxi ride brought us to a little hostel with matching prices. It was close to the airport, and since it was late in the night, we took it. Next morning we left on foot in search for the Panalpina office. When we found it we had walked a few kilometers and followed random directions given by people who either didn't know and didn't care, didn't know but believed they did or, more likely, didn't know but wouldn't admit it, something we were getting more and more used to.

Inside the office the few staff people present seemed confused and tired. It was Friday, December 29th, and the last day anything was open before the New Year holiday. Our hopes of getting the bike out of customs had been low, and when we heard that both our contacts were off that day because of a company party the previous night- which also explained why everyone was so tired and unfocused - our hopes reached rock bottom. A young man with sore, red eyes came to our assistance and started the paperwork. The bike had arrived as scheduled and was kept in the customs warehouse a few blocks away. He asked for an additional forty dollar fee for the handling, and I went through the roof, just as I had done in Panama.

We had repeatedly asked our Panalpina contact in Panama to give us the total price, everything included, and he had repeatedly assured us that no additional costs except the customs fee would show up mysteriously in Guayaquil. I demanded they called him and sorted it out between themselves. The young man did, but quickly put his hand to his forehead, sighed and handed the phone over to me. I asked for an explanation, and from the other end of the line I heard one of the most hopeless excuses I could remember. According to the agent in Panama, the reason for not telling us about the additional handling fee, was that he didn't know exactly how much it was. If he had told us, he continued, we wouldn't be satisfied until we got the right answer. Bloody well we wouldn't, but why didn't he make a phone call to Guayaquil?

Instead of answering the question he began listing up how much other companies charged for the same service and how little they made on motorcycle freight. I cut him off mid sentence, realizing there was no way I could get through, said good-bye and slammed the phone down. The staff had overheard everything and quickly lowered the price. Furthermore, they sent a guy off to get the papers they needed in a hurry, and when they arrived, sent us off with a guide to find the local customs chief.

It was eleven o'clock, and the customs warehouse would close one hour later. When we arrived and saw hundreds of people waiting in lines in front of the offices, we simply shrugged and accepted the situation. But our Panalpina guide took us straight through the lines and around a corner to a door with a sign saying "Authorized personnel only". After a knock and a presentation, we were greeted by the boss, who smiled, offered us chairs and listened patiently to Bente's plea for a quick procedure in the closing hours.

Then he went away with our papers and we stared at the wall. After a few minutes he came back out, handed the papers over to two chatting fellows in a corner, who asked me to come over and sign them. They stamped the documents and gave them back to the boss, who went away for another ten minutes. We looked at the watch, eleven thirty, then at each other forming the silent question, "When will they ask for the Carnet?".

The door slammed open and the boss exited again, asking us to follow him to the warehouse. Our hearts made a simultaneous jump, and I asked as casual as I could if everything was ready. Yes, he said, we had a transit permit for five days. We totally ignored the short amount of time we got, glanced at each other and smiled happily. The Carnet issue had obviously gone passed the Guayaquil customs. Inside the warehouse Rocinante was resting on a pallet, totally unscathed from the flight. We started unwrapping it, seeing that the clock was ticking away towards noon, closing time.

Finally, seventeen minutes past twelve, the paper work was done, the gate was opened and we drove out into the sunlight. Every customs officer, warehouse worker and guard smiled and waved us good-bye, and when outside on the street, we shouted a loud JIIIHAAAA!, swerving from side to side of joy. We had cleared the bike in less than one and a half hours, hadn't needed neither the Carnet or any of the supporting documents we had prepared, something which had to be some kind of record. South America, here we are!

Chimborazo, 6310 meter above sea level, seen from the pass.

Climbing the Andes Mountains

It was too late to get a decent mileage done that day, so we stayed in town one more night. It gave us the time we needed to find a workshop where we heated up and straightened the by now bent side stand. The left mirror had corroded and broke off in Panama when trying to unscrew it, but would have to stay in the luggage for a few more days. That night we found a Internet café and later went to see the new version of Charlie's Angels, for no other reason than that it was the only un-dubbed movie they showed. After the movie was over we were sorry we hadn't had a few drinks up front, since it would have improved it a lot.

We left early the next morning, hoping to reach Quito or even Otavalo in one long day. First the road led us through a very flat coastal region, where people built their houses on stilts to avoid water entering in wet seasons, then suddenly the Andes began. We climbed straight into a thick fog, then further into the mountains. My new altimeter was getting a nuisance to Bente, who had to listen to my reports for every hundred meters we ascended. When it showed 2500 meters, Rocinante seemed to loose power. I was sure it had to do with the air filter being clogged combined with the altitude, since we had been over four thousand meters before without any noticeable power loss.

At a gas station I switched the air intake from the left to the right side which should increase the air flow for a while. It didn't improve things though, and now we were steadily climbing along the highest paved road in Ecuador. At the pass, 4300 meters above sea level, the engine was slower than ever. To our right, the majestic snow capped cone of Chimborazo, Ecuador's highest mountain, 6310 meters above the sea, loomed in the sunshine. It was beautiful. Along the road we came upon twenty to thirty road blocks set up by the indigenous people, who asked for money or presents. The road blocks consisted of trees, stones, ropes or whatever else they had handy, and we soon ran out of pocket money. Going downhill from the pass we followed a bus who blasted through every block, throwing stones and wood far into the ditches, landing dangerously close to the Indians. But it got us through.

Stumbling along the Pan American, literally spoken

We were in the Central Valley and in Ambato we met the Pan American Highway for the first time in South America. The going was good and the road blocks had ended, so we felt sure we would reach if not Otavalo, then at least Quito before sunset. How wrong we were.

We are riding through Lasso, a small village some eighty kilometers from the capital. Both are tired after a long day with high altitude changes. It's raining and the road is slick. My concentration must be lower than normal. We are closing in on a railroad that crosses the road in a sharp angle. I am not reducing the speed. I don't see the seven, eight centimeter step on the closest rain-slick rail. Bente sees it coming and thinks to herself how strange it is that I don't slow down or move a little to either side, where there's no edge to worry about. But it's too late to warn me. We hit it doing about eighty kilometers per hour.

The front wheel is thrown to the right. The bike goes down hard. Bente is thrown off the bike and lands on her left hip. She slides about twenty meters into the opposite direction. Luckily there's a break in the heavy traffic. I land hard on my back next to the bike. My head slams into the pavement. The helmet cracks. Rocinante slides over to the other rail, which stops her hard on the handle bar and aluminum pannier. Then everything is quiet. I am very confused. I try to get up, but a terrible headache stops me and I lay down again. Bente watches from a distance. Although she is fine, she thinks the worst about me. We look at each other. She confirms that all is OK. It prompts me to say the same. It comes out blurry and I'm not sure about the truth in it. I'm not sure about anything, except that there's an alarm sounding next to my ear. Somehow I crawl over to the bike and turn off the ignition. The sound stops. I try to get up again, but the pain is too much. Bente is by my side and helps me crawl over to the side of the road. There's several people around us. They are shouting and stopping the traffic. Some lift up the bike and push it over to us. Slowly a haze moves away from my eyes and I start realizing what have happened. Bente talks to me all the time, asking for my name, where I am, why I am here and so on. My answers are slow but satisfactory. Her hip hurts, she says, but otherwise she's fine.

I get up, take off my helmet and walk two steps into a little shed to get away from the rain. I stumble on the way in and dive head on, slamming my forehead into the concrete floor. Bente hears my scream of pain and frustration. I feel so stupid, and am more confused than ever. Dreams flow around in my head. It's impossible to think straight for more than a few seconds before I loose the chain of thought.

After a long time my head cleared and we got up and out of our little refuge and took the bike in closer view. The left aluminum pannier was lying on the ground, totally torn open with the bottom hanging out. It would need serious surgery before being useful again. The left handlebar was bent down towards the tank. The rear left turn signal was broken to pieces when the aluminum pannier was compressed out of shape. But otherwise the crash bars took the hit and not even a scratch of paint had left the bike. Not that the damage worried either of us at the moment. We held each other tight and couldn't believe the luck we'd just had. If the traffic had been as it was a few minutes earlier, things could have turned out a lot more serious. I could hardly think about it.

The new Mexican president were among the many victims in the New Year Eve paper doll exhibits on Avenida Amazonas in Quito.

We strapped the left pannier in place the best we could and somehow got to the nearest hotel, a forty dollar guest house. I was in no condition to keep on driving, so we shrugged at the price and accepted the room. When we had unpacked we stayed in the room for a couple of hours, holding each other and keeping my condition under strict surveillance. I was alternating between attacks of headaches and nausea, and when we tried to eat dinner later in the night, I could only push myself to eat parts of it. That night I went through the accident time after time, blaming myself for putting a life that meant so much to me at stake. If I had only been concentrating the way I should. If the traffic had been of the same intensity as a few minutes earlier, and so on. Finally it drifted away and I fell asleep. Bente stayed awake for a long time, keeping an eye on her husband who was breathing laboriously and moaning in his sleep from time to time.

The next morning I felt a lot better. My head was still hurting but with a lot less intensity. The muscles in my neck, throat and stomach was hurting like I had done a few thousand sit-ups the day before, probably because I had instinctually used them with all the might I had when I realized the back of my head would hit the pavement. My left knee was also hurting from twisting it in the fall. But all in all I felt reasonably fine and ready to ride to Quito. Bente, however, was feeling physically fine but mentally very low. The whole morning she was on the verge of crying and felt totally apathetic and indifferent to everything. It was probably a delayed reaction, pushed ahead because she used all her energy and concentration taking care of me the night before. She admitted that she had worried a lot more about me than she said. Now that she saw that I had improved, a nervous reaction came. I comforted her the best I could, assuring her that it was all right to react like she did, and as we prepared to go, she felt slightly better.

Before leaving I needed to straighten out the handlebar. The hotel was obviously in a low season, because before long I had seven uniformed helpers, consisting of cooks, receptionists, bell boys and waiters. They came out with a three meter long metal tube which we slid onto the handle bar. The seven helpers raised the tube until I said stop. Then two of them took away the bent-out-of-shape aluminum pannier, and when they brought it back, they had hammered it into a shape resembling squared. We thanked them profoundly and when we left, the whole staff was out front waving good-bye.

Good-bye, year 2000, welcome 2001

We arrived in Quito early on New Year's Eve. It was my second visit to the city and with the accident the day before, we knew the celebration would be excellent. Not that we would dive into the bars and drink like mad, my head was not ready for that, but we were very happy and more caring for each other than in a long time. The night before, when arriving at the hotel in Lasso, a man had asked us about the bike, the accident and our travels and then had told us he ran a hostel in Quito. We liked the man and headed for his place. He was still out of town on a guided tour around Ecuador, but his wife welcomed us to Hostal Casa Grande and gave us a good value room for the next few nights. We immediately headed for an Internet café and sent e-mails to Lars and Tini and to Jens, saying we were in town looking for company. Lars and Tini came back a few hours later and in the evening we met them at The Magic Bean, a combined hostel and restaurant in "Gringolandia", as Jens later called the area of town where most of the hostels and Internet cafés are.

Lars and Tini had received their Carnet a few days before and had finally gotten their bike released from customs. A couple of friends had come over from Germany to visit them and soon they would be on their way south towards Peru. As we caught up with our separate adventures and misadventures, Jens and Christiane, his girlfriend visiting from Germany, walked in. We greeted each other warmly and another round of catching up started. Jens looked at my forehead where two big crusts told about my meeting with the concrete the day before. I said we had an accident, something that prompted him to ask if I wasn't normally using a helmet when riding. A long story, I said and told the by now rather funny tale about my concrete dive. Never take off your helmet until you are absolutely sure you're safe.

From left to right; Jens, his girlfriend Christiane, Tini, Lars and Bente, all bent over the South American map discussing routes down this enormous continent. We're in "Gringolandia", Quito.

Later in the night we all went our separate ways. Jens and Christiane had arrangements with some friends and so had Lars and Tini. We strolled the Avenida Amazonas, packed with people and entertainment. Along the whole avenue people had made paper dolls to look like the country's top politicians. Ironic slogans joked with the recent dollarization in the country. Last year Ecuador's economy were pointing straight down into the ditch, a situation which had prompted the indigenous people to protest heavily. This led to a change of government, but also later to a continuation of the old Government's politics. The sucre was pegged to the dollar and later dropped all together.

Today only the dollar reigned, and it was difficult to understand how a country would give up control of their own economy like that. The dolls were to be burned later in the night , so we had a couple of beers while waiting for the old year to die and the new to arrive. Strangely enough, people started leaving the streets around eleven o'clock, and by twelve there were only the hard-liners left. We kissed each other and wished for an accident-free New Year. By now the dolls were burning and firework was going off. Maybe that was the reason why people had left, because the fireworks went off in every direction.

We talked for a while with a group of locals in their early twenties, but decided to head home when one of them was hit in the arm and got a decent burn. I was feeling strange. If you have ever seen a movie where the hero goes through the most arduous of times, being shot at and almost dying several times, and then enters a town with a huge festival going on, like a typical Indiana Jones or something, then you get the picture of how I was feeling that night, limping along in the fiesta streets of Quito with a headache, sore muscles and a scar or two to prove what I had been through. What a hero I was.....

Permits and bike shops

On the first day in the new year we debated what to do next. If we were to comply with the five day permit, we had to leave Ecuador within three days. Since we had had the accident, we decided it was worth spending the next morning getting in touch with the customs authorities in Quito, to ask them for a longer stay. We definitely had some work to do on the bike; putting the final touch on the handlebar, fixing the aluminum pannier and finding out why it was running poorly. For dinner that night we had chosen Paella Valenciana, a rather expensive Spanish restaurant serving the famous dish by the same name.

When we got there I felt lousy with nausea coming in waves, head spinning, my hands cold and sweaty. I hardly got any food down, and right after dinner we left for the hotel again. It was hard to say what was wrong with me, but the altitude and another day of drinking too little water, combined with the recent accident, was our own diagnose. I also felt some kind of anxiety building up inside, which was kind of strange, since I had felt reasonably fine and ready to ride again the day before.

In the morning I felt better and we went in search for the customs. We found them on Avenida 10 Agosto and got through to the boss. When he saw the permit stamped in our passport, he commented that it had no exit date. We jumped and kept quiet about the five days we had been told in Guayaquil. What it meant, he said, was that we basically could stay a week or two without getting into trouble. When we left the office we laughed and amazed at how lucky we had been that day in Guayaquil. Now we could slow things down a bit, fix the bike and then go to Otavalo.

Our hotel host had returned from his guided trip when we got back to the hostel, and was all over us trying to help us with possible solutions for the bike and the pannier. A neighbor car workshop got the pannier and promised to have it ready and fixed by the next morning. Then I was off to find a motorcycle dealer, and after a couple of visits I stumbled upon Racing Parts close to the airport. These guys were good, and they knew several of the people we had been in contact with, people who were going south as we were.

Together we took out the spark plugs and checked everything. The plugs were all white, so we replaced them. The mechanics believed the poor Ecuadorian gasoline to be the main reason for the lack in performance. The day before we had cleaned and oiled the air filter, to no avail, so the options were few. A bottle of octane booster and injection cleaner was recommended as additive to the gasoline. Then the mirror was fixed with a new bolt and the handlebar straightened out to the correct angle.

That night we met up with Jens, Christane, Lars and Tini again, spreading a big South American map on the table between us, and for the next hours we shared ideas for routes down the continent. After a pleasant evening we went home and packed for a short ride to Otavalo.

The center of Indian markets

The colorful market in Otavalo.

Rocinante was running better in the morning, although not perfect. But what I later noticed was that she had gone from consuming 8 liters to 5 liters per 100km, just by replacing the spark plugs and adding the octane booster. It was like a miracle and almost too good to be through. The hundred kilometers ride to Otavalo went through nice mountains and I was looking forward to revisit this market town. It had had a warm place in my heart for many years for several reasons.

Eight years earlier I spent a month in Ecuador and managed to visit three Saturday markets in Otavalo. Seven years before that my eldest brother, Eivind, spent almost the same time here. He was the one who pushed me into travelling in the first place, having done several longer trips himself, trips he often wrote about for the newspapers he worked for as a journalist back home. In Otavalo, I felt I was merging my two bigger trips together, this motorcycle journey meeting the sailing/backpacker adventure Eivind and I experienced eight years ago. When we left the sail ship which had brought us from Norway to Venezuela, we travelled to Colombia together before separating, him going north and me south. Eivind died the year after we returned from the trip, and I will always remember him like I was picturing him now in Otavalo, casually dressed like a backpacker with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and a heavy camera bag over his shoulders.

Last time I was here, I was traveling with Einar, an old friend from Norway. We hang out and drank terrible Caña liquor at the local Peñas, leaving us hangover for days. When we rode into town this time, I had four things I wanted to find; Plaza de Ponchos - which should be easy, the hotel we stayed at - more difficult, the Hard Rock Café Otavalo - not a part of the official Hard Rock chain, and the Peña bar were we tried to drown ourselves in the local brews. The plaza was easy to find, and the market was almost as active as it was when I was there last, and it was only Thursday. We drove around the square to find that the Hard Rock Café was closed - someone told us later that they had been in a name conflict of sorts, and the Peña had changed owners. Next was the hotel, which I remembered was a few blocks to the south from the plaza, but after a couple of tries we gave up. We looked up one of the recommended hotels in our newly bought South American Handbook, Hotel Riviera Sucre, and drove straight to it. I couldn't believe my eyes when I realized it was indeed the same cosy place I had stayed at last time.

We settled in for four days, and strolled the market later in the evening. It was a couple of days before the hoards of vendors would move in for the Saturday market, but even so it was huge and had an even bigger selection than I remembered. We ended up with each our alpaca wool sweater, which would replace the fleece jackets we had carried along for seven months, if not for any other reason so for the fact that we needed a change. Then Saturday came and we bought a rug and a poncho, both of which would be sent home with the fleece wear. During the stay in Otavalo, I had waves of anxiety coming over me, which was hard to explain. I tried to push it aside and normally managed to do so for a few hours before it returned. We put it down to a late reaction to the accident and tried our best to ignore it. A Sunday ride into the surrounding mountains proved that Bente also needed a little more time to be comfortable on the bike again, and I promised I would take it very easy for a while.

Turning south

Volcan Tungurahua, still smoking.

When we left Otavalo, we left the northernmost point of our South American journey. The Pan American led us back to Quito, and for the second time we managed to pass the Equator Monument without seeing it. We rode straight through Quito and into the old city, a place we both wanted to see before leaving it behind. We drove through narrow streets to the plaza, lunched in a little alley, and then left the city. In the outskirts we came upon a student demonstration with burning tyres blocking the road. A little opening had been made by the numerous police present, and we were let through without any problems.

The Pan American south of Quito was at least four lanes wide, but had no lines to separate the lanes. Hence the traffic moved freely and liberal, and sometimes three or four vehicles came towards us side by side, pushing us out on the edge of the road. The going was good and in the evening we arrived in Baños, a tourist town on the foot of the Tungurahua volcano. A little over a year ago, this active volcano had come to life and threatened the existence of the 16000 people living here. The army moved in and evacuated the town, and its people had to stay in neighboring cities. But after three months, the villagers had had enough and fought their way back. To avoid the army making a frontal attack on them, they sent their women and children first, and slowly the town was repopulated. In the beginning they had no medical services or police, since the government announced that anyone who went back into the high risk zone was denied official aid.

Baños' problem was that the mountains had shaped a funnel leading from the crater and straight into the town center. Any pyroclastic cloud or lava flow would hit it mid-ship But the volcano eventually calmed down again, and slowly the town came back to life, the tourists returned. Today, the only visible sign of the potential danger is the yellow escape route marks painted on every street. We stayed for two days, marveling at how the gray clouds coming from the still smoking crater drifted over our heads. The human being is a master in adjustment, but we found it incredible that people dared live their whole lives on the foot of a dormant mass murderer.

When we left Baños heading south, we chose the road connecting it to Riobamba, a road closed for a long time after the small outburst from Tungurahua. Landslides, mud slides and lava flows had cut off the road on ten-eleven different spots, leaving it impassable for anything except small cars and, of course, motorcycles. The first two hours we bypassed land slide after land slide. Sometimes Bente got off and walked over the soft sand, while I gassed it and wobbled my way through. I was happy to feel good about the ride, but Bente was still nervous and didn't like the dirt riding. Luckily she got better towards the end.

Baños had poverty as well, as every Latin American city has.

We bypassed Riobamba and continued south through a wonderful mountainous landscape to Alausi where we spent the night. On one of the local restaurants close to the bus station, the lady told us, when asked for the menu, that they had merienda and nothing more. Lunch! We smiled and ordered. Why have a menu full of different dishes when all it takes is to make one good one. This was something we would see a lot more of in the time to come, small eateries that only served one dish, merienda, almuerzo or cena, depending on the place and the time of day. The dish started with a soup with meat and potatoes in it, then came with rice and chicken or meat, followed by a juice made of one the uncountable fruits they grow down here.

The road to Cuenca was okay, but we had to keep our eyes wide open because of all the rocks in the road, washed down from the hillsides during the rainy season, which was now. There seemed to be no hurry in removing them and making the road safer, but to our luck most rock slides were old and ploughed trough by buses and trucks, opening up the path for us. After a very quick stop in the colonial beauty of Cuenca, we drove on. Now the road turned worse and worse. This was a surprise to us who had been told time and again that this section of the Pan American Highway had been fixed and paved during the last year.

We climbed up to 3500 meters where we could only see the remnants of the pavement. We were riding on pure gravel and had entered the clouds. Soon the visibility was so low we had serious problems seeing were the road led. In addition my by now totally fogged visor wouldn't stay up anymore, which meant I had to raise the whole chin section on my helmet to be able to see anything, leaving my face soaked and cold and my eyes sore from the rain. From time to time a bus came towards us, prompting me to steer Rocinante as far out of harms way as possible. It had gotten very cold and wet, and it took forever to get out of the mountains and start the descend towards Loja. When we finally did, we felt the heat coming back into our bones, and cheered the clear skies that welcomed us.

We stayed three nights in Loja, a town according to the South American Handbook and itself, the musical capital of Ecuador. When we went in search for live music that night, we were amazed at how little there was. A street concert celebrating a classical maestro was nice, but in the bars they said; "Yes we have live music. No we don't have a band." We ended a long and futile search in a little bar where after five minutes a seven man mariachi band entered the stage. The Mexican Mariachi music never was our favorite, so we quickly emptied our glasses and headed home.

Going from Baños to Riobamba through more fantastic nature.

Peru was waiting for us just around the corner, and on Monday 14th of January we drove the remaining part of Ecuador to Macará on the border. Checking out as tourists was easy, then we moved ten meters ahead to the customs. A young guy worked a type writer and then asked for a copy of my passport, which now had a hand written page canceling our bike permit. But since it was Sunday, the copying office was closed. He asked me to come along in his car, so we could go back to Macará, a ten minutes drive, to make the needed copy in his office.

A German who lived in La Paz, Bolivia, had been waiting in line with his car, and when he saw us taking off, he came running. He needed the same cancellation, and the custom officer knew it, but had anyway planned on taking me to town first, then the German. Now he brought both passports along and we went for a ride. The ride was kind of odd, since we seemed to make a lot more turns in town than necessary. He was honking his horn and saluting people everywhere, and I had a growing suspicion he was proving his status by driving foreigners around town every Sunday.

When we crossed over to the Peruvian side, we were, for the first time so far, asked for the Carnet de Passage. I simply shrugged and said we didn't have it, which was satisfactory to the officer. After about an hour and a half at the border and without paying anything, we left with two months permit for both us and Rocinante. We felt refreshed and had more or less left the accident behind us. Bienvenidos a Peru.

Saturday food market in Otavalo.

On 3500 meters on our way to Loja, before fog and rain combined with a lousy road made the trip more interesting.

When the weather was nice, the Andes showed its beauty. We were on our way to Loja

Next chapter