I came to this little country of Ecuador just over a year and a half ago. After a long stretch of living on the road, riding the first leg of my journey from Alaska, I was eager to experience a stable and predictable life, and have friends that didn’t disappear in a matter of days.
I picked Ecuador of all places because I wanted to press on with my Spanish studies; so I figured that living long term in a Latin American country would be the most efficient way to bring that about. I managed to secure myself a job at an international school in Quito, gained a work visa, and enjoyed a steady flow of cash in the right direction.
After a short settling-in period, I found an excellent Spanish teacher, Indira, and started taking one-to-one classes in a coffee shop.
Since these studies were the central purpose for me being here, I took our classes very seriously, making sure not to skip a session unless absolutely necessary.
Cracking on twice a week, an hour and a half each time, I made really noticeable progress.
The ‘breakthrough’ moment happened only a month after starting, when I realised that I had just held an unbroken conversation in Spanish with my uber driver for 40 minutes.
This gave me a huge boost in confidence, which carried me through a sort of honeymoon period where I believed that I was pretty competent. But, as we increasingly expanded our studies of new verb forms, and the intricacies of irregular verbs and all their unique conjugations, countless phrasal and colloquial expressions, which don’t make sense with simple translation, I realised that I had in fact barely touched the tip of the iceberg.
After a few months, Indira handed me over to her Venezuelan colleague, Berxi, who taught me for the remainder of my time in Quito. She didn’t speak much English, so all explanations were provided solely in Spanish, which kept me on my toes.
We carried on in this way, every Tuesday and Thursday after school.
Looking to make a bit of extra cash on top of my salary, I took on an English student, Joaquín. This kept me busy after school on Mondays and Wednesdays.
We started from absolute zero and gradually developed to the point where we could natter away quite happily in a couple of past, present and future tenses.
I socialised and travelled as much as I could in my spare time. I was incredibly lucky to be taken care of by Cristian, the social worker at my school. Despite him being a bubbly football type, and me being a quieter, more introspective person, we got along like a house on fire.
He did a really great job showing me around the place. In the first few months we covered quite a lot of ground, visiting Mindo, Nanegal and Santo Domingo.
After just a few months I started dating the school receptionist, Raquel. I was a bit uncertain at first, mostly because she didn’t have much in the way of English, and we were both working at the same place, which was awkward. As her work bestie, Cristian was perfectly positioned to nudge me in the right direction, and eventually I gave in.
Obviously it didn’t take long for the students to figure out what was going on. The staff were rapidly on our case too. Chisme (gossip) is the national pastime in this part of the world!
It didn’t help that the students discovered Raquel’s Tiktok, where she had posted a few lovey-dovey videos of us together.
Ouch.
Cristian left the school to take a new job as a social worker for a hotel chain on the coast. All of a sudden I had lost my best mate…
In a rather short period of time Raquel became my closest companion, and we settled into a steady travel routine on the weekends, generally getting away from Quito once or twice a month. Bus journeys across the country are incredibly cheap, so we could do quite a lot while still saving money.
She’s cheerful, low-drama, and always ready to make the best of the situation. I rapidly realised that she was undoubtedly worth her weight in gold.
A weird situation developed with her landlord and I jumped at the opportunity to invite her to move in with me. There was some shared trepidation at the beginning, but after getting used to each other’s ways we got on very comfortably.
So life settled into a predictable rhythm. Go to work, take Spanish, or give English classes, cook dinner and then cosy up for the night. Travel on the weekend if possible, or set up our stall at an artisanal market (Rak runs a small jewelry business on the side).
And things should have happily carried on indefinitely in this very agreeable manner, and had every reason to do so, except for the fact that one of the people in this relationship was obsessed with travelling all over the planet on his bicycle.
Eventually, my eagerness to get back on the road became urgent enough to start making me really unhappy with my nice, predictable life. Going hiking, competing in a bike or foot race, or heading out on the occasional weekend bikepacking trip wasn’t enough to feed the fire burning inside me anymore.
By my reckoning I had well exceeded my original, self-imposed objectives in Spanish long ago; living and communicating solely in that language with Raquel every day for a year and a bit had given me a significant boost.
So I decided to hand my notice in, and kickstarted the process towards becoming voluntarily homeless once again. Repairing and replacing equipment, scouting the road ahead, selling or donating most of my possessions, securing travel health insurance, moving out of my apartment, and making so many goodbyes.
I had planned to fly back to Mexico City (CDMX) and continue from where I had left off in 2023, but it now seemed much more straightforward to just carry on pedalling south from my base in Quito. The truth is that I was somewhat dreading Central America, with its busy roads and high daytime temperatures; several other Pan-American cyclists had reported that section as being the low point of their trip. By comparison, I can’t wait to test myself on the challenging terrain to be found in the photogenic landscapes of Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
I have every intention of going back to complete the remaining section between CDMX and Quito after Ushuaia, but for now my mission is South America.
So let’s get on with it?
I rolled out of Quito on a Monday morning, and followed familiar, scenic roads down through Nayon and into the valley of Cumbaya, then Tumbaco, crawling my way towards the mountains on the opposite side.
I paused to snap one last photo of Quito, when a local guy called out and came over. Pablo used to work in the naval academy here in Ecuador. He insisted on attaching a fluorescent buff to the back of my bike to make me more visible to drivers, then pressed some coins into my hand and told me to buy a soda. He wanted me to come back to his apartment where he had a fluorescent T-shirt for me to wear, but I begged to be excused. Having waited so many months to finally get moving I really need to feel the world move under my wheels without delay. He told me that God would be my guide, and that I ought to keep to the side of the road and not trust the trucks and buses.
What a fantastic interaction to have in just the first few hours of my great adventure. There are really great people out there, cheers Pablo!
Eventually I reached Pifo, on the far side of the valley, and began the long climb up into the hills. Despite my best intentions, I had done virtually no exercise in the weeks leading up to my departure. Instead, I had had a solid two weeks of reunions with various people, generally involving going down the pub. Well I certainly reaped what I had sown.
I rapidly found myself pinned upon my lowest gear. After a short while that wasn’t cutting it, so I began to zigzag, breaking my climb up into little switchbacks. I knew that there was a little restaurant up ahead, but I couldn’t remember how far. Eventually I got off and just pushed the bike up the hill, feeling absolutely crushed by my apparent weakness.
Eventually I turned up at the place and grabbed a bowl of caldo de gallina (chicken soup), which magically restored some of my sense of wellbeing. I filled up my water bottles so that I could camp, and the proprietor gave me a lollypop for the climb.
I resolved to dive into the bushes and put my tent up at the first opportunity. The steep sides of the valley didn’t exactly provide a lot of flat hiding places on either side of the road. Eventually I found a slightly concealed depression and bunged myself down there. The ground was far from level and, with my feet braced against the end wall of my tent, I could just about manage to keep myself from sliding down my sleeping pad at night.
The next day I started pretty strong, but very rapidly my strength seemed to evaporate, and I fell back on my familiar game of zigzagging my way crabwise up the hill. After a couple of hours I reached a false summit, made myself a jam tortilla (well established roadside nutrition on my previous trip from Alaska), and pressed on. Soon I found myself walking again, I passed above the treeline, and eventually stumbled into an isolated restaurant by the roadside. Another chicken soup, and a decent drag of coffee. Back to it.
A messy hybrid of pedalling, pausing to gasp for air, then zigzagging some more. It got a bit steeper, and I made my last push to the top of the hill on foot. I felt weak and dizzy, and stumbled around a bit stupidly. Passing cars honked, waved and shouted encouragement to me. Finally, I realised that there was no longer any landscape looming over me. I had made it to the top of the pass.
4063m, no wonder I felt absolutely destroyed on the climb. I knew that far bigger stuff would be waiting for me down in Peru and Bolivia, and that this was just the beginning, but for now I could pat myself on the back and know that I would be leaving the big hills behind for a spell.
I found myself standing on top of a great geographical divide; from here it would be more or less downhill all of the way to the Amazon basin.
I put on all of my warm clothes, pointed the front wheel to the east, and let gravity take the reins.
A little less than an hour later I found myself looking down upon the spa town of Papallacta. Here are the most well known hot springs in Ecuador, so this was always going to be a mandatory stop on my way through the country. I checked into a hostel and immediately lurched off down the hill to plunge myself in the hot water.
The best advice I have ever received from a fellow traveller was to hit every hot spring you encounter. Nothing can come close to the delight of being immersed in pools of hot water when your days are dirty, uncomfortable and exhausting. And because this is Ecuador, I only had to pay $5 to get in.
The next day was all downhill. Probably the longest and most beautiful descent I have ever done by bike. Hours of carving my way down through cloud forest, the road following the valley created by a descending river. The climate gradually became warm and muggy. I happily removed layers, until, by mid afternoon I was down to T shirt and shorts.
The road more or less levelled out after Baeza, and I eventually rolled into Cosanga. I met a German traveller, Viviana, who recommended a good place for me to stay for the night.
I had a bit of climbing the next morning. I was very happy to discover that I was in a reasonable physical condition after all. My earlier struggles over the high pass on day two could probably be put down in part to the altitude.
Eventually I reached the top, and discovered that I had reached the last foothills of the Andes. I was looking down upon a distant carpet of clouds, with occasionally visible clumps of trees. I realised that this was the transition point between the cloud forest and the vast Amazon basin below.
I spent a good hour or so of constant descent through the mists, watching the surrounding vegetation change from dark to light green.
Eventually I reached the bottom; A broad river cut across the road, and beyond that point I found myself having to scrabble my way up short hills, before earning brief descents down the reverse slopes.
I eventually rolled into Tena, hot, sweaty, and dirty. I found myself a hostel, and dived straight into the shower to wash off the grime, before doing my customary dance on my sweaty bike clothes to get the worst out of them. I swapped into my dry clothes and hung the bike kit up to dry. I discovered a nearby restaurant that did an enormous, family sized pizza for $7.99, which I annihilated in its entirety.
Lino, a 20 year old German backpacker, was the only other guest at the hostel. We grabbed some beers and brought them back to the hostel, where I discovered that he had started his travels at my destination, and had spent the last year and a bit working his way slowly up by bus, volunteering at hostels to get free accommodation.
Over the evening he gave me a comprehensive digest of all of the bits and pieces I should and shouldn’t visit. My google maps is now very thoroughly pinned with locations down south.
We decided to mess around near Tena the following day, visiting a laguna azul and the seven waterfalls.
The following day I was planning to ride the 25km or so to Mishualli, and I convinced him to come and check it out. He would take the bus and I planned to pedal.
At some point we decided to make it a race.
My bike, sensing that now it was really important to be hasty, promptly broke the chain. I made repairs, but then it happened again. I repaired it a second time and the chain broke once more. Bugger it. I knew Lino would shortly be returning to Tena in the afternoon, and then onwards to Banos, so I decided to speed things up and stuck my thumb out. I got a lift from the very first vehicle that came down the road. Absolutely incredible. You can easily wait for an hour to catch a ride in the UK.
I loaded the bike in the back and they took over to Mishualli. It turned out somehow that I had managed to get myself on the wrong side of the river from the town centre, and therefore had to cram my bike and myself into a cable car in order to get over. It looked like someone had started to build a suspension bridge across at one point, and then apparently had just given up after completing the vertical supports.
I met up with Lino and we did the typical tourist fair of trying to feed fruit to the local monkeys, checked out a giant ceibo tree and went for a plunge in the river. We nattered away pretty constantly about travel etc. pretty much put the world to rights, invented various schemes, and ultimately agreed that the next trip should be done by the greatest of all forms of land transportation, a tuk tuk.
Eventually Lino had to head back to Tena to catch the last bus for Banos.
Top bloke. Hope to cross paths again in the future!
I faffed trying to fix my drivetrain, which remained stubborn, until eventually I just settled for digging out a new chain from my supplies.
The next day my road took me well off the beaten track, taking a boat across from Mishualli, before making a second crossing later in the day at Puni Bocana.
My derailleur must have gotten knocked on one of my boat journeys, because it seemed to have gotten itself out of index. The chain kept clunking and trying to shift down a gear. I was lazy and decided to just leave it, reckoning that I was less than an hour from my final stop.
A stitch in time saves nine. With a loud clunk the chain broke, somehow the derailleur hanger was snapped in the process, and the derailleur itself ended up jammed in the spokes of the rear wheel. Fortunately I was in the process of climbing at the time, so I was immediately able to stop rolling, avoiding the derailleur getting mashed up in the wheel. Words were spoken that won’t be repeated. I wondered which local god I had managed to piss off in my travels.
All the bags off, extricated the derailleur from the spokes, dug out a new hanger, discarded 2 ruined chainlinks, attached 2 fresh ones donated from one of my spare chains, got it all assembled, faffed around getting the rear derailleur indexed once more, luggage on, pedal.
I was hot and furious. The whole point of biking was that I should be able to apply force in order to move myself and my gear across the planet. The bike was the one thing I really wanted to work smoothly. It’s very frustrating trying not to put too much force on the pedals for fear of that sudden, terminal clunk.
I ended that day in the town of Arajuno. A complete departure from the touristy vibe of the previous couple of places. It felt very local, lots of indigenous faces, traditional wooden houses, and lots of rainbow flags flying (the flag of the indigenous here in these parts).
It turns out that you get two choices for weather in the Amazon: blazing equatorial sun, or torrential rain.
Over the next few days the balance shifted heavily in favour of the second one.
From Arajuno I rode down to Puyo.
Pretty standard view for this stretch. Everything appeared even greener with the rain.
From Puyo I took two days to ride to Macas. Absolutely no let up in the rain, got soaked both days.
In Macas I took a whole day off to do laundry. The rear wheel was getting clunky when freewheeling, so I took it to the local mechanic.
I spent the rest of the day running little errands. I got hold of some heavy duty plastic in order to wrap up the bike at night, and try to keep the worst of the rain out of the various bearings.
From Macas I had a fantastic section all the way down to Mendez. A series of peaceful small towns with beautifully maintained, brick buildings, streets free from trash, lovely parks, and even bike lanes. It didn’t really feel like Ecuador. Somehow I had left the third world on the roadside behind me.
The only hiccup was that the derailleur decided to go out of index again. I have no idea how or why. I had swapped my rear panniers around, to force myself to lean the bike on the opposite side to reduce the chances of me bashing the derailleur against anything.
Learning from my previous experience, I immediately pulled up to a sheltered bus stop to make my adjustments, but with one last push of the pedals, my chain broke. Evil bastard.
Regardless, I made it to my objective of Mendez pretty early in the day, where it was time to say goodbye to the low lying lands of the amazon basin, and climb up into the hills again. Not quite the Andes, but a separate, smaller amazonian mountain range.
As I approached Limón Indanza I encountered another cyclist, Xavier, and we nattered our way up and into town. I asked if he knew any good hiking trails around, and it turned out that he worked as a local tour guide for canyoning. Would he fancy going for a walk tomorrow? Sure, let’s do it. We carried on rolling into Limón and he pointed me towards a good hostel, then we grabbed some dinner and nattered about life.
We went off for a mess around in the hills the next day.
By the time I set off again after our day of exploring, I had more or less gotten to know the man’s whole life story.
More climbing, over to Gualaquiza.
Next day, I attempted to go to Yantzaza, but got my first puncture. Kind of a weird moment, because I had had a bite to eat at a bus shelter, near a statue of the Virgin Mary on a raised dais. I glanced up at her and thought to myself ‘I wonder if she has any power all the way out here in the sticks?’ Directly afterwards, puncture on the rear tyre. Interesting?
After faffing around in the sun sorting out the puncture I got moving again. The rear brake was now rubbing on the rim, and the derailleur had decided to get itself out of index again somehow. I detached the brakes, opting to do a proper job when I got somewhere more comfortable, and fiddled with the derailleur once again, until it ran smoothly.
Pedaled up a hill and found myself looking upon a rather pleasant bar, made of wood, like a covered patio with open sides. Could I possibly put my tent up in the back garden in order to stay and have a few? Yes? Nice.
The next day it occurred to me that I hadn’t passed a single day without alcohol since Arajuno, and not a day without a cigarette since Tena. This was not good news at all. These sorts of things can quietly creep up on you if you let them. I had begun many of my days with the firm intention of not partaking in neither a drop, nor a puff, and yet I had repeatedly caved in.
It can really wear away your self esteem, feeling like you are ruled by a substance. Over my time in Ecuador I really haven’t fought particularly hard for my health, often readily leaning on food, alcohol, nicotine, and those brain-rotting short videos on Youtube and Instagram, as means of passing time.
So I decided that I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t a slave to these things, that I could find a reasonable balance, and regain some self respect through my own discipline. I realised that everyone that I had met on the road had been practicing some form of moderation or other: Viviana in Cosanga no longer drank, Lino was a vegetarian, and only drank when other people were doing so, Xavier used to drink, smoke, and abuse substances, but now was completely sober. Out of all of these people I was consistently the person with the least healthy lifestyle.
Xavier had told me that every day he wakes up, goes for a run and repeats to himself ‘don’t drink, don’t do drugs’ several times. I decided to adopt my own version of his idea and told myself ‘don’t drink, don’t smoke’ three times, then finished with ‘-and feel good’.
It’s crazy how the brain works. Both positive and negative messaging is so powerful in imprinting new behaviours. The first few days were pretty hard, full of anxiety and a powerful thirst that couldn’t be quenched by soft drinks. All those sorts bad memories of something painfully embarrassing that sometimes come unbidden to your mind late at night when you are trying to sleep, driving you into a state. I kept reminding myself to just chill, that I was doing a good job. Keep going.
I pushed on through Yantzaza. An absolute hole. The first place that I’ve seen on this trip that I positively disliked. Everything was under construction, heavy machinery kicking up dust from incomplete dirt roads. I felt pretty vulnerable riding along as a tiny little cyclist amid the turmoil.
Upon leaving the next day, I found myself in the midst of more heavy goods vehicles and construction machinery. Drivers were barely moving over while passing, leaning on the horn as they came past. One in particular was carrying rebar, for concrete construction. As it brushed past me, the steel rods hung over the side whistled past at chest height. I didn’t need much imagination to envisage being unceremoniously turned into a human kebab skewered halfway down the length.
I opted to cross the river for a spell crawling my way along muddy farm trails.
All down the river bank I could see that there were major construction efforts underway. Heavy diggers worked upon earthen dykes to redirect the river flow. Industrial pumps worked to remove water from newly isolated sections.
I crawled my way slowly through the mud in the pouring rain, past overflowing streams, for 20 kilometers or so. Eventually I decided to just take my chances rejoining the blacktop and pushing on to Zamora.
The traffic was a bit better now, most of the construction around Yantzaza was behind me. I couldn’t help but notice the shape of mountains looming ahead. I was finally arriving back at the feet of the Andes again.
Here in Zamora I would be climbing around 3000m up to Loja, before turning south again for the border with Peru.
But all in good time. First I reckoned it was time for me to take a long fat break over the weekened, while the whole country rushed all over the place to vote in the presidencial elections.
