Ecuador 🇪🇨

Friends and family edition… excuse some of the editing and poor grammar, it is tricky on a mobile phone.

I eventually managed to pull myself away from Medellin and Colombia and make my way to Ecuador. First stop was Banos in the mountains a few hours south of Quito. Arriving late at night in darkness I was very underwhelmed by the town and it didn’t look like I imagined… fast forward 6 hours to breakfast on the hostel rooftop and I was met with the most breathtaking breakfast views! The town is nestled in a valley surrounded by very steep mountains with the occasional waterfall dropping into the edge of town. 

Day 1 consisted of a day trip to see the various waterfalls and sights around the town. In the gorges and valleys around town a lot of extreme activities have popped up… not sure I would trust the safety of them just yet. Maybe in a few more hours time I would… and with tequila… 

The highlights of the trip are the Pailon de Diablo waterfall and the swing that over looks the town set in a lovely garden. The swing was the original and is set on a mountain top overlooking the town so when you swing out you are essentially swinging out over the hillside with a big drop below. This of course is a rite of passage for any back packer passing through Banos and naturally there are now many copy cat swings with different views and different levels of extreme. Second last stop on our day trip we were taken to the extreme swing that flings you out over a cliff edge with a spectacular view below. I gave this one a shot… very good fun but being strapped and harnessed in by very young lads and doing tequila shots didn’t fill me with confidence…  maybe the tequila helped. It was so much fun! I would do it again but perhaps once the initial thrill has gone it isn’t the same.

Day 2 in Banos things got interesting, with a Canadian couple I met the day before we undertook the Chimborazo hike and downhill bike ride! The peak of the volcano is the closest point on earth to the sun (and the heavens, so it was fitting to be here the day after the very sad news from back home). We were warned about the altitude and the effects it could have, naturally I thought nothing of it and assumed I would be fine given I believe myself to be quite fit. 

I had come from Medellin and Bogota, the latter being 2,640 metres above sea level but we would be driving to base camp and then hiking the final bit to 5,150 metres above sea level. When I stepped out the car at base camp it hit me like a punch, my lungs instantly felt like they were going to implode and I was dizzy within seconds. I’ve never felt anything like that before. Of course I told my Canadian friends and the tour guide I was fine! During the hike I did my best to keep pace with my new found friends (they came from altitude so were at an advantage). 

We reached 5,150m, as far as we were allowed to go without professional guides, and I was so disoriented and dizzy, it took me a good while to unlock my phone and navigate to take a photo! A great experience! 

The walk down to base camp was incredible, I could almost feel my lungs expanding and taking in more oxygen, all in my head I am sure but nevertheless it was an interesting sensation! 

The downhill biking was so much fun, a little tricky on the volcanic gravel but after 8km of gravel we hit the roads and had another 16km largely downhill to our lunch stop, well lunch at 4pm after the days activities! Lunch was simple but delicious I must try recreate it when I host next, soup of cheese, potato and pasta followed by every restaurants own take on beans with rice and meat, simple but effective and delicious. 

The Banos Cascades Bike Ride has been one of my bucket list items, from only recently, but nevertheless I was all about it… on a youth hostel rented bike… the ride is 60km!!! The ride takes you from the mountains through spectacular scenery and waterfalls / cascades down to one of the entry points of the amazon, Puyo. As such the scenery changed a lot as I went. The ride started well at a leisurely pace. I stopped off here and there and even revisited Pailon de Diablo waterfall from the other, and better, side this time. On this side you can walk behind the falls getting soaked, of course I did this! Why wouldn’t you after having to crawl through a cave walk way to get there! 

This waterfall was the 17km mark, 43km to go with some hill climbs and it was here I discovered the bike gears didn’t really work. As such there were some long painful climbs! I just looked at the scenery, gritted my teeth, took big breaths of fresh air (so long as a fume heavy bus or 18 wheeler wasn’t passing) and was thankful to be in such a beautiful place and then the climbs seemed to fly by! And then the rain came… I was approaching the rain forest after all! Alas the bike had no mud guards so the water from the front wheel sprayed up into my face almost blinding me. Every bus stop I now saw was an escape route home, you have to take the bus back to Banos / home. However, I kept saying the next bus stop and then the next bus stop until eventually I defeated the weather and the rain stopped!! And then… I ran a flat tyre 8km out! This was game over… I was so sad that I came so close to completing it on a crappy bike in average to challenging conditions. Then on the horizon, in the town of “Shell” (quite fitting) I saw a petrol station! I limped in and quickly topped up with air! I was good to go but needed to move before it ran flat again. I entered the Puyo city limits and you couldn’t take the smile off my face I was so happy and had thoroughly enjoyed the adventure, also my knee was starting to hurt a lot so I was grateful to be there… ah Puyo is big… ugh.. unbeknown to my smiling happy face I still had a few more km to go to the bus station! I was the only Gringo in town as far as I could tell. A lot of funny looks towards the limping gringo and his bike. 

Four days later now my knee is back to normal. I am now in Montanita, I took an interesting night bus here and surprisingly managed to get some sleep. The town is a renowned party destination… in peak season. It is now low season and midweek so is super super quiet! My Canadian friends also just turned up so I have friends to meal with now. Zero chance of that in the hostel, the hostel that holds a couple of hundred had about 8 people in it so I moved to a nice beachfront hotel with my own balcony overlooking the beach. The weather is cold, some 21 degrees and windy so there isn’t much to do aside from relax and walk the beach. I sampled the one nightclub that was open last night which was pretty fun but only 20% full.

Walking the beach daily I continue to do my handful of trash initiative whereby every time I visit a beach I return with a handful of trash or as much as I can carry. The high shore line here is particularly bad so my impact will be minimal but if everyone who visits a beach did the same every visit  I think we would make a big difference! On the back of this I spoke (again) to 4Ocean and they loved the idea and have sent me a beach clean up kit! M&D I posted it to home but maybe we can get it to SA so I can use it here, Brazil might be possible. For those that don’t know 4Ocean is a company that cleans beaches on a high volume scale, they target the most in need of attention places.