A Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step

Ecuador
The title "A Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step" is a Confucius quote but as with any translation, you never know if it is exactly correct. I'm taking poetic license and I am going to say that "a journey of 10,000 kilometers begins with a single pedal." I reached a lot of milestones in Ecuador; I reached 10,000 kilometers, I passed 365 days of being on the trip (excluding time away from trip in the US), and I also crossed the equator!

Since my camera was stolen in northern Peru I missed some photo opportunities until I purchased another in Ecuador.The following photos were all taken with a little 14 megapixel, 7x zoom point and shoot camera. It is not the best camera but it got me by until I could have a friend who visited me in Panama bring me another one.

Gabriel and Narcissa owned the hotel in which I stayed in the town where I bought my new camera. They used to live in the US and were very hospitable during my stay. They were heading to Guayaquil the day I was planning to ride through it and offered me a ride with them. I was dreading a ride through a big city after what happened in Peru and the city of Guayaquil has a bad reputation so I was happy to have an alternative and accepted the ride to get me through to the other side. They carefully planned where to drop me off so that I would be past any bad parts of town and where I could access the main route to the west. I have avoided most of the big cities, always trying to choose a route that goes around instead of through a city whenever possible.

I headed west in Ecuador to the coast instead of just going straight up the middle. It was a little longer route but I wanted to visit a family I had met in 2007 while traveling to Ecuador and Colombia with my friends Diane and Kim.

As soon as I hit the border there were lots of banana plantations. The bunches were covered with bags like shown above. It makes the bananas grow faster and protects them from pests. 

There were by far more billboards in Ecuador than anywhere else I had been. There were advertisement billboards and lots of propaganda billboards encouraging national pride and stating how much money the current government had spent in city, school, and road improvements etc.

I was very happy to see that in Ecuador there were lots of signs like this. This translates to "No littering, care for the environment."

A very graphic billboard showing a child and mother  with blood on their clothes and bodies as if they were in a traffic accident, yet they are posed as if they are playing. The billboard translates to "When you forget to look ahead, you forget about your family" and the icon indicates a ringing phone because texting or calling while driving is an issue here like it is in the USA.

Just to be clear, there are no firearms allowed at this club.

I was so happy to come across more flamingos. I didn't think there would be any in this part of the continent.  I really wanted to camp near here but I found that Ecuador was a bit too populated for stealth wild camping and that was very disappointing. I could have asked to camp on private properties if I asked permission but then there was no adventure in that! :(

There were lots of big trees like this one in northern South America and in Central America as well. It was so nice to get to where there were trees again after the sand of Peru!

Fresh and cold coconut milk, yummy! There were stands like this all over the coastal areas. After drinking the milk straight from the coconut they scrape the meat out and I would take the coconut meat with me to eat along the way.

The beach scene in Salango during a holiday weekend.

My arrival at the restaurant in Salango where Diane, Kim and I had met a super nice family back in 2007. Fortunately the family still owned the restaurant because I would have been very sad to have pedaled a detour of almost 180 miles (300 kms) and not found them there.

The following several photos are of the family and friends we met in Salango in 2007 each person's photo followed by their photos from this trip in 2013.
We so enjoyed this family and the food at the restaurant they owned was so good.
We went fishing with a relative of the family's in the middle of the night back in 2007 and finally got a big catch just after sunrise. They said it had been awhile since they had a good catch and this one must have been because of our lady luck. The fishing was a great experience even though it was hard to pull ourselves out of bed for the 1am departure. The sea was full of phosphorescence that night, truly incredible.

Emilia-the baby of the family, such a cutie now (below)!

Grandmother Venus then and now (below).

Washington, the only son in the family all grown up now (below).

Washington and one of the twins (I can't tell them apart at all) either Ivanna or Romina then and now (below). I actually am not even sure if it is the same twin in both photos, ugh, I feel bad.

Cinttya and I then and now (below).

Mom Liliana and Dad Emiglio with Emilia back then and now (below).

The girls of the family then and now (below with Mom too).

What a gorgeous family. All of the them are so sweet and happy and welcoming. I think the twins look like Penelope Cruz.

 Emiglio, Liliana and I went dancing on the beach in the next town Puerto Lopez for the holiday celebration.

Liliana showed me how to make patacones, a smashed and fried plantain dish common in Ecuador. Liliana made them better than anywhere else I had eaten them. They were usually really dry, but not hers.

Open air buses were common in Ecuador.

Tubes of escape a.k.a mufflers. I love how the words translated sometimes. Another name I saw for mufflers was silenciador (silencer).

Tankita sporting her new handlebar basket purchased in Ecuador to replace the handlebar bag/backpack that was stolen in Peru.

It was getting late in the day and starting to look like rain when I happened across this gem of a place. There was a billboard for it on the highway so I turned off and checked it out. I was the only one there on this mid week day. 

I asked about staying in a cute cabin but they were far too expensive for me so I asked about camping. I was directed to the riverfront below the cabins and found a great place (below).

This campsite was great! Showers and bathrooms were very far away up the hill by the pool and cabins but I loved this spot regardless. Who needs a bathroom and shower with Go-Girl and a river like this nearby? Unfortunately, this was the only place I camped in Ecuador. It as just too populated along the roads to wild camp.

A bonus of this place was that it came with a Rottweiler guard dog that loved visiting the river and playing in it. He would get in and try to move the rocks and would bark at them when they wouldn't move. We had a good swim together.

The couple that ran this place was so sweet, Lourdes and ...(I forgot his name).

He loved singing karaoke and did a pretty good Frank Sinatra! He cranked up the karaoke machine just for me. 

Before I left Lourdes gave me this incense burner and key chain for a souvenir of Ecuador.

Heading up and over the mountains where rain was abundant and so were waterfalls.

There were lots of places for washing trucks along the highway where the river ran close by. They use the water from the river and it runs constantly even when they are not washing a truck. I don't quite understand washing a truck in the rain but I saw it a lot.

At a loss for a place to camp I was asking around and was offered this schoolroom in which to sleep.

One of the roadside food stops (the end product shown below).

This meal with pork, plantain/banana chips, soft fried plantains, and crunchy corn kernels was $2.00. Ecuador uses the US dollar for their currency as does Panama and El Salvador. It is sad that their own currency devalued so much that they changed over to the US dollar but it made it easy when figuring out how much something cost, no dividing or multiplying like usual.

I had just taken almost the whole day to cycle up a steep mountain road and once near the top there was no place to stay. I asked at the food stalls and they directed me to the police station where I was offered this room for the night. It was sort of a storage room but had a bathroom and shower too! 

It is an awesome feeling I get whenever I have a good view of the climb I just came up like this one!

The weather closing in.

I had days like this just a couple of times. Usually I could stop somewhere before the weather turned so bad, but over this mountain there wasn't any place to take refuge so I just had to keep going. The fog wasn't as bad as in this photo the whole time, just near the top.

Tankita doesn't change gears very smoothly when she gets really dirty. So the worst part about riding in the rain isn't so much the rain but the follow up work to clean Tankita. It really takes a lot of work to do a trip like this. I don't mean just the physical work, that is part of the fun, but bicycle maintenance takes a lot of time as well as the general maintenance of the bike and hand washing clothes, sewing repairs, sewing modifications to make everything more functional, backing up photos and GPS data, purifying water each day, and planning out routes and goals. Often my rest days aren't really rest days because I have a lot of chores to do. I'm not complaining, just trying to explain some of the less glamorous parts of the trip. :)

Tankita is so beautiful when she has just been cleaned.

"Solo confio in Dios" translates to "I trust in God alone." Judging by the other sticker below that on this bus his trust is in God AND marijuana.

This wonderful gas station attendant Consuelo lives with her two children behind the gas station where she works.  One evening I was told a hostal existed in a town ahead so I kept riding. When I got to the town I discovered there wasn't a hostal or any other hotel type place. It was getting late so I asked if I could camp near the gas station. Consuelo showed me where I could camp and before I started setting up my tent she must have had a change of heart and offered me the floor in one of the rooms in her living quarters.

Consuelo and her two children Josselyn and Carlito all sleep in the same room together but this room was available for me. Josselyn brought me this mattress from their room. 

Crossing the equator in Ecuador!!!

This monument is one of many located at the equator along various routes in Ecuador. It is run by a group called Quitsato (http://www.quitsato.org). This group believes that the earth might be situated with the equator running in a vertical direction instead of a horizontal position where the axis of the earth is through the equator. It is a very interesting concept and they have some interesting theories as to why they believe this. The theories were to be presented to the world at a big conference in Lima in April, 2013. 

If you put two cars together you can make electricity!! :)

I stopped to fix a flat on the side of the road and got eaten by sand flies! Mosquitoes, not a worry, sand flies the bane of my existence it seems!! And they are sneaky bastards! I never see them first. 

I stopped at an ice cream store that Luz and Rodolfo own and was looking for the owner of the hostal next door. They told me he was out on a family emergency but would be back. So while I was waiting I had a banana split and chatted with Luz a bit and then she offered to have me stay at their place for the night! They had a beautiful home and gave me my own room, cooked dinner for me that night and cooked breakfast the next morning too!

These guys were working tossing these grains by walking through them and shuffling their feet. There was a great big Rottweiler nearby that came running up on me and barking. I usually just keep riding while talking to the dog in a friendly voice telling him, esta bien perro (its okay dog) but this time I had stopped because he didn't look like he had much conviction and I wanted to get a photo of these guys tossing grains. The Rottweiler, as predicted, turned around when he was still about 10 feet away from me so I called him over. He came over and we made friends and then all these guys came up to me and wanted a photo with me. They all took turns taking photos on their phones. I am not sure if it was because of my ride and all my gear or because I had befriended the "vicious" dog!

There was no sign on the building indicating this room for rent.  I just found it by asking the locals who directed me to some guy's house who has rooms he rents. It was this way in a lot of the back woods places in South America. I paid $5 US dollars for this room, where the bathroom with a cold shower was outside across a courtyard (below).

Quinboletos, a breakfast food that was kind of like an airy muffin with raisins wrapped in a banana leaf. I think it is made with the grain quinoa. I usually discover this type of food by accident. I see a roadside stall or market vendor selling something so I try it.  I guess it seems like food is a recurring theme in my photos but I feel it is a big part of knowing a culture and I certainly spend a big part of my time eating!!! 

This is the map of my route up to the border of Colombia corresponding with the last photo for this posting near Tulcan, Ecuador. As usual the orange lines indicate where I rode and the black lines indicate where I used other means of transport.

This blog brings you up to date on my travels until March 1st, 2013. I am in Oaxaca, Mexico as of this posting on August 7th, 2013.

Photos and blog posts to come:

Colombia and Statitstics from South America
Panama

Costa Rica-a.k.a. Gringolandia.

Nicaragua

Honduras

El Salvador

Guatemala and Statistics from Central America

Mexico