wantPhew where to pick up?? The Quilotoa loop was filled with spectacular verde patchwork hillsides. Extremly rural but with indigenous people farming and grazing sheep and cattle everywhere in the hillsides. So we´re biking along after a morning of some steady climbing and it´s oh 10:30 in the morning. Some mountain Andian people are hanging out ouside there house and get all excited to see us biking by. They wave at us trying to get us to talk. Tina looks over and says maybe we should go back and chat to work on our spanish? Sure! So we turned around and no sooner do we pull the bikes over than the guy is standing there with a shot glass in our faces pouring some local concoction out of a coke bottle. Jugo de Canon he say with a slur. So out of obligation Tina takes half and hands the rest to me to finish, but of course I couldn´t get away without a shot of my own. Phew, pretty strong stuff at altitude after a morning of biking. Not too bad though, certainly sampled worse local beverages. We realized biking away that it was Sunday morning and it seems relatively common for locals to stay up all night Saturday hanging out drinking into the morning hours of sunday... this is not the first time I have been obliged to do Sunday morning shots. We vowed to not stop again and try to know at least when it was Sunday (so easy to loose track of the days down here). We decided to try more horseback riding. It was an incredible ride down some steep slopes into this canyon. Our guide was a local Quechwa and really knew a lot about the area, explaining old Inca sites and beliefs from this valley. We ran the horses pretty much the whole way back. It was really fun but tiring since I don´t really know how to ride correctly (I was only sore for 4 days afterwards). Funny enough, even though Tina is the better rider she is the one that fell off her horse. The culmination of the loop ended at this beautiful crater lake at about 12,000 feet. It was a great 5 day tour of this area. Off to Banos for some rest and relaxation. Well the relaxation had to be earned so we pulled our first 80 Km day and then followed it up with another 80km day into Banos. We were thinking this day wouldn´t be too bad as the last 24km was downhill. Well as it turns out It started to rain and the wind was blinding us. We actually had to pedal relatively hard downhill the last 10 Km. What a trip, pedalling downhill, that´s a first! Banos proved to be a great town for rest, refueling, and relaxations. With really good food, baked goodies, and local treats like sugar cane and melcocha(sort of like taffy). The natural hotsprings proved to be simply divine and amazing for the muscles. We managed to barely escape the luxuries after 4 days of enjoyment. Well after an uneventful day back uphill out of Banos we decided we would takle Ecuador´s highest paved road, toping out at around 12,000+ ft. After a long hour just to get out of the city we began to gain some serious elevation and some awesome views. After a full 6 hours of continuous climbing we decided it was getting late and we should look to camp. With indegenous people farming and grazing the land everywhere we felt it was necessary to get permision to camp. We came across a nice looking lady working in the field. We stopped and asked if we could camp in her field or near her casa. In an extremly shy way she said that would be fine. We proceeded to go with her to the back of her house where she showed us our camping spot for the night. She lived in a small house with 2 rooms of no more that 100sqft each. Concrete block walls, no windows, straw roof, and no bathroom. We offered to share pasta and bread with her and her daughter. She was delighted and accepted gracefully all food we offered. She sat with her daughter and watched us take everything out of the bikes and set up the tent. Other locals stopped by at times to check out the crazy gringos in there small mountain community. With our technical gear and bright yellow tent we could be noticed from far around. They watched with curiousity as we set camp and pulled out or stove to cook dinner....but never talking and very shy about answering questions. It was a truly amazing experience to spend an evening with this lady and her child. To see how simply these people live was certainly an eye opening experience, and her willingness to let these strange smelly people come stay by her house was really neat. The next morning we told the lady we would send her a picture of her and her daughter with their house, they had never seen a picture of themselves before and the lady was thrilled to see the picture on the LCD display. At her request we ended up taking multiple picture of her and her daughter. We then learned when trying to get her address that she could not read or write, but hopefully we got enough information from her to send the photos. We biked to Salinas the next day, a quaint little town tucked in this amazing valley with the picturesque backdrop of cliffs. The whole reason we came to this out of the way nook was becasue we read they were know for cheese and chocolate, we will definitley go out of our way for good food. We visited the cheese factory, in the mornings locals line up in front of the factory with their llams and donkeys to deliver their daily milk. They would get paid for the milk by the weight. The factory produces mutiple types of cheese, two of the harder sharper cheeses we sampled and immediatly had to buy. Finally, good cheese! Sadly, the chocolate factory tour was closed for Semana Santa but we still got a hold of some chocolate. Mmmm, dark chocolate. Now if we could just find some good coffee for Tina. Maybe we will have to go to Columbia next.
-Steven
