Biking the Andes

Speeding down a sandy and impossibly steep mountain road, I’m still a bit faint from our earlier climb up to 5000m.  The lunar landscape is populated only by lichen and the occasional vicuña that I can’t appreciate because I’m too focused on not injuring myself – a fall here would be bad news.  My fingers are sore from constantly pumping the brakes but I need to keep slowing myself down – both to keep track of Oscar, who is somewhere behind me just out of sight, and because I can’t feel my hands in the damp cold.  The constant thumpthumpthumpthump of the road vibrations are rattling my body, and make it difficult for me to keep my hands on the brakes.  It’s very cold.  How could this get worse?  I round a steep switchback somewhere around 4500m and ride right into a cloud – I can’t see a thing.

We just finished a fantastic four day mountain biking trip that took us from the freezing heights of two of Ecuador’s highest volcanoes, past volcanic craters, through indigenous villages, and down into the semi-tropics on the border of the Oriente.

We weren’t actually biking for four days, just riding the downhills – we had a van, piloted by our friendly and experienced driver/guide, Alberto, and a great dog, Champy.  The tour agency we used, the Biking Dutchman, came highly recommended by an expat family we met in Cuenca.

On the first day, we left Quito early for the two hour drive to Cotopaxi, perhaps the most famous of Ecuador’s volcanoes due to its perfect conical form.  Yo and I had been here on our visit 18 years ago and we were struck by the contrast.  What was then a turnoff in the narrow, rutted, Panamerican Highway now had an entrance, visitors’ center and roads similar to what you might find in any smaller US National Park. 

We drove to a flat area of paramo, or high Andean grassland, just below the base of the cone for a brief warm-up on our bikes, where even very slight uphill stretches left us gasping due to the altitude.  From there, we drove straight up to the highest parking area, mounted up, and rode straight down the gravelly steep road.  Even though I bike a lot at home, I found it very challenging and difficult to control my speed in the turns.  I wondered, not for the last time, exactly what I had signed us up for.  But we always had the truck right behind us, with the option to get in and ride for a stretch, which Yo and Ruby took advantage of on some of the steeper parts.  After the initial steep descent, we all descended down the paved road to the park entrance.

Getting started

Cotopaxi

Wild horses

At the uppermost parking lot on Cotopaxi

View from Cotopaxi

R speeding down the mountain

And more downhill

Our first day ended with another couple of hours in the car as we drove to Quilotoa, an indigenous village high up in the clouds, situated on the rim of a volcano’s crater lake.  We walked up to the crater rim to check it out, but the area was so thickly covered in clouds, that we could barely see down to the lake.  The Hostal Alpaka Quilotoa was exactly what I imagined an Andean bunkhouse to be.  The owner, Patrona, an indigena matriarch wearing the traditional fedora, and her family, presided over the comfortable but plain lodge, which featured a blazing wood stove and hearty mountain fare.  Dinner was chicken/quinoa/potato soup, lamb (or goat?) stew with more potatoes, rice, plantains and vegetables.  We shared the communal table with travellers from big mountain countries – Argentina, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and France, as well as Ecuador.  Dinner was followed by cards (we’re playing a lot of Hearts here, building up to teaching the kids Bridge) and some more time by the fire, with the entire lodge asleep by 9:30.

The next day, we awoke early and after a big breakfast, walked partially around the crater lake to one of the peaks on the edge.  The weather had changed completely overnight and we had a great sunny view down into the crater.  From our vantage point, we could look across the crater to the tallest peak (a sizable mountain in its own right), down to impossibly blue water.  Nothing lives in the mineral-rich water.  Tourists can rent kayaks and swim if they can stand the cold.  I’m sorry we didn’t have more time there – it would have been nice to spend a day hiking around the rim and then down to the lake, a full day trek.  Many of the fellow travellers we met were on a 5 day walk from village to village, which would be wonderful to do on a return trip to Quilotoa. 

lunch on the road

Village scene

Our lodge in Quilotoa

Interior

Exterior

The crater lake through the clouds

And in the clear, the following morning

Snow-capped Ilinizas in the distance beyond the crater rim

By 10 am, we were back on our bikes for a 15 km ride down a quiet paved road to the small Quichua town of Zumbahua.  We rode alongside a formidable gorge through beautiful, farmed countryside filled, incongruously, with cactus.  It was a great ride for the kids, especially Ruby, who wasn’t a fan of the rough dirt roads.

We stopped long enough in Zumbahua to load up the bikes and watch Champy dominate the local stray dogs.  Zumbahua hosts a huge weekly indigenous market, which unfortunately, we missed by a day.  The Quichua men dress “normally,” but the Quichua women, remarkably, wear felt “pork pie” hats, white blouses and woolen ponchos, dark colored knee-length wool skirts, either white knee socks or black lace pantyhouse, and black leather pumps with heels.  It’s a unique Austrian/Andean fashion sensibility. 

Oscar stopping to let traffic pass

Studly British bikers riding from Alaska to Cape Horn - 3 1/2 years on the road!

Next, we drove up for an hour or so to a remote ridge, had a fantastic lunch, then got back on bikes for an amazing descent through high grazing land, followed by hilly farmland whose small plot divisions looked like someone had spread a green patchwork quilt over the mountains.  

Lunch spot

Patchwork mountainsides

We then ended the day with a drive around and partially up Chimborazo, Ecuador’s highest peak.  Our hostal was set in a lonely stretch of paramo across from an old train station.  Chimborazo was right there, but the clouds didn’t allow us to see much.  The kids spent the last hour or so before dinner playing with Champy and the local dogs, and trying to touch the llamas, who seemed a bit stand-offish.  Another hearty, communal mountain dinner and some chess games with O&R, and we again went to bed early.  I had some trouble sleeping, which we had been told to expect due to the altitude.

The following morning, we awoke to cloudless, super-HD views of Chimborazo, so vivid it almost seemed like a set.  

 View of Chimborazo from our hostal in the morning

After breakfast, we drove over an hour to the Chimborazo park, then up a steep winding road to the parking lot at 4800m.  As we ascended, the ground cover went from grass, to cactus, then little grass, to lichen, to nothing at all.  From the parking lot, we walked up a bit, then Oscar and I continued to the level of the highest mountaineering shelter – 5000m (about 16,500 ft.).  For us sea-level natives, it was very hard walking, and we were impressed by locals who booked by us, as well as by the half dozen or so climbers who passed us, coming down from their all-night ascent to the summit.

O&I with the Whymper Refuge in the background.  Above 5000m!

 By this time, we were very cold, and finally got on bikes for our first downhill of the day.  The ride was cold, bumpy and steep, but a lot of fun, and as close to extreme sports as I care to get.  When we entered the cloud, Yo and Ruby got on in the van, but O and I were too far ahead, so we just kept forging on, sometimes no visibility at all.  We made it all the way down to the parking lot at the park entrance without even realizing it due to the zero visibility.  But once we figured out where we were, we were more than happy to wait for Alberto and the van.

Descending Chimborazo

After another drive and a lunch during which Alberto introduced O&R to peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches, we had a beautiful and not-too-steep descent down a paved road through a narrow green, river valley, that reminded me at first of Switzerland, and later, California, as the temperature rose and the farms changed from cows to fruit orchards (pears and tomate de arbol).  We rode almost all the way to Ambato, the largest city in the central part of the Sierra, then back in the van for the two hour drive down even more to sub-tropical Baños.

Descending toward Ambato

Arriving in Baños felt like coming back to civilization after a few days in the high mountains.  Famed for its natural hot springs, Baños is very much a tourist town, filled with pizza places, ice cream, backpackers and wifi.  Our accommodation was at a more conventional small tourist hotel.  For dinner, we had Pad Thai at a place run by some guy from the Bay Area.

Our final day, we got a much later start, more than welcome after the past three days.  We rode straight out of the hotel, down the “Avenue of the Orchids”, the road to Puyo and the Oriente.  It was an easy ride, down a spectacular river valley, with walls rising up thousands of feet on either side, and descending way down below us to a raging river.  Because it was Sunday, and because this is a major road, there was a lot more traffic than we had seen before, so in that sense, the riding was less comfortable.  The highlight of the day was our final destination, El Pailón del Diablo (The Devil’s Cauldron), a huge waterfall that tumbles into a never-ending, swirling pit before entering the river.  It was worth the half-hour hike to get down to the base, and then up to the cave that puts you literally behind the waterfall as it spews from the mountain.  After lunch at the restaurant by the waterfall, we drove back to Baños, said our farewells to Alberto and Champy, and settled in for some much needed rest.

Cable car across the Pastaza River.  No way!

A rest stop on the Avenue of the Orchids

Aberto, Champy, R&O at the end of the trip

The four-day trip was a true highlight of our time in Ecuador, and I’m looking forward to more family biking trips.  I’m particularly proud of Ruby for holding up on those steep mountain roads!