Laguna de Quilotoa

 

 

This is Laguna de Quilotoa, a pretty awesome crater lake, 250m deep which last erupted 800 years ago. I arrived here after spending a few average days in the river towns of Misahualli and Banos from the Amazon. I wanted to see the lake first hand after seeing some impressive photos and to get some hiking and altitude acclimatization in for a volcano hike the following week. The steep isolated ascent from the highway to the lake at 3,900 m.a.s.l was pretty cool through the small Andean hillside villages as the fresh winds became colder by the minute.

 

 

  

 

 

 

I met a few travelers on arrival, who I spent the next few days with. We hiked down to the still waters at the lakes surface from the town and back up the first afternoon.

 

 

 

The following morning with better weather conditions we hiked the rim in four hours ascending and descending the dirt tracks, watching the colour of the water changing as the clouds and sun moved across it.

 

 

Local Andean communities, always in hats and seeming to suffer little from the harsh and cold climate.

 

 

I met Andi and Ellen, a lovely New Zealand couple here on the ride up to Quilotoa. They were riding south from Alaska at a slow pace and had a lot of stories to share. We rode on together after the lake, only for a day unfortunately as I was keen to hike up a mountain.

Breaks in the countryside, all the time in the world

 

 

 Central Ecuador's flowing countryside

 

 

Ecuador, the beautiful country

 

 

Laguna de San Pedro

 

I hadn't given much thought to Ecuador before arriving but it quickly seemed like a country to spend some slow time in. From the crossing, the pace and people reminded me of Guatemala. There's a large indigenous presence, colourful clothing and soaring mountains. There's a warm calmness to the people who have plenty of time to chat. I was handed a map from the tourism board at the border and decided here was where I would enter the Amazon, the paved roads lead deep into Ecuador's slice of the rainforest of rainforests. It's a small country with an impressive landscape - the Andes cut through the country from north to south and climb significantly from the Colombian heights including several active volcanoes, the Galapagos islands west of the mainland is a wildlife haven and an important place in Darwin's studies on evolution and almost half the country in part of the greater Amazon. Relative to size, it's the most biodiverse nation in the world. It's also the worlds largest producer of bananas. They have a healthy growing economy and a significant reduction in extreme poverty in the past decade.  The roads are in great condition, easy to navigate and the petrol is the cheapest I've found by far, 55c a litre for the high octane.       

  

 

 

From bending through the mountains for a few hours I stop in Otavalo for a couple days. I ride out to a couple nearby lakes and try the local delicacy -  guinea pig, reminding me of tender roasted rabbit. The Saturday morning animal market is interesting and disturbing where all sorts are tied to stakes, squealing and moaning and sold off.   

 

 

 

Obligatory stop when crossing the Equator with a foot in each hemisphere

 

 

I stop in high altitude Quito for a few days, it's a relaxed place as far as capital cities go and gives me time to see a couple of museums, wander through the old town and visit the bike shop and order a few parts, new tyres and get a couple things repaired. Sebastian and the boys in the workshop are super helpful. We agree on a suitable set of tyres for the roads ahead and I meet Sebastian and motorcycle friends for a beer one evening to discuss my experiences travelling north and what to expect south of here. I also meet Fabian, a motorcyclist and photographer who shared his impressive South American photos with me and a group of travelling Brazilians one evening. The mixed hostel group and cool staff also made Quito entertaining and relaxing.  

 

Once sorted for a return loop to Quito in a few weeks for tyres I make the journey east to one of the larger Amazon towns, El Coca. The city turns to suburbs, then through the dry, brown and open mountains into wet and green flat lands as I reach the beginning of the Amazon. There's a few lookouts which offer views over the rainforest canopy for as far as the eye can see. Humidity sets in as I reach a small town at dusk, pushing on to El Coca the following morning. The insects are biting, the living a little simpler and the meals now just a big pile of rice, a plantain or yuca and a piece of chicken or fish. I'm directed to the port at the town and am approached by Raul and we chat for a while watching the river  boats come in. The town sits at the convergence of three rivers, the principal being the the Rio Napo which begins high in the snowmelt of the Ecuadorian Andes, crosses into Peru and eventually joins the mighty Amazon in Brazil. Raul introduces me to Juan, a quiet and gentle man who worked for 20 years as a guard for one of the protected areas of the jungle. He monitored the river traffic from a hut and was on the lookout for illegal loggers trying to exploit the rainforest, mainly coming in from Colombia. Juan agreed to take me into the jungle for a few days, camp at the hut with his ex-colleagues, and explore what the pristine primary forest has to offer.         

 

 

We met the following morning and took off on a river boat with food, water and a machete -  four hours east along the Napo towards the Yasuni protected area and the hut by the river.  

 

These trees are in abundance, shooting over 70 metres into the sky with huge webbed bases. If the canyons in the southern U.S. made me feel small and the open seas into Colombia made me feel weak, being here really made me feel like a dot in the universe. This is the richest ecosystem on the planet, home to a third of all the earth's life forms and a fifth of the world's birds. It's 8 million square kilometres in size where there's more plant species in a single hectare than in all of Europe. Because it lies on the equator the climate barely changes all year round and its stable environment allows plants and animals to thrive. It's so dense that only 2% of sunlight makes it to the jungle floor and its plants produce 20% of the world's oxygen. It's importance and brilliance goes on and on. The daily energy generated by the sun shining over the Amazon is equivalent to 6 million atomic bombs.   

Juan takes me out for a night walk the day we reach the hut and somehow spots this snake. Over the following few days we fish and take hikes and his love for the jungle shows as he tries to point out as much as possible. What interested me most is how humans have forever lived here prosperously with a resourceful and sustainable respect for its capabilities, its food sources and medicinal offerings. To the indigenous, the jungle serves as its supermarket, pharmacy and church. Juan picks a dry fruit which tasted like smoked mussels.     

 

We open up these plants, there's ants running inside, a source of protein, they have a strong, sweet acidic flavour like eating a whole lemon

Juan cuts down this tree which retains water very well and is used if lost in the jungle and in need of fresh water. There's also shells used to whistle into if lost as well as a certain hollow tree base used to knock the machete against to communicate.

Juan cuts into the Sangre de Drago 'Blood of the Dragon' tree which pisses out a red liquid as deep as human blood. He cups it in a leaf. It's the most bitter taste I've experienced. It's used to soothe stomach aches. There's so much more just in this small patch of jungle, a tree oil used for shampoo, tea leaves, a liquid used in darts to stun animals, jungle viagra, insects to eat. We visit an indigenous community one morning and I sample the fermented sweet potato with a decent alcohol content which to some village women is their only source of food and drink.

I'm lucky enough to spot a lot of wildlife, this coral snake, a deer nearby the hut, woodpeckers, toucans, howler monkeys, turtles and hundreds of parrots which come to feed in the mineral waters every morning. We head out searching for caiman (alligator family) one night in the boat and spot one on the river bed, a pair of bright red eyes on a hunt. It dips into the water as we approach and it bumps the boat seconds later.

 

 

Fishing on the Napo, we only manage to catch one small Bagre which we eat for breakfast

 

 

Visit to a turtle conservation project, at this size they're easy prey and numbers are dwindling so the project tanks allow the turtles to grow big enough to defend themselves before they are set into the wild.

 

 

After leaving Juan and returning to El Coca for a  night I spend the next day riding west in the rain. I stop under some shelter for a while during a heavy downpour and am approached by this group of siblings and cousins leaving the nearby school who annoy Sixto for a while and eat all my biscuits. A fun experience in the jungle, I hope to return further down the track.

 

San Agustin-Mocoa-Pasto-Ipiales

I wander in to the next notable town, San Agustin, to visit the archaeological park and the stone sculptures of Gods and mythical animals of a little known ancient culture of the 1st-8th century A.D., carved in honour of the link with their ancestors and their spiritual powers. The ride in through a winding deep valley was fun and I stayed at a quiet Swiss-run place in the hills, setting up the tent for a few days. The lively market was also an interesting place to spend time chatting to old men over coffee and load up on soup entrees and a rice, vegetable and meat dish which the Colombians seem to do well.  

 

 

After riding on and spending a couple days in Mocoa, an Amazon gateway town, I take off for the long infamous road to Pasto which I'd read much about, the surface wouldn't be too much of a problem as long as I didn't experience heavy rains. I left early on a clear morning and hoped for the best. The dramatic 80km path is known locally as the devil's trampoline, the road is continuously twisting and climbing through the valleys of the Cordillera Central, inclining 3,000m before finishing lower at Pasto. 

  

 

 

For hours I slowly ride the gravel and dirt one-lane road, choosing my path carefully and listening out for trucks approaching the blind corners. I'd read a few stories about landslides and trucks falling off the cliff.   

 

 

Gentle waterfalls and shallow rivers dominated the path, never too deep to cause a problem

 

 

 

A memorial to the Virgin Mary in the cloud forest, locals stop to light a candle and pray. From this point near the top my camera stops working, because of the humidity I think and I miss photo opportunities of the mile long hairpins hugging the mountain where the road meets within 30m on the other side and the cliffs which fall hundreds of metres. I cruise beneath overhanging cliffs and ride through the misty clouds which makes it difficult to see oncoming trucks, watching out for the faint headlights. They always seem to be in a hurry and assume I'll just simply pull over into the soft gravel on the road's edge. The summit at over 3,000 metres includes a police bunker and a coffee break in the light rain.  

 

 

 

Sixto against the carved out Andes 

 

I take breaks at the beautiful Laguna de la Cocha for a coffee and at a farmhouse with a sign for trout for sale. The lovely old lady invites me into her house and proudly shows me her trout smoking set up in the back room before I buy a large one for snacking on for the following days. Finally I reach the asphalt after descending through the clouds. I spent my last night in Colombia in Pasto, one of the most miserable highway towns I can recall - barred up convenience stores, rubbish littering the streets, vandalism, nothing but fried chicken for dinner, shady characters roaming the streets. It reminds me of the grim and uninviting highway towns I've stopped in when I ride till dark and stop at the nearest hotel sign - Yazoo City, Mississippi; Orange Walk, Belize; Guaimaca, Honduras come to mind.

 

 

 

Stunning Las Lajas church built in the valley in Ipiales on the Ecuadorian border

 

Colombian days

 

 

 

I spend my first days in South America in Cartagena, the port town where the boat arrives. Although my first impressions are unwelcoming, typical of busy port towns that act as a gateway to a continent, I enjoy wandering around the city and having a few beers on land and getting comfortable with the new surroundings. During the Spanish era Cartagena served as the principal trade and slave port and it's said to be one of the most beautiful cities in South America. The nights in the old town give an atmosphere of old Europe. Arriving on a long weekend means I have to hang around a extra few days to get through the drawn out customs clearance before meeting the majority of the sailboat group further along the coast in Santa Marta ready for a short trek into the popular Tayrona National Park.  

 

 

 

The beaches here at Tayrona are stunning, I take my tent in and camp for the first time in a while and soak up some lazy days along the beaches and recharge the body before finally leaving the Caribbean sea after following and returning to its shores for months. 

From my first days in Colombia, the place seems a paradox of sorts, 'it's very political, very complicated' I'm told by several locals. A historical backdrop of violence and tragedy set amongst streets full of gentleness, a genuine friendliness and dancing. A street guide in Medellin tells us that Colombians have short memories, if not they couldn't smile and dance so happily and free with all that they've endured. The system is fuelled by corruption yet the police saturate the streets and patrol the highways. The disparity of wealth is pretty clear when riding, the cities and bigger towns look quite comfortable, then there's the shanty towns along some of the highways and the sleepy uninspiring villages.  

 

It's history is a story of war, bloodshed and tradegy – the Spanish conquest, the fight for independence, the 50 year civil war between guerrillas, paramilitaries, and the army and the drug fuelled violence of the 80’s and 90’s . The Spanish arrived in 1499, setting up a colony containing indigenous communities, Spanish invaders and African slaves. By the 17^th century there were more slaves than indigenous Americans here. Bogota became the capital of the Spanish New World kingdom in 1717.

 

Simon Bolivar, El Libertador, the independence hero of Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia leads battles against Spanish troops in northern South America for several years and eventually conquers and founds the Republic of Colombia in 1819. He abandons his presidency a decade later, gambles his money away and died of tuberculosis shortly after. Since independence Colombia has suffered unceasing civil wars and revolutions, the US take advantage of the infighting at the turn of the 20^th century and set Panama, then a Colombian province independent in order to build and control the canal.

Although the coffee trade brings an economic boom the past century involves more civil wars, divided citizens and a military intervention. In an attempt to stabilize society and curb the violence, the two parties agreed to share power for a 16 year period in the 50’s and 60’s, alternating presidency every four years, disallowing any other party from entering and therefore sowing the seeds for the Leftist insurgents and the emergence of the FARC amongst other lesser known guerilla groups. What began as a voice for the exploited indigenous and working class in the countryside aiming to redistribute land and wealth more than five decades ago, the Marxist rebel groups are now blamed for preventing the nation’s development. Their socialist ideals are contradicted with kidnappings and their involvement in the cocaine trade which funds their cause and activities, exploiting those they set out to protect.     

 A recent battle, just another, involves the boom of global cocaine demand and with it the rise of Pablo Escobar in the 1980’s. At a wealth of over $20 billion he had enough power to be voted into the senate and even offered to pay off the country’s entire foreign debt. The coca leaf only grows in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, in the high elevation, temperate climate of the Andes. Colombia is again the biggest producer of the processed drug which is increasingly demanded by the developed West. Of the two tours I took in Medellin, the underlying result of cocaine production is that Colombia gets the short end of the stick in many ways. The trade funds the guerilla movement here and sustains the continual violence and terrorism, its lucrative opportunities keeps rival gangs killing and murdering each other and as the demand increases, the U.S. offers more military aid and puts more and more pressure on the Colombian government to eradicate the growth of the coca leaves, resulting in spraying vast areas of Andean land and destroying crops and damaging soils in its path, affecting the livelihood of the farmers. The farmers are then push towards involvement in the drug to sustain themselves as agriculture becomes more at risk.

Nowadays, the drug violence seems to have reduced and is less publicized, the FARC presence is pushed more and more into the jungles and their support is dropping but peace agreements with the government are continually stalled. It's a colourful history and a colourful people. 
 

 

Within a couple days of leaving the travelling group and northern coast I reach the mighty Andes, the longest mountain range in the world, a 7,200km long stretch along the entire length of South America. It's the backbone of the continent, home to active volcanoes, cloud forests, snow capped peaks, high altitude desert plains, home to the most biodiverse habitat and some of the most hostile environments on earth. It's a real joy to ride amongst giants and deep valleys. 
 

 
By the time I reach Medellin I'm ready for rest from the curves, ascents and crazy Colombian truck drivers and car drivers willing to overtake on blind corners. I check in to a busy hostel and find a few of the sailing group staying there, along with Simon, Clare, Lui and Liana who are staying nearby. There's a triumph dealership here, the first for a long while so I visit the shop, meet Octavio and leave Sixto for a service in good hands. Medellin leaves a great impression, I take a couple tours through the town, learning of the rapid changes happening, ride the cable car up to the so called slums and enjoy the nightlife of a modern and vibrant place and wonder how a city can have so many beautiful women.  It's a huge improvement from the big cities of Central America, the streets have a real pulse and progressive mood. It has won recent awards from most innovative global city and stands proud in the great strides its made since its dark, infamous days of the early 90's when it was one of the most dangerous and murderous cities around.  

Octavio (centre) did a great job with Sixto and invited me on a ride with the local Triumph riders over the mountains and into the countryside on a Saturday afternoon where he was representing at a motorbike expo.    

We have a barbeque lunch and I get to know a friendly bunch of guys and discuss my trip and bike stories. Sixto even gets himself showcased at the Triumph stand. The foreign plate gets me discussing many curious questions.

 

Sharing Medellin nights with Lui and Liana

 

 

Now back on my own for the first time in a few weeks, I head towards Salento, the main tourist town in the coffee zone, as all coffee growing regions, slightly elevated, the weather is temperate and the hills roll on into the distance. I find this gem of a farm hostel nestled away in the hills outside of town and set up the tent for a few nights, meeting a variety of interesting travelers from all over the place. 

As soon a I arrive I meet Johnny, a volunteer at the farm who asks me to get involved in the lunch he is being taught by Mariangela, an older Colombian women working there. The dish is called Mondongo, a traditional tripe soup. We head off to town to get the ingredients and take orders on cutting vegetables etc., as it slowly cooked away the smell reminds me of nights when Mum would add tripe to pasta sauce for Dad when we I was younger. With so many other ingredients the tripe taste wasn't too overpowering and finished up rather well.

 

 

The nearby Valley of Cocora took me on a five hour hike through some damp cloud forests, crossing waterfalls and rivers, watching some hummingbirds over some aguapanela, sugar cane tea served with a soft cheese and finally through this picturesque, silent valley with the national palm trees scattered between the mountains. 

 

 

 

 

To finish off my time in Salento I wondered down to Don Elias' property where he gave tours of his coffee plants and demonstrated the process of coffee production at a small scale level. He was a delightful man who was very proud of his patch of the world, the quality of his coffee and organic, old-school way of life.