Project VELAIA

We had 44 000 Pesos in our pocket when arriving in Ipiales in the evening. 22 000 we had to pay for the hostel, so there was not a lot left for dinner, internet and the breakfast the next morning. In a bakery they sold us chocolate cookies that tasted like 3000 years old, like the ones archeologists find buried with mummies so they’ll have enough food to make it over the Hades. So we exchanged the black ones for white ones and kept a fair distance to bakeries for the next few days.

Tom, a Israeli backpacker on a one year solo trip through South America, had stayed with us in the hostel last night and together we went for dinner where he’d been eating all the meat and we got the vegetables and fries. This ‘border crossing’ morning we went through the Colombia emigration and after crossing the bridge to Ecuador through the formalities of the Ecuadorian immigration together … it’s a lot easier and less boring that way. We met him 3 or 4 days later again in a backpackers place in Quito but couldn’t stay there because it was packed to the limits.

Cycling up the valley on Ecuadorian soil now we saw a few huts beside the road and walls of adobe bricks drying in the sun.

In nearby Tulcan we went to an ATM to get a two weeks supply of our first Ecuadorian money: US dollars! Yes, that’s right, Ecuador changed their currency system to the US dollar and a bit of research on the Wikipedia revealed that the president suggesting the currency change got fired by the people because of suggesting this but his successor carried on with the same politics.

The Ecuadorians seem to like new presidents better than old ones and therefore almost none of the last few presidents made it through his 4 years term. But as a touring cyclist you’re far away from politics; what counts for you are the politics of the road: How do the car drivers behave? Will they respect cyclists or will we have hard times with stupid and high risk overtaking like the last few days in Ecuador? Upon these questions depend our lives while we’re on the road! In Australia for example experienced touring cyclists told me to get off the road when a big logging truck approaches from behind and just the other day at the Gocta waterfall I’ve been informed about three fatal accidents in Kiwi country (New Zealand) involving cyclists. In Ecuador now the situation got much better than Australia and New Zealand and also at least a bit better than in the Colombian south.

On our way south towards Quito we already passed a few volcanoes including 5790 m high volcano Cayambe. But the clouds crowded around the volcanoes, not only here in the north of Ecuador but also later on leaving the capital behind. Only in the very early morning can one sometimes spot them cloud free.

A group of German mountaineers told us at a lunch in an expensive restaurant that they start very early in the morning, 2 or 3 o’clock, that they reach the peak a few hours later and begin with the descent before the sun melts the snow and makes it almost impossible to pass through.

With a smaller double volcano close to Ibarra we’ve been more lucky and I got a few nice shots of my father fighting against the in parts pretty steep gradients and the monstrous volcano standing massively in the background.

On this 3 day ride from Tulcan to Quito we averaged 1500 meters of altitude gain a day and 90 km even though we encountered all weathers. But the roads on the main route are in a good shape and the winds were on our side!

Cycling into Quito we met a Dutch cyclist, Pete, who caught up with us on his pure road touring bike. Together we fought our way to the center of the historic town, cycling in the often crazy traffic on bus lanes, through parks and the road works of the for car traffic closed city center near the Via Amazonas. Then we separated, Pete cycled to a friend and we went to a cheap posada where we paid 6 USD for a tiny room with bath and shower.

The coming day we changed this room to a bigger one with wooden floor and windows. The climate inside this second room was a lot better and the loss of the private bathroom didn’t matter because we had the whole floor with the shared sanitary facilities for ourselves. From the top floor of this little hostel close to the Plaza Torres we had a nice view on the old town center and on the Quito valley.

How did we spend the time in Quito? Well, there are a lot of distractions in such a big city, especially when you’ve been cycling through the countryside of not so developed countries for weeks. The internet is a lot faster here and for 50 or 60 US cents you can browse the net for an hour at a decent speed – time to catch up with what’s going on at home, what other travelers are doing and check the CouchSurfing world.

Searching the CS site for CouchSurfers in Quito I found an interesting profile of four really cool Germans hosting fellow travelers in town – should have checked that earlier as it would have been nice to hear a few familiar sounds and get precious informations in this “only Spanish” part of the world.

I found out that my friend, fellow recumbent cyclist and fresh world record holder in unsupported long distance skating, Rob Thomson, had just set out on a new adventure, crossing China with his long board with trailer … an idea he must have had since riding through the country on a train as my Catalan friend Samuel had told me at our meeting near Erzincan, Turkey. And now that I´m putting the pictures into the post he´s already finished his legendary journey around the globe!

And back home my mother and sister had just been moving to a new place and had a lot to do with moving all their possessions – almost unimaginable for a light fellow like me who’s belongings fit into two backs and on the top of his rear rack

But of course we have not only been on the internet for the 3 days stay. I had to change the total set of front chain wheel, chain and rear sprocket because my laziness of the last 12 000 km since hopping onto the new mountain bike Down Under. I wanted to get a slightly smaller chain wheel because of the continuous up and down here in the Andes. Actually I’ve been trying to get a new one a bit smaller all the time since Merida in Venezuela where my friends and fellow cyclists at EcoBike unfortunately couldn’t help me out.

In a small shop they told me they had one with 34 or even a bit below, I only had to wait for an hour … great! We came back after 2 or 3 hours and what did they have? A tiny tiny chain wheel with 32 teeth only! 32, that’s right. I thought about it for a while and told them to put it on the bike. When I spotted the tiny part between the cranks it reminded me a lot of an April fools joke from famous Sheldon Brown, the Nano Drive.

As the young workers at the first bicycle shop didn’t convince me with their work I cycled to a different shop to have the sprocket on the Rohloff Speedhub changed. Cycling through this congested city without the panniers and therefore a really light mountain bike I almost felt like a messenger, moving faster than anyone else in town, much faster as the cars stuck in the rush hour traffic, faster as the busses and even faster as the red busses of Quito’s Bus Rapid Transit system that reserves special lanes only for the red busses and has installations like train terminals to enter the busses at fixed places. A slightly anarchic feeling, the bicycle having the function of Robin Hood, empowering the weak while the rich suffer under their self caused traffic infarct – like the pictures painted in and on the Carbusters magazine or the legendary Bike Quarterly series.

Then we went to the IGM (Instituto Geografico Militar), a strange connection between the military and geographers found all through South America. Where we have the TOP 50 maps you can buy at the German Landesvermessungsämter, Google Earth or other topographical maps available in a lot of book stores, here you have to visit these marionettes in their ever same looking camouflage uniforms, give them a copy of your passport or even the passport itself, leave your bike at the entrance and invest a lot of time for results that are not worth mentioning: The best they could provide us with was a map with scale 1 : 2.000.000 with a bit of topography. Just slightly better than the 1 : 4 mio. I already had on the handlebar bag from my friend Jerry in the States, who´s traveling with a young puppy at the moment (picture for my sister who loves puppies ):

And just as we wanted to leave, joking about the results of our hours long investigation as “expensive toilet paper”, we made out the planetarium, also part of this military complex at the eastern part of Central Quito. I thought we could maybe have a coffee or drink in the building, so we entered. A woman approached us, talking quickly to us in Spanish. Not really understanding what she wanted I replied with “claro que si”, a phrase I had learned from my Coffee Break Spanish, meaning “of course” or something alike. She told us we had to pay a few dollars and we hadn’t yet realized what we had gotten ourselves into she opened a door leading into a totally black room and closed it behind the two of us.

I couldn’t see anything and neither could my father. So unknowingly we had already entered the planetarium show and in the low light we had to find a seat. At the end of the show in which we didn’t really understand a lot but could at least guess what they were talking about in their Latin American Spanish, we found ourselves at almost opposite sides of this round room.