Cayambe - Day 38
Trip Start
Mar 17, 2010
1
41
44
Trip End
May 21, 2010
Cayambe, Ecuador
Friday, April 23, 2010
Miles - 315
First breakfast in Ecuador - scrambled egg on its own followed by a fried cheese sandwich, very strange. For some unknown reason some people were clapping and cheering when Nick walked into breakfast, very irritating.
I love Ecuador!! (Sorry Peru, I can be very fickle).
It is so green, amazing hills and valleys, an absolute pleasure to ride up and down. One minute you are looking down at the clouds, the next you are riding through them. Absolutely beautiful...wow...amazing!
The road out was very twisty, it took us 3 hours to do 100 miles. Had a scary moment when we went into cloud and Brian's visor and sunglasses instantly steamed up while we were going round a tight bend. He paniced and braked, this made the bike stand up and we were nearly in a ditch.
The houses are built from bricks and are larger and most are painted unlike Peru and Bolivia where they were very basic small hut type structures.
Passing through the small towns and villages the women and some of the men are dressed in very traditional clothing as they go about their every day business. The women wear bright jewel coloured clothes - a long full skirt in one colour; either bright pink, red, purple, green or blue, with a decorative trim at the bottom. Accompanied by a shawl or blanket in one of the other jewel colours and a top underneath in another colour, all topped off with a hat. Not the bowler hat worn in Bolivia and Peru, this is still black but more of a trilby style. They look very striking against their bright green surroundings.
We climbed higher today, aboout 3200m so it was a lot cooler than yesterday. As with other places we have visited it gets slightly less green and more rocky as you get higher but it is still as beautiful.
Very close to our hotel we passed a sign marking the point the equator line passes through, will have to visit that tomorrow!
The Hacienda Hotel was very quaint and rustic with lots of history, the original French explorers stayed here when they travelled here to learn about the equator. All the rooms surround a central courtyard and each room has a log fire. Which of course had to be lit!
We met up with everyone at 7pm for dinner which was lovely.
10.10pm - Night night...fire still glowing.
:o)
