RTW North to South: And then there were two

KS- Thursday

Its me again. I hope everyone enjoyed reading my wife's blog posts as much as I enjoyed not having to write them. I really loved having my wife here to share some of what this adventure is, she got to see the real behind the scenes of what a trip like this is. Some call it a vacation, and it is, but its also much more than that. Every day is a bit of a struggle as to what to eat, where to go, where to find gas, finding a place to stay that is somewhat livable for the night, and the constant question of "what did that person try to tell us?". For some reason, Chip and I always find ourselves on not quite so relaxing vacations, be it riding motorcycles across distant continents, or rowing heavy rafts through the famous whitewater of Grand Canyon for weeks at a time. Marybeth has been on many trips that don't involve relaxing on the beach as well, and a couple that do. Someday I hope to be able to take a long distance bike trip with her, because as she proved over the last week (no surprise to me), that she can handle travelling with a bike in the chaos that reigns outside the borders of the US.

Wednesday morning after kissing my wife goodbye as she headed to the airport at 5am, we decided to load up and try to beat the traffic out of Quito. Our earliest start for a long time as we were on the bikes just before 6am, making our way through town. All our GPSs seemed to conspire against us, by either not finding satellites, taking us through tiny winding streets, or just saying that there was no route possible. Eventually we exited the city on the southern side and headed down the open road, bordered by distant snowcapped mountains on either side of the valley. Being so close to the equator doesn't guarantee warmth, it was in the low 40s most of the morning as we rode, even though the sky was clear. Eventually we became separated in a town when my nav sent me off the main road, and Chip didn't see me go left. I enjoyed some nice twisty roads through farmland and later turned back onto the main road, only to be directed off it again to go through an even smaller town and back onto the main. As I was riding by myself, I kept thinking that something had to be set wrong on the GPS and I should stop and check it. Right about then, I looked over at a gas station and saw Chip fuelling up. A handful of brakes got me into the station where after gassing up, we went through my settings and found the problem, shortest route vs fastest route. After that it was all gravy all the way to Cuenca. After checking into our hotel we caught up with another rider who is heading to Argentina as well. LoneStar doesn't need an introduction to the ADVRider crowd, many people read his trip report "LoneStar's Adventure to South America" ourselves included, so when we saw the chance to meet up with him we took it. He's been having bike problems, and sitting in that town for about a month getting the bike repaired. An evening of swapping stories with him and another rider made for great entertainment, hopefully we'll meet up with them again in the future.

This morning we loaded up and headed to Macara just shy of the Peruvian border. It was a long day of 380k, but shorter than yesterdays 480k, mainly high altitude twisty roads and hills. Beautiful views, and some not so pretty sights were the norm for the day. I don't like to talk about roadkill in this setting, but today it just has to be brought up. We came over a hill and there was the largest smear of blood I have ever seen on a road, I swerved into the other lane to avoid as much of it as I could. It was blood like a river, my first thought was what could have made such a mess, then I saw a large bus, and a horse, or what was left of a horse. Most animals are left either tied up, or free to roam in this country, and apparently this horse had roamed to the wrong place at the wrong time. Nobody was hurt, other than the horse, so we carried on with our journey, knowing that our English would not be helpful to the situation. Later on we passed a second horse laying dead on the road, quite strange. A few miles past that we saw some other riders on BMWs heading the other direction. I waved, and later wondered if I should have tried to warn them, but I couldn't think what the international hand signal for "theres a dead horse in the road" was, and everyone that rides down this way has their head on a swivel and is ready for anything, that's how you survive down here because anything can happen. Just ask the guy sitting along side the road looking at his truck that was against the guardrail, missing the back wheel. You spend the day dodging people, taxis, trucks, busses, dogs, chickens, pigs, goats, cows, horses, rocks, parts of road that have fell off the mountain, and parts of the mountain that have fell on the road.

Now we are in our hotel in Macara hoping that the repairs on LoneStar's bike were successful and they make it to this town today. If not, we will probably meet them at the border tomorrow to begin our journey into Peru. Cramming two days into one report, and being out of practice at writing, it will get better, someday, maybe. A couple pictures to finish it off, no horses.