Ecuador

The landscape changed very quickly once I entered Ecuador the desert and scrub was soon replaced with the lush tropical vegetation and thousands of Banana trees lining the road. The driving habits also seem to have changed, but for the worse. It seems that like in India the bikes don’t seem to matter for much on the road, and the cars (and trucks) will just continue to overtake and force you to the side of the road. I had deliberately crossed the border on a Sunday, firstly to see if the border traffic was any better and secondly because I was entering the largest city in the country, Guayaquil, and I knew that the traffic there would be lighter.


Bananas everywhere


Some of the residents of the Simon Bolivar Park

Guayaquil was quite a surprise, most of the place is nothing to write home about but the river frontage has been developed into a park with all sorts of areas for the families and beautiful parks filled with tropical flowers. This is also a starting point for many visitors going to the Galapagos Islands. I did also manage to set the video camera to 240 frames per second to record a hummingbird feeding at some of the flowers. If I ever get caught up on the videos you’ll see it!! Both nights here it rained very hard and the result was that the humidity went through the roof in the morning sun.


Free Internet in the park in this old carriage


Beautiful tropical gardens


Some of the Bromiliads on show

The next stop was Quito the capital of Ecuador and surprisingly the second largest city. It’s also the second highest capital city and again it’s spread out over the hillsides of the volcanoes that surround it. I stayed at an eighteenth century house that had been converted to a hotel and was right in the historic centre of the city. Churches and plazas abound with some stunning colonial architecture there is also people trying to sell you everything on earth you don’t need, clean your shoes or give you a tour.


The road up to the Basilica


The Angel that overlooks the city


A quick medical checkup anyone??

The other big attraction for me was that the equator is just outside the city to the north. Rather than ride the bike through the traffic and have to carry the helmet around I caught the buses, it wasn’t hard and only cost about a dollar in total. There are two places to ‘see’ the equatorial line; the first is the official site the Mitad del Mundo, the second is the Inti Nan museum. The difference being that the official one was set up many years ago using celestial measurements and is in fact in the wrong place by about 150m! But it’s the best place for the photo opportunities. The second and smaller place is more fun to visit and was determined by military GPS later on, and so is therefore more accurate. A couple of days later I finally rode across the equator for the first time on land, another thing ticked off the list.


Mitad Del Mundo


The line that's in the wrong place


Inti Nan Museum


The right line


Head shrink takes on a whole new meaning!

I was going to stay in a small town just this side of the border, but as it was a Friday and by all accounts the visitors from Colombia come across for some duty free shopping on the weekends, I decided to continue and stay on the Colombian side in a place called Ipiales, one small border town is very much like another.