The Last Leg

Our decision not to rush through Ecuador and race for Peru was a good one, we have been able to soak up the beauty and majesty of the Ecuadorian Andes to their full extent. However, it meant that on arriving in Cuenca at the end of our last day cycling there was not much fanfare or applause…it was just the end of another days riding and rather an anticlimax. The road was busy, I had stomach ache, we shouted at one another and it rained.

Our last week wasn’t all bad though! From Latacunga we headed down to Baños, then continued on a very dusty road, that kept detouring due to landslides and volcanic activity, to Riobamba. From there we took a bus to Chimborazo. We had many debates in previous weeks about climbing the volcano…a tempting prospect as it is the mountain closest to the stars due to the Equatorial bulge. However, the trip required some mountaineering experience so we thought we would go away and get some before attempting the climb! We settled to walk in the park. It was chilly and desolate as we set off and the weather rapidly closed in around us, about halfway to ‘base camp’ it started to snow. We weren’t prepared for this and rapidly flagged down the next pick up to come along. The view from 4900m was minimal but we caught glimpses of the snowy monster of Chimborazo above us before starting our descent back to the road. The visibility got worse and we were offered a lift down…but as we had already cheated once we rejected the offer, five minutes later we were regretting that decision as the snow turned to rain and we trooped down cold and wet to quickly flag down a lift in a warm car back to the city.

The Ecuadorian Andes have been windy, often against us and in strong gusts which are hard to handle, doubling the effort required to move forward and generally pretty soul destroying…however sometimes it is behind and acts like a little helping hand up the hills. With the wind comes the dust and we found ourselves having to wash our eyes out when we stopped. Sam found the amount of dirt on my face at the end of the day bizarrely amusing, his beard just disguised evidence on his own.

We felt a little like we are marching for home. And march for home we did over the next few days, up hill and down valley one after the other. We were surrounded by spectacular scenery and in one particularly memorable camping spot, the clouds were laid out below us like a stormy sea, frozen in action. Incredible.

Our last night on the move was spent camped outside a restaurant near the Inca site of Ingapirca. We thought we should end in style and camp on the side of the road without paying a penny! Ingapirca was an interesting and tranquil place on the ancient inca trail towards Peru, nothing like the scale of the sites in its neighbouring country but beautiful all the same.

Then we arrived into Cuenca…wet, tired and a little grumpy but pleased to have finished what we started when we set out 11months before. It’s not everyday that you finish a 7132mile (11,503km) trip through 11 countries, confronting every type of weather and terrain, pushing ourselves to our limits (and beyond?!) and spending most of that time with just one other person and the four wheels we bought all the way from England to help us out! But it has been wonderful. The tough moments make the elation greater, the special moments make the tough ones disintegrate. This is the ebb and flow of life on a bike, a life that we have become very used to over this past year. As it comes to an end we are both realising how much we will miss this life. Here’s to many more two wheeled adventures, it really is the only way to conquer the world!

First to the Galapagos, we have heard they have sunshine, sea and an abundance of wildlife…so we thought we had better take a look for ourselves!