After a nice warm breakfast at our hotel, we rode south on the Pan-American highway which runs in between awe inspiring mountains. The whole country seems to be made of steep green mountains and valleys and ravines and rivers.
We rode the section called the Avenue of the Volcanos because it goes next to Cotopaxi (19,400 ft), Cayambe (19,000 ft) and Antisana (18,700 ft). Unfortunately, the tops of the mountains were covered by clouds but the views were incredible.
Everything in Ecuador (houses, stores, buildings) seems to always be under construction, with just one more room or wall or expansion left to do and buses are more and more colorful the deeper we get into the country.
And, the people seem to also be more indigenous. You can hear Quichua spoken everywhere ... at the markets, restaurants, and stores ... and, you see people wearing the well-known top hats that you find in Bolivia.
Ecuador has an incredible topography with impossibly big, steep and tall green mountains, with agriculture parcels going way up their skirts thousands of feet up. This is something that has to be seen to understand. It is like earth has come out of the ground to greet you in its most magnificent form.
We had our first case of altitude sickness today as we were climbing to 12,000 ft but everybody is good now.
We stopped at the Equator line and learned a bit about geography, the relationship between the sun and earth, and how things manifest themselves in the northern vs the Southern Hemispheres. Actually very interesting. Including how the Incas used this observations to build their cities.
At the end of the day, we arrived in Banos, our destination for the night. Banos is an adventure, tourist town with excursions to do paragliding, bungee jumping, rappelling, climb the waterfall, etc. The town is know for its thermal waters which we will try tomorrow. After dinner, we took the street party rollercoaster train for a fun, spooky, fast ride around the whole town.
Tomorrow, we need to perform the 1,000 km service on all the motorcycles ... they were all new when we started in Cali. So, we will take the day off from riding and go do some of the wild things you can do around here.
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