Offline Sunday

Our view. 

Cotopaxi, at 19,350 feet (5900 Canadian feet) is the second highest volcano in Ecuador where Chimborazo is the tallest but that one is further away.

This Sunday Cotopaxi has been free of clouds all morning clearly visible from our campground at 10,000 feet, high above Quito, Ecuador’s capital city of two million people.

In fact we could drive to Cotopaxi in less than two hours if we had a mind to and didn’t have a dog. National Parks in South America are not pet friendly.

Luckily I’m not snow friendly so viewing the peak from a distance suits me just fine. We’ll get a view of Chimborazo in the center of the country as we drive south toward Cuenca later this week. 

There’s stuff to see along the way but I doubt we will deviate much from the PanAmerican Highway through the middle of the country. The coast is reportedly sketchy and the port of  Guayaquil, the largest city in the country is not safe at all which makes getting into and out of the small safe tourist area a bit awkward. We plan to get some beach time in Peru.

Like an idiot I got some sunburn sitting out reading Kim MacQuarrie’s excellent biography of the end of the Inca Empire…

…while Layne added to our artwork and cleaned mushroom caps for lunch. 

A balsa wood toucan above and a butterfly magnet below from Mindo…

And a colored bead strip, a gift from a Brazilian overlander, she used to cover the cut we had to make in our Berkey water filter holder which was also made in Mindo for us. 

Rusty takes his campground relaxation sometimes in the sun and sometimes in the shade. He’s not fond of the other four dogs in the campground but he tolerates them and mostly stays in his end of the campground. 

Sunday is also chore day all around us. A Belgian overlander whose Sprinter is in the shop is living in a tent as he waits for his van to be returned soon.

For someone like this at 10,000 feet the great drawback to Andy’s place is the lack of a communal sitting area as this campground is still a work in progress. Kasper the solo Dutch overlander in his elderly expedition truck has a terrace above his cab, suitable for lunch. 

He and Jonas the Belgian are working to replace brake parts on the giant truck. 

Brakes and transmissions suffer on the PanAmerican and we all talk about how wild the road is through the mountains. Meanwhile Raphael and Delfina from Germany in an older Fiat Ducato diesel van have been off climbing Cotapaxi so I’m looking forward to their return to hear how it was. 

Andy, from Canada, has been in Ecuador for a number of years settling here after riding the continent on a motorcycle, working as a tour guide for motorcyclists and settling on this piece of land which he is turning into an oasis for overlanders. No mean task. 

We said goodbye to our Belgian friends Jan and Caroline and their kids. They are such upbeat people full of humor and their two children are having a great time with them. Their van is the diesel European version of ours so where they go we shall follow. I hope we see them again before Argentina. 

I keep noticing the absence of Americans and Jonas jokes so much the better but I wonder why. I do notice our access to public lands and forests is an object of some envy by Europeans who have experienced wild camping in the US and I’m looking forward to more of that when we get home.

Talking of going home the young English couple we’ve met are going to be in Chile in a couple of months selling their Chevy N300 to a foreigner who wants to take a tour. It seems odd probably but there is a market in Chile for travelers to buy and sell campers of all sorts, as Chile allows foreigners to buy sell and export Chilean registered cars. People do it all the time to take a trip for months or years and then sell it on. They’re asking $5,000 US for a complete small camper if you’d like to see Patagonia or Bolivia or go further  afield in your own car, it fits anywhere and they travel incognito as these vans  are everywhere and  that I do envy from time to time even if it is a bit small and simple for a long term home. 

Not Florida anymore. 

Morning fog:

Mushroom cap Sunday lunch cooked in the air fryer. 

A lazy Sunday at Andy’s. Considering I’m posting this Sunday afternoon I hope you’ll forgive me. Quito we shall explore Tuesday morning I hope.

Quito At Andy’s Place

We left Mindo Thursday night after Segundo the carpenter finished our water filter holder. He was out of town Friday so it ended up being an unrefined rush job but our Berkey water filter isn’t going to tip over on rough roads  as has happened before. 

The basket holder we bought in Mexico three years ago had started to stretch and allowed the heavy filter to tilt so we got ourselves what we had long wanted which was a replacement made of wood. 

Defunding would have preferred to spend more time refining it but time wasn’t available and as he did a rush job we paid him twenty bucks when he asked 15. 

While he was doing his carpentering we went to a butterfly house just outside Mindo. 

To feed the butterflies you rub your finger on the fruit provided and encourage a butterfly to walk on you. 

I preferred to keep my distance to not crush one by mistake. 

I first went into one of these places on Duval Street in Key West and you can find them all over the place but they are I find quite fascinating. 

They are an absolute bugger to photograph and I confess I was pretty half hearted as I enjoyed the show. 

And there was the matter of managing Rusty who was amazingly enough, allowed in.  

Mati and Sammy, two British overlanders last seen at Finca Sommerwind flagged us down and we went to see the butterflies together. 

Mati and Sammy pondering souvenir choices. 

After all that excitement we drive into Mindo where Mati and Layne had independently settled on Persian food for lunch.

It turns out owners lived in Quito, an Iranian couple, and they liked Mindo so much they moved there. Lunch was excellent, falafels, eggplant and so forth. Moving to mindo seems an odd choice to me but it is a popular tourist town in Ecuador. 

Ecuador does not give the impression of being as wealthy as Ecuador even in the tourist centers. The streets are clean and trash is picked up but there is a slightly more careworn air to the country though the roads are mostly excellent.

With our water filter holder as complete as it could be we left town and the rainforest that is its main attraction. Clouds and intermittent rain were oppressive and we were feeling the need to get on to Quito the capital.

Thursday evening around 4pm we left Mindo and its saturated soil. A friend in California messaged me to te me Ecuador was in the news following a total electrical blackout. We noticed nothing of course with our batteries and the absence of traffic lights at that moment…Heavy rains have killed ten people in mudslides in central Ecuador and destroyed dozens of homes. Furthermore the rains have swept debris into the hydroelectric turbines choking them. Deferred maintenance has been blamed by the new government so one assumes the money for the maintenance has also vanished, as it does. 

The road to Quito wound up and down and left and right under the rain and the heavy clouds making nightfall come faster than expected. We saw a restaurant and pulled over to see if we could buy dinner and spend the night. The manager said the restaurant was closed but we were welcome to park for the night so we did, listening to the rain come down. Layne heated our leftover steak and with a bottle of red wine ignored the awful weather. 

It was a matter of pressing on Friday morning to the capital two hours away. We had no cell service so rather than set up Starlink in the rain we remained out of touch (hence no post) and didn’t feel the loss too much.

Stopping for the night was smart as by morning the rain cleared and traffic was much easier to spot. On the outskirts of the capital we passed a serious motorcycle accident. Police were measuring so I assume it was life threatening or fatal. Ecuador does not have auto insurance which is odd. The government covers all accident insurance by taking part of vehicle registration fees and foreign vehicles are covered in the plan for free. Therefore there are no uninsured drivers which seems pretty smart. 

We stopped at a German bakery recommended to us by Mati and Sammy, the English couple do when we got to the campground we had a huge pretzel for lunch.

There are two routes up to Andy’s place, a more normal road and an incredibly steep route and Andy sent us a message to avoid Google Maps first choice of routes. All went well until I rest the route after the bakery and unbeknownst to me Google Maps reset the route to the tougher route without my bothering to notice. The good news is we now know GANNET2 shod in superb KO2 tires can climb near vertical streets but the bad news is it scared the pants off us. We ground up the hill at just over walking pace, not stopping not slowing but slowly passing the pedestrians walking alongside us. It was ghastly. 

The campground penned by a young Canadian is at 10,000 feet and I will certainly write more about it but the sun is going down, the air is getting cold and I need to get inside. This is the storage area for people who take tours to the Galapagos or deep into the Amazon. We aren’t leaving Rusty for ten days so neither trip is on though we have planned alternatives. 

We are in the upper level with other travelers including a Dutch couple working on their expedition vehicle with help from another Dutch guy whose Mercedes Benz Sprinter van has been off the road for a few weeks. The expedition truck is elderly and rather crude. I love it. 

This is part of Quito laid out below us. At 9400 feet it is second in height only to La Paz Bolivia’s capital at an altitude of 12,000 feet which is the highest capital in the world. Amazingly I feel no altitude sickness up here at 10,000 feet. 

Museums, restaurants and so forth all laid out below in some hectic traffic. This might be a busy week.