Cycling from Cayambe to Quito in Ecuador
Cycling in Ecuador is certainly rewarding in terms of scenery. This blog entry is from the day's ride between Cayambe and Quito as part of my Alaska to Argentina bike tour.
Cycling Ecuador
Blog post from 5th June 2010
Leaving Cayambe through the main road running through the town, I was treated to some downhill, but the overall tone of the day was that of uphill cycling.
The road ran on the left hand side of a valley, whose ground had been additionally split by an earthquake, which I hope you can make out in this picture.
Along the way, I came up to the Equator.
I have cycled over the Equator once before in Kenya, and have actually visited the Equator in Ecuador a few years back. This was a different spot though, and so of course a photo was obligatory. Apologies for my stuffed mannequin stance !
To think that I have cycled from the Arctic Circle to the Equator !!!
Cycling into Quito
After that began a rather laborious uphill section towards Quito that seemed to last the rest of the day.
Being a Saturday, there were plenty of other road cyclists out, each one more amazed than the next that I was cycling up such steep angles, and in certain cases overtaking them !
As per usual, I was mapless on entering a big city, but had memorised what Google had to show me, and miraculously managed to find my way into the centre, and more specifically exactly to the hostal I had in mind to stay at.
Hostal Chicago was 13 dollars a night, quiet and with a good internet access. Time to put the bike in storage for a week and switch off from cycling !
Read more about cycling from Alaska to Argentina
Dave is a UK travel writer living in Athens since 2015. With 20 years of firsthand travel experience and over 80,000 km of bicycle touring across six continents, he's been blogging at Dave's Travel Pages since 2005. Every guide is based on places he's actually been.
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