Planning and Preparation
The original idea for Ecuador was born while talking with my friends Ayon and Vijay. They had been travelling internationally on a motorcycle recently and somehow we got talking about Ecuador, Peru and Columbia. A little bit of research on the Internet showed that Ecuador was probably the easiest of those destinations, especially with a few companies in Quito catering to Americans who want to rent bikes or book adventure riding excursions. We contacted a couple of these companies, and some of this was simply sending a message on WhatsApp, but then decided to book our rental bikes with the biggest of them – Ecuador Freedom Bike Rental.
Ayon was the first to book his flight tickets to Quito and Shobhit & I followed suit the next day. Mahesh joined in on the plan a few days later, but Ayon decided to cancel his tickets and instead take his family to Ecuador later in the summer. So eventually it was just three of us – Shobhit, Mahesh and me. Shobhit booked a BMW G310GS, I booked a Yamaha XT250 and Mahesh booked a lowered Suzuki DR650. Interestingly these reservations were made on Saturday Jan 21st 2023, while my employer announced layoffs on Monday Jan 23rd, 2023. Thankfully I was not impacted, but the timing for such events always ends up a little surprising.
A month or so before the trip, the Freedom Bike Rental guy emailed us saying that the XT250 is out of service and is going to be replaced with a Hero Xpulse 200. The DR650 was a bit tall for Mahesh, so I ended up riding it for most of the trip, while Mahesh took the Hero. So here we are, three North Americans of Indian origin, riding Indian made motorcycles in South America. The BMW is made in TVS Motor Company’s Hosur plant in Tamil Nadu, while the Hero is proudly made in India, I just couldn’t figure out in which city, Hero has so many plants.
From the get go, the plan was to do an adv ride, mixing in good amounts of off-road riding. Somehow my interest in pure street-oriented touring has waned and I’ve focussed on more off-road “adventure riding” over the last 3-4 years, as the contents of this blog will attest to. With focussed off-road riding in remote places, a GPS was a must, so I picked up a used Garmin Montana on Advrider. This simple (though ancient) device was worth its weight in gold! The Garmin saw heavy usage on every single day of the trip and routed us through completely unmarked terrain. I developed a new appreciation for the ruggedness and reliability of Garmin GPS’es while at the same time developing a maniacal hatred for the Garmin software.
Between February and May, the three of us had several Zoom calls where we discussed the route, the hotels to stay, and other things to pack. I planned most of the routes myself, and I used basically three resources (1) Ecuador Freedom Bike Rental has self-guided tours that describe routes and destinations, (2) Noraly, aka Itchy Boots had ridden through Ecuador in Season #6, I watched all those videos and (3) General content on Google about roads to take and places to visit. Garmin Basecamp makes it easy to plan routes, especially off-road, so I created a day-by-day plan of all 6 days and shared it with Shobhit and Mahesh. Shobhit bought a new Garmin Zumo XT, but he was not able to load the South American off-road maps in time, so his unit was not usable. Mahesh has a similar Montana to mine, and he was able to navigate with ease on this trip.
Ayon & I signed up with Duolingo, the free language learning app and started to learn Spanish. I ended up with a 90 day learning streak, which was a great help on this trip. I could form simple basic sentences, and had a vocabulary of maybe a 100 Spanish words. In more complicated situations we would end up using Google Translate, which also worked very well.
I decided to carry my Alpinestars Halo Drystar Jacket and Pants. The weather forecast for Ecuador showed rain off and on every day, so I was thinking about taking the waterproof Aerostich suit, but packing it into my hand-carried luggage was not an option. The A*Star suit could simply be worn on the plane, while the rest of my gear was packed in my waterproof Wolfman Expedition Duffel bag.
Our helmets were equipped with Sena communicator units and they came in handy while riding. Unfortunately Mahesh’s unit took on water on the second day and he was not able to use it to communicate for the rest of the trip.
So with such a long introduction, here we are at SFO waiting to board our plane.
Day 0: Flight from SFO to Quito
We were booked on JetBlue, SFO to Ft. Lauderdale to Quito. The flights were uneventful and comfortable, with just a little turbulence over Panama. We had a beer at FLL and arrived in Quito at around 10:30PM. Immigration was a breeze, no forms even, and we called an Uber to take us to our hotel. We noticed a lot of smog in the air that night.
We checked into our hotel – La Casona de La Ronda Heritage Boutique Hotel – a wonderful quaint little hotel just a couple of blocks from Plaza de Santo Domingo and Independence Square (Plaza Grande) in the historic part of old town Quito. It was past midnight by now, so we called it a night.
Day 1: Ride from Quito to Mindo
In the morning, we explored the hotel a little, had a great omelette breakfast and decided to walk around the historic town of Quito.
After exploring the area a little, we checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the motorcycle rental place. It was about 20 minutes away and we got set up pretty quickly. The bikes were ready to go, cleaned, lubed and gassed up. They set us up with a prepaid cell phone for emergencies and a bunch of tools, like wrenches, tire irons, tubes and a pump.
We left Quito in heavy traffic, weaving in between cars and trucks. Our first stop for the day was the Ciudad Mitad del Mundo (Center of the World) – a monument constructed right on the Equator. We walked around the little village they had made there, took a few pictures and climbed up to the top of the tower.
Lunch was pretty good there, we had Llapingachos, Ecuadorian style potatoes and other veggies.
After lunch, around 2pm, it started to rain lightly as we made our way to our destination Mindo. Our first off-road jaunt of the trip would be from the highway to the a small village called Nono. This was about 30 kms of off-road and the easy terrain helped us get confident with our new bikes. I noticed that the DR650 severely lacked both front and rear brakes, something I got accustomed to over the course of the this trip. We made it to Nono in the light rain, but as we were leaving Nono, the rain got very heavy. In the huge downpour, we were lucky to find a cafe for some coffee and the owner there spoke English. It turns out, he is an Argentinian, lived in Switzerland for a few years and then moved to Ecuador about 13 years ago. He told us stories about the quaint rural life in a small village like Nono.
We left Nono when the rain reduced, but it never completely stopped for the rest of the day. As we got to the town of Tandayapa, it was getting to be 6pm or so, and we decided to skip the rest of the off-road section and ride to our destination on the highway. Sunset is around 6:15PM in May in Ecuador, and it gets very dark by around 6:30pm. The highway decision was a good one. It was pitch dark and rainy. The DR650 headlights were dimmer and weaker than any bike I have ever been on, I could barely see anything, so I asked Mahesh and Shobhit to lead. We rode slowly, with our rain gear and made it safely to our hotel in Mindo – CasKaffeSu. This was a decent hotel, and after a hot shower we went to the main street in Mindo for some pizza and drinks. Shobhit bought a full bottle of Chivas Regal from a store there, and at first, I was wondering if we would ever finish a full bottle. Turns out the bottle was over in less than 24 hours 😀 I wasn’t surprised at that either. Over pizza and whisky, Mahesh told us the amazing story of how he met his wife. His wife is from Bulgaria. Mahesh also told us that he recently lost his job, just a few days prior to the trip. Silicon Valley layoffs were hitting everyone, sadly. But overall, Mahesh’s mood was up, his spirit was not shaken and we tried to not dwell on jobs & careers too much.
Our hotel for the night.
Day 2: Ride from Mindo to Chugchilán
We got up early. Sunrise is around 6AM and the sun comes out bright and shining. Not quite like the Bay Area where morning are always cloudy and foggy. After another egg breakfast, and we were on our way.
We rode out to the highway from Mindo and stopped for gas. Full service gas in all of Ecuador and the price of the regular gas was cheap (~$2.5 a gallon). Ecuadors largest export is petroleum and petrochemicals. We rode through the town of Los Bancos and crossed the bridge on the wide Esmeralda river. This river flows into the Pacific and is not part of the Amazon. In just a couple of kilometers we hit our first off-road section of the day. Surprisingly, this road was gated, and we had to pay a small toll (25c) to enter. The guard at the entrance collected our toll, noted down our names and raised the gate for us to enter.
This single lane road was excellent. For the next 60 kilometers, we rode through many small towns, lots of farms and plantations and alongside amazing scenery. Many times were we literally riding through the clouds. The terrain not too technical and not too easy, just right for us to have a good time.
Riding through the clouds
Somewhere on this road, Shobhit and I were leading and we lost sight of Mahesh. So we pulled over, waiting there for a few minutes, hoping he will catch up soon. A few minutes turned into 5, into 10, and that point we turned back to go look for him. We are never 10 minutes apart, generally just a few minutes between us all. So I was starting to worry a little as we traced our way back, but luckily we found Mahesh in about 3 kilometers. It turns out that he lost the spring to his side stand while riding. He obviously could not ride with a floppy side stand, so he used a string from his helmet bag to secure the stand to the bike. We found him just in time to help a little, but thankfully that was the only issue.
We pressed on, taking many breaks along the way, and while 60 km may not seem much, riding that distance off-road was strenuous. We exchanged bikes for a little bit while I rode the Hero. It seemed like a decent budget bike, not very powerful and not very good at off-roading, but a good budget entry level adventure bike. We stopped a few times for a sip of whisky!
We got to the highway right around lunch time, and it started to rain just then. We found a roadside “dhaba” for a simple meal of rice, beans, salad, potatoes and eggs. A nice beer to go along and we were fueled up.
At this point it was still raining a little, so we decided to take the paved highway to our destination for the night – Chugchilan. We rode the Hwy E20 to the Pan-American Highway (E35) and while there was a lot of commercial truck traffic the twisties were very nice. This was a recurring theme for the trip – very good twisty roads for sporty riding. The Pan-American Highway is at a high altitude there and we were riding around 11-12,000 ft. We stopped for gas at one point and got a nice view of Volcan Cotopaxi in the background.
We got off the highway at Via Sigchos and took that road inwards towards Chugchilán. Of all the twisty roads I have ever ridden, Via Sigchos ranks up there with the best of the best. Excellent tarmac, beautiful scenery and amazing curves for sporty riding. For a moment it felt like riding in the Swiss Alps, the Sierra Nevadas and the rural Indian countryside, all at once.
Here is a beautiful view of Iliniza Sur from Via Sigchos. This whole road was superb, about 80 kms of pure bliss. Mahesh commented to me that he missed his BMW S1000XR, it would have been amazingly fun there.
Sigchos is a nice small town with a hospital and university. With a population of 1200 it was one of the larger towns we rode through. You just don’t see too many people out there and not too many vehicles either. Strangely, even in the smallest of Ecuadorian towns, I noticed many roads are designated as one-ways. So if a town has 4 roads, 2 of them run one way, the other 2 the other way. This would often confuse the Garmins and a couple of times we rode through the wrong way to get across town.
We made it to our hotel – Hostal Cloud Forest – by about 7pm. This is an awesome little “hostel” catering mostly to European backpackers. It was very affordable at $51 for two extremely comfortable double rooms. Shobhit and I took one room, while Mahesh took the other. We went to the dining room and enjoyed a communal dinner of corn soup, quinoa, veggies and beans. The banana bread and chocolate was also pretty good.
Before turning in for the night, we played around with our Garmins, mapping out a shortcut for tomorrow. With ~300kms of off-road tomorrow was going to be a long day, but using our paper maps and Google maps on our phones, we found a shortcut that would reduce the off-road distance by about 30km.
Day 3: Ride from Chugchilán to Salinas
We rose early and headed to the dining area for breakfast. After an awesome breakfast of pancake, fruit and yogurt, we took a quick picture in front of the Hostal and were on our way. This was to be our longest day with about 250km total, and it turned out great.
Our first stop was Quilotoa Lake, about 20 minutes south of Chugchilán. I’d seen this in lake in Itchy Boots’ videos so I knew sort of what to expect. I also knew where to ride our bikes to get a perfect view. The lake was beautiful, stunning, especially when the cloud broke and sun shined brightly. Dissolved minerals in the water give this lake a green color and it looks especially vibrant when the sun hits it at the right angle.
Shobhit wanted to fly his drone here and take some pictures, but there was some issue with the firmware and app on the phone that prevented that. Nonetheless, we took in this magnificent sight for some time, and decided to ride on. We were able to find gas in the small town of Zumbahua and then got on to the highway E30. A short distance later we turned off the highway towards Angamarca and the road turned to dirt soon. Again, in terms of the best dirt roads ever ridden, the road from Zumbahua to Simjatug via Angamarca remains my top one of all time. We saw a bunch of Andean camels along the way, both the wild ones, guanacos and vicuñas and also the domestic ones, llamas and alpacas, seen here.
Ecuador has some amazing roads!
We crossed Angamarca, a small town with maybe 5-8 streets total and rode through “downtown”. There was a busy market in progress, native people buying and selling all sorts of stuff. We wanted to stop and take a look, but with all the electronics on our bikes and our passports and luggage we didn’t feel safe stopping and walking around the crowded market. Here is the town of Angamarca in the distance. We stopped for a casual break and Mahesh dropped his bike on the soft grass as he dismounted.
With all the rain, the roads were wet in some places. Wet and often very muddy. Mahesh came in a little too hot into a corner and fell down in the mud.
Shobhit also dropped his bike a few kms down the road. Thankfully none of these were major incidents, just minor drops.
We got to the town of Pinllopata and took a shortcut towards Simjatug. A few kms down the road we stopped for lunch, a nice egg and tomato sandwich packed for us by the Hostal in Chugchilán.
There is something about having a sandwich on a trail while riding a motorcycle through the clouds!
We took a break again in maybe 50kms, after passing through Simjatug.
Rural Ecuador has lots of dogs, country dogs that chase behind motorcycles, barking viciously. Not all of them were vicious through, this fella came by and quietly sat beside us as we took a break.
We made it to our hotel – Hotel El Refugio, Hostal de Salinas – in good time. Thankfully we hit rain for the last 5-10 kms only. I had reserved this hotel by chatting with the department of tourism of the province of Guaranda on WhatsApp. They put us up in this hotel, which seemed decent but was a few hundred meters outside the main town. Not a big deal, but the rain was coming down heavy now. I went in for a shower and realized that the hotel had no hot water. There was some problem with the water heaters, so in the middle of this huge downpour, we transferred to another hotel – Hostel la Minga. At $15/night per person, it was a great deal. They had a small garage at the back where we could park our bikes.
After a hot shower, which was only luke warm, but anyway, we headed to a pizza parlor across the hotel. Pizza is everywhere in Ecuador. After a lot of whisky, pizza and general fooling around we called it a night. It was pretty cold that night, probably in the 40s, and the hotel only had a central fireplace for heating. The fleece blankets kept us warm and we slept well.
Day 4: Ride from Salinas to Chimoborazo
After three days of riding off-road non-stop, today was a bit of a rest day. We didn’t have much ground to cover, so we’d planned on walking around Salinas to explore the place. Our hostal was right in the town square, and since today was Sunday, they were getting ready for a town market.
We walked down a couple of blocks to the local chocolate factory. It was not operational because of the weekend, but we could stop by, check it out and buy some chocolates.
This small little hilly town is very picturesque and it was such a pleasure to walk around.
From the chocolate factory we walked down to the cheese factory. It was a mid-sized operation employing about 30 people part time. We bought some local cheese at the store.
We walked back to the town square then and visited the Church. Everything is about a 5-10 minute walk here. The Church was pretty!
And our final stop on this walking tour was a football (soccer) manufacturing “factory”. This was about the size of our dining room, on the second floor of a dilapidated building. Coming from California, this really gave me some perspective, on how parts of the world live. We talked to this girl for a few minutes who showed us around her uncles factory. We didn’t end up buying any footballs because we had no space to carry them.
Lots of domesticated farm animals are used for labor in rural Ecuador.
It was about noon by now and after the relaxing morning, we decided to gear up and ride on. It was only about 50km to Chimborazo, but we took some interesting dirt roads and stayed off the main highway. We gassed up in the town on Guanujo and took this dirt road that the Garmin showed us would lead to the Chimborazo highway. We must have missed a few turns, but we ended up at a dead end, where the road led to a recycling facility and a single caretaker house. We talked to this family and they advised us a different route to Chimborazo – over a steep hill.
The hill cimb was steep but we all managed. We were now riding in the Chimborazo national park, which we later realized was not permitted. The trail there was not very well developed and probably did not see much use. In a few places the dirt was very soft. Shobhit and Mahesh both lost traction at one point and their bikes went down. The Hero was so underpowered, that it was not able to move it’s own weight in the sandy area. Eventually I was able to help them both ride through some very soft dirt and thankfully we made it out of there on to the highway.
Riding a motorcycle at 14,000 feet on the volcanic plains of Chimborazo is an experience I will never forget!
The DR was really bogging at 14,250 ft. It was cold up here and were in and out of the clouds.
When we got to the highway, it was a little tricky to get off the dirt and on to the pavement. The water channels (gutters) on the sides of the roads are typically deep in Ecuador. With so much rain, they are designed to be about 2 feet deep, so it was a little tricky to jump our bikes on to the pavement.
We got our first glimpse of this majestic mountain when the cloud broke. We decided to ride around the mountain for a few kms, before we hit our hotel.
It’s hard to describe the grandeur of this mountain, it looks very big and imposing when the clouds clear.
After riding around Chimborazo for an hour or so, we arrived at our hotel for the night – Chimborazo Lodge.
This was a beautiful property, situated right at the base of the mountain. We had a couple of excellent double rooms booked, and the property offered dinner and breakfast at the beautifully appointed dining room. The owner of this hotel, Marco Cruz, is a famous mountaineer and has apparently been up Chimborazo several (hundreds) of times.
The only other guests at the hotel were a couple, a lady from Munich Germany with her tour guide, a local Ecuadorian naturalist, Manuel Jacome. We got chatting with them before dinner and shared some whisky. Mahesh talked about how Bayern was playing in the Bundesliga and the Champions League. A lot of whisky was flowing, and so the opinions on football were getting strong.
Before dinner we also hiked up a short path towards the mountain. Walking through the herd of alpacas, in a remote but stunning place like this … was special. I will never forget this view of the mighty Chimborazo.
Dinner was cream of broccoli soup, some roasted carrots and a poached pear for dessert.
After dinner, we walked outside to view the sky. It was crystal clear with stars shining brightly. It was also very cold by then, probably in the mid 30s. Shobhit was chatting with Manuel and he recommended a hotel in Misahuallí to stay and explore the Amazonia. We made a note of that hotel and decided to ride out there the next day. There was no cell phone signal or WiFi anywhere at the hotel, so that evening we had to ride out a few kms to a restaurant and update our families that everything was ok.
Day 5: Ride from Chimborazo to Misahuallí
Manuel the tour guide had recommended that if we wanted to visit the Amazonian part of Ecuador, we should stay at “the Jungle Lodge El Jardin Aleman“. Our original plan was to ride to Volcan Cotopaxi, but given how cold we all were, we were ready for some warmth. But first we wanted to see. ifwe could get to the basecamp of the mountain. We set out after an early breakfast, and rode to the entrance to Reserva de Producción Faunistíca Chimborazo. Our original plan was to ride up to “Carrel Refuge”, the first mountain cabin that hikers use to summit Chimborazo. Unfortunately, the only way to get up there was using a sanctioned tour operator. We couldn’t ride our bikes up there and plus it was very very cold indeed. After a couple of quick pictures, we were on our way.
The ride from Chimborazo to Misahuallí was mostly uneventful. It was fully paved, and we were riding the main highways that connect the towns along the way. We descended from 14,000 ft to 1,500 ft in about 4 hours, and the temperature went from freezing to warm and humid. The roads were very nice, twisty and scenic, but there was some traffic along the way.
Somewhere along Highway E30, between Banos and Puyo, we encountered a huge traffic jam. There was a mudslide on the highway blocking the flow of traffic in one direction. With one way controlled traffic, there was a traffic jam for 6-8 kms in each direction. Being on motorcycles, we could go around the cars and pass through it fairly quickly. However for the cars and buses stuck there, I’d imagine this was easily a 3-4 hour delay, but they were all filed orderly in one line, obeying the traffic control and not passing on the double yellow. Impressive! This level of traffic discipline is rare in India.
We got to the hotel early afternoon and were immediately struck by the beauty of this place.
The natural surroundings were completely different from the high Andes. Everything was lush green, tropical, warm and humid. The owner of the hotel, also a German, was not available in the afternoon, but greeted us later in the evening. We decided to head into town for lunch. Misahuallí is a vibrant tourist town where the tributary Misahuallí merges with the Napo river. The Napo river is huge, easily 2 km wide here. It flows into Peru and in 1,400 km becomes the Amazon river.
Misahuallí is also the last developed town in Ecuador, when going eastwards in the Amazonia. Anything East from here is mostly developed for petroleum and related commercial enterprises.
Lunch was more rice, potatoes and lentils.
We also took a short boat ride down the Napo river. The currents were strong. The Napo river and it’s tributaries rise in the Andes and they always carry sediments along. This is why they are relatively eutrophic and they look muddy and dirty because of the stirred up sediments.
The boat captain took his son along. No lifevest, no safety gear. The kid was about as old as my son.
We ended the relaxing evening with some pool at the hotel pool table. Mahesh is an expert pool player! He beat Shobhit and me easily in all the games we played.
Dinner was some fried broccoli, potatoes and beets. It’s amazing how simple the food is in Ecuador, so much different than the typical American dinner.
I slept very well that night. I turned on the ceiling fan in the room, and with the warm weather I was able to sleep soundly that night.
Day 6: Ride from Misahuallí back to Quito
This was the last day of our trip. We woke up late and had a lazy omelette breakfast. There were a couple of macaws on the hotel property and we took some pictures with them.
This parrot was happy to sit on the shoulders of hotel guests for a picture.
Shobhit also got his drone working and flew it over the hotel, taking some pictures of the property and river.
This is the Misahuallí river.
A quick poolside photo at the hotel and we were on our way.
The ride back to Quito was uneventful again. All highway riding, again through some amazing twisties. We dodged. afew mudslides again, climbed back to 13k ft and made our way to Quito.
Typical mountain highway in Ecuador. We took many short stops along the way.
Getting to Quito requires crossing a mountain pass, at 13k ft. Shobhit stopped for a quick picture while it took Mahesh a good 20 minutes to catch up on his Hero.
Nonetheless, we made it in good time and returned the bikes to Freedom Rental by about 3pm. The return was smooth and hassle free, and having survived the last 6 days with simple but bland food, we are all craving for some spicy Indian food. We took an Uber to Sher-E-Punjab, where we had some amazing Indian food. We also met the owner, Satwant Kangura, who spoke fluent Hindi and chatted about his life in Ecuador. He was a great guy and made us feel special and warmly welcomed in his restaurant.
This was the end of the trip and we had a couple of hours to kill before we had to go to the airport. So we found a massage place – Happiness Spa – and got a nice relaxing back massage. This helped with the soreness of riding a motorcycle on and off-road for 6 days. The flights back to the Bay Area were fine, I slept most off the time.
So Ecuador 2023 was a more than just a fun motorcycle ride. We experienced the amazing geographic diversity of the country, the friendly and warm nature of the people and the simplicity and authenticity of the food. It was an amazing trip overall and I wouldn’t hesitate to go back there again.
Here is a short video from Shobhit’s Insta360 camera:
Gear Review [coming soon]
Helmet: Scorpion EXO AT950
Jacket: Alpinestars Halo Drystar Jacket
Pants: Alpinestars Halo Drystar Pants
Gloves: Klim Dakar Gloves and Cortech Super-Sonic WP Gloves
Sujit Kirpekar 