The first 2 riding days were short on riding: altogether a mere 160km. But we passed by Freedom Bikes and organized some insurance thing in Quito which took almost half a day. Leaving Quito in traffic took 2 hours even though it was only 20km. We crossed the equator and stopped at a nice little monument they put up 100 years ago.

(Almost) at the equator…

Unfortunately the measurements those days weren’t as accurate as todays GPS, so the line they drew at the monument to symbolize the equator is a few hundred meters off. Equipped with our super precise GPS we ran around in circles to find the real 0,00°-line. That led us on the middle of the busy street where Christy posed with the GPS in her hand while the cars started honking at her.

Pretty close to the real equator there is a nice little museum which shows some original houses from different Indian tribes from the amazonas area of Ecuador.

Later we stopped at a nice viewpoint into a great crater of an inactive volcano. We were still at approximately 3000m altitude and the next 70km would bring us down to 500m. A winding, but pretty good road with lots of traffic led down to the cloud forests. Mindo, a little town was our goal. With only 70km to go and another 3 hours of daylight we left the crater.

For Christy this was the first time she rode such a curvy mountain road ever. And now fully loaded. She took her time and did a great job. My main concern was all the traffic and the cars, busses and trucks that overtook her. But she did great and kept going her own safe speed. I tried to be a few meters in front of her. But after a while I realized that this was pretty dangerous for myself, because I was worried, looking at Christy in my mirrors all the time instead of looking for my own tracks. So I kept a larger distance and just checked every other minute for her.

On the road to Mindo into the cloud forest

But she did very well and took her time to stay safe. So we descended down into the rainforest.