Author Archives: Andy

The Cotopaxi volcano

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We had bad weather for 2 days, so we decided to take a “day off” in Latacunga. There is not much to do in the city so we slept in and had a real lazy day. The next day we packed just what we needed to climb the Cotopaxi and rode to the entrance to the park.

You can’t enter the park with motorbikes and it is compulsory to have a guide with you. So we stopped the bikes and negotiated with the guides. With David we started in his 4×4 towards the Cotopaxi.

The Cotopaxi volcano

The Cotopaxi volcano

The volcano is still active and is one of the highest active volcanos. His last eruption was 100 years ago and he is getting warmer in the last years.

You can climb the volcano, it is an technical easy accent but takes it talls due to the altitude of almost 5900 m. With the guide you can drive the road up to 4300 m and ascent by foot to a mountain lodge at 4800m. 1 hour later you reach the glacier (yes, it takes that long for 200m …).

On the the way up to the mountain hut

On the the way up to the mountain hut

The weather was still uncertain with lots of dark clouds sorruounding the mountain. So we were not sure weather or not we would actually see anything or whether we would just stumble around in the clouds.

You enter the National Park on a dirtroad which swerves between 3 volcanoes with Cotopaxi being clearly the major and most beautiful.

Suddenly the clouds on our right opened and for the first time we had a fantastic view on the northern flank of the volcano. Standing on a flat gras plane we could see the mountain building up slowly with gras covered brown earth. It was steepening up and the ground turned into a red more rocky wall which finally ended in a perfect white cone head.

The road steepened up and led in sharp turns up the volcano. The guide got busy driving. On some hairpin turns the road seemed to end in the sky.

Finally we arrived on a small area where David parked the car. A few hundred metres above we spottet the hut and started walking. It was steep, and a cold wind blew, but the sun was shining and with its intenseness it was quite warm.

View into the broad valley

View into the broad valley of Cotopaxi NP

Even though we were already at 4300m the climb was ok, obvisouly we have been adjusted to the altitude in the meantime.

The view was incredible. The flat area underneath the volcano was spotted with shadows of small clouds that covered the sky north of us.

The east and west side of the volcano was in dark clouds. Just the north flank from which we were ascending was in the sun. We were really born lucky.

Great views from the Cotopaxi

Great views from the Cotopaxi

After we reached the mountain lodge I wanted to go on the reach the glacier. The guide was a little bit unhappy with it, but he couldn’t leave we walking alone and so he and Christy followed.

We walked up the steep path. The view changed every minute and was incredibly beautiful. We had a lot of breaks to enjoy the view since the altitude was taking its toll.

The difference between the start of the hike at 4300m and the last bit from the lodge to the glacier starting at 4800m was amazing.

The 500m difference in altitude made it so much harder to breath. Its not a new thing to me in general, but the effect within such a small altitude difference really surprised me.

The guide said, that the ascent from the lodge to the summit is usually 5hours for trained mountaineers, 7hours for “good-in-shape”-tourists. And it is only 1000m difference in altitude.

The glacier summit of the Cotopaxi

The glacier summit of the Cotopaxi

As we reached the glacier the guide started to hurry us up, since the clouds were thickening and became very dark. He was afraid of a thunderstorm that would very quickly develop at this mountain. In fact we heard some thundering on the way down, but finally I think he just had a private appointment that he didn’t want to miss. We took our time to shoot dozens of pictures from this wonderful place and view.

The hike up the hill is quite breathtaking, not only due to the thin air

The hike up the hill is quite breathtaking, not only due to the thin air

We were unbelievable lucky that day. With all the clouds surrounding us during the day, it could just as well been that we just stumbled around in the clouds, not seeing anything. I acutally found it wonderful to have all these clouds around us, since they created a dramatical atmosphere.

Dark clouds left and right of us

Dark clouds left and right of us

The “throat of the moon”as the name is translated in an indigenous language really meant it very well with us.

Our travel seems to get better and better….

Avenue of the volcanoes

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In two days we drove from Mindo to Latacunga. The weather changed and so we got quite some rain one night. It was freezing cold at night and so we asked the owner of our hotel in Machachi to start the little oven we had in our nice apartment. The warmth of the fire was fantastic and created a very cozy athmosphere.

On the Avenue of the volcanoes

On the Avenue of the volcanoes

The place we stayed used to be an old train station.

The road of the volcanoes is impressive. Left and right one volcano after the other, in between the Panamericana. The road itself is nice to ride on: 3 lines in each directions, all very wide, little traffic, winding between the mountains. But of course it is a highway, so stopping is only possible on the shoulder. It became more and more cloudy and when we arrived at the Cotopaxi Nationalpark, it rained again. We couldn’t see anything of the Cotopaxi, a 5900m active volcano with a picture perfect cone shape. So we decided to find a nice hostel and stay there for a day to wait for better weather.

The cloud forest

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Mindo is a small town which lives from local and international tourism. The landscape surrounding the town is characterized by steep mountains which are covered in rich vegetation. The clouds from the ocean collide with the Andes so that this region gets a lot of rain.

We decided to make a little walk to a waterfall. A pick-up taxi brought us up the mountain. We were sitting in the back of the truck as it went up a steep and bumpy dirt road. On a little cabin we jumped off the back of the truck. We new that there was some sort of cable car that we would need to use in order to get to the path that leads to the waterfall. We did not expect what we saw.

A small cage, hanging on a steel cable transported people from one side of a large valley to the other. The cage was moved by a second small steel cable that was driven by a truck engine. A guy was sitting there, acceleration with food-pedals. After max. 5 people entered the cage, the guy put in 1rst gear and accelerated the steel cable, shifting to second gear as the load was getting some speed. To get the cable car back from the other side of the valley he was putting in reverse.

Cable car to the waterfalls

Cable car to the waterfalls

We paid our 6$ return-ticket and entered the rickety transport. There were 2 benches facing each other for 4 persons. The fifth has to stand and hold on to a cable. And off we went. It was quite impressive. This thing got pretty fast, swinging left and right. It started with the tall trees left and right and very quickly the treetops were far underneath us. The view was incredible. We could see the forest from a very unusual point of view. Safely arrived on the other side of the valley we started our walk to the waterfall. The path was winding along the mountains ledge. We were walking like through a tunnel of green leaves. In all shapes sizes and shades of green. In between once in a while some glowing red bloom.

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The sheer variety of plants was mindblowing. The eye could hardly separate one from the other as they all grow on another and in another. A wild chaos of all kind of exotic plants with leaves 3 times as big as we are.

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Humming birds flying to get the nectar our of the flowers, always a bit to quick to make it into one of my pictures.

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Once in a while you could see through the thick vegetation into the steep valley. This view offered the 3-dimensionality of this whole scenery.  As we walked clouds moved into the mountain range opposite of the slope we were walking along. The air was very humid, but fresh and cool.

It was a fantastic walk.

Crossing the equator

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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...

(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

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.

 

 

Getting the bikes

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On Tuesday we took a taxi to the airport. The taxi driver takes a different route than the one we had when we arrived in Quito and so we are irritated a little bit first, but it turns out he takes the easier route: a brand new 3 lane highway from the city to the airport.

There are different cargo areas and it takes a lot of asking and driving back and forth to find the right place to go. It turns out, we first have to go to the shipping company (which was Iberia Airline) and then to the customs where our bikes actually are. The two things are a few kilometers apart from each other. So we are very thankful to have such a great taxi driver.

He was really super kind. After we had our papers signed at Iberia Airline, we drove back the 5km to the customs where they told us we would need a SOAT, an Ecuadorian insurance to get the bikes. Of course we couldn’t get it at the airport, but only in the city. AAARrrrgh. Well, we kept asking and talking and finally we found a young lady who would help us. She told us we wouldn’t need to have it right away but would need it generally and would need to get it ASAP.

There was a lot of waiting going on there on this airport. Our taxi driver got a very good extra money for the great work and support he has done and took off. We waited and waited, and finally got the papers to get the bikes off. Of course there was a mistake, so back and waiting and waiting…

Finally we met the boss of the delivery section. And she was really cool. When she saw our bikes she was all over them. With real tenderness she was moving her hand over the handlebars of the bike, clearly in love with it. She used to have a bike herself, she told us.

With her help everything went a lot smoother and quicker. Until we had to pay 200$ customs. Well, they would not take any kind of card. No, there is no ATM here, only 5km away in the airport. And they would close in 20min. There are two banks here, but you cant withdrawal cash there. I started cursing and rushed to bus stop, got the next bus to the airport, ran to the next ATM, got some cash and back in a taxi.

The boss lady already arranged everything, so all went smooth from that point.

We were allowed to leave the wood of the crates just leaving behind. So we uncrated the bikes and wheeled them out of the shipping area.

There we stood, everybody leaving for his or her families. The sun was slowly descending, in 30 minutes it would be dark.

We connected the batteries, put on the panniers and filled up the bikes with some gas. It was all very much reminding me of the hectic days we had in Munich the last few weeks….

Filling up the bikes with gas was necessary, because we had to ship them without gas. A nice guy from freedom bikes lent us a 20l gas-can so we could make it to the city.

Freedom Bikes is a shop around the corner from our hotel. They rent motorbikes inclduding GPS tracks. They have small 250ccm dirt bikes, but also BMW F800 and similar. They are a great group of guys who helped us in many ways, including tips for the trip and the gas can.

So we filled up the bikes (a little bit hectically, that had some effect later, but that’s a story of its own…) and started them. They started immediately and so we took off to Quito.

The ride was actually nice and the traffic not as bad as I thought. But still for Christy being the first ride outside Germany, at night, we were pretty happy when we arrived safely at the hotel. We wheeled the bikes into the garden and locked them there.

The next day we did some packing and checking and added some electrical equipment to the bikes that we bought in Germany the last day.

Quito – slowing down the pace

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It was only the night before the flight that we realized that we would arrive in the afternoon.

So far we have been too busy with other stuff than asking ourselves how long the flight would last, how much time we would have to change in Amsterdam and at what time we would arrive in Quito.

So arriving in the afternoon was a pleasant surprise for us, since we thought for some reason we’d arrive in the middle of the night.

We booked the hotel the last evening in Germany, so we didn’t know if we would get picked up. But leaving customs we already saw a guy holding a sign with our names.

He brought us to Quite to the Boutique Hotel Café Cultura where we would stay for the next few days. The drive there was quite impressive. A very narrow, traffic-blocked and winding road lead down a canyon and up on the other side. Christy was already getting nervous about that road. Later we learned that was one of three roads to the airport and it was the worst.

For the first few days in Quito we didn’t do that much. We were still in the Check-List-Mode and it was very difficult to understand that there was nothing to do until Tuesday until we would pick-up our bikes from the airport. For months we were so busy getting things organized, that the sudden feeling of having nothing to do felt like a whole new thing.

We were walking down to old-town, a very nice colonial style city with nice placas and restaurants. It is a world heritage.

Old town of Quito

Old town of Quito

On Sunday we took a taxi to the “teleferrico”a cable car to one of the volcanoes surrounding the city. The volcano is not active any more and is easy to climb. When you are adjusted to the altitude. We walked about half the way up (form 4000m to approx. 4300m) and had enough. But the view of the city was incredible. There are no bushes, but a lot of different types of gras that live at his altitude. And it is just beautiful up here.

On our little hike up to Pichincha volcano.

On our little hike up to Pichincha volcano.

View of Quito

View of Quito

Some guys on dirt-bikes ride up here for an afternoon ride.

Mountainbikers use the teleferrico to bring the bikes up and ride them down on steep slopes.

We sleep a lot, a little bit jetlagged but more tired because of the stressful weeks laying behind us.

The hotel we stay in is very nice. Humming birds fly around in the garden. Three kittens entertain us. The air is warm and the sun intense.

Quito is at almost 2900m, so the nights are cold, but in the sun it is hot.

The hotel is in between the two tourist areas of Quito: the beautiful old-town and the “new-town”, a party area with generally loud and pretty bad bars and restaurants.

With a recommendation we find a fantastic Ecuadorian restaurant there though. We eat out there twice and are having fantastic food there.

The most impressing thing regarding food here are the juices. All fresh, super tasty and with lots of pulp.

Our favorite becomes Tomarrillo, the tree-tomato fruit.

The last few days before we left….

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It was a crazy last few weeks, days and hours we had in Germany.

For weeks there was no evening or day where we were not fully busy. In spite of the long preparation time, a lot of things came up pretty late or just took much longer than estimated.

We had to crate our bikes (which we had to do in pouring rain), prepare official stuff (like insurance of the bikes), clear my flat (painting, moving the stuff to Christy’s flat, …) and prepare Christy’s flat for subletting it. We actually had the subletting contract signed only a week before we left.

 

We had one room and the cellar in which we stored all of my and Christy’s stuff (including all my furniture).

When the lady who rented the flat for 6 months arrived we were just ready with packing and sorting our stuff. In fact I was taking down the South-America map from the wall when she was standing in the entrance.

Since we sublet the flat from 1.9. and we left 4.9., we stayed in a hotel just around the corner of Christy’s flat for the last few days. Christy negociated a room with a great city view.

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We also had the issue with two motorbikes that we would keep in Germany: my Rally Bike and Christy’s Off-road bike. Where would we put them? Christy’s Boss was super kind and offered us to park them in his garage for the time.

I was working to the last day, leaving the company at 4pm. After that we organized our packing. Christy had bought some waterproof bags, because a few days ago we have noticed that our Touratech panniers were not waterproof. We had a lot of issues with getting the panniers, even though we ordered them already in April (but that’s a story of its own).

We took the last pieces of stuff to the cellar of Christy’s apartment and had something to eat. We returned to the hotel after 1am. At 3:30am the alarm went off. An hour later we were on the way to the airport. Take off was at 7am.

I usually can’t sleep on planes, but for more than 1 hour I was completely out.

 

Short history of a long dreamed dream

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At the age of about 15 or 16 some of my friends and me got into watching slide shows. We went to the city of Basel in Switzerland, a mere 20 minutes from my home whenever an interesting show was presented. There were a couple of professional photographers that we liked a lot. We saw slide shows of travels and countries all over the world.

One of these professional photographers was Michael Martin. A German geologist who fell in love with the Sahara desert and traveled there frequently. Every year he was in town to show his incredible pictures in a well presented multi-vision slide show. He was (actually still is: see www.Michael-Martin.de) the best photographer of deserts that I know. And his entertaining style of introducing you to these great landscapes and interesting countries and people of northern Africa blew our minds. We loved his shows and never missed one.

He travelled to the deserts on his BMW motorbike and that had quite an impact on us. We bought books about adventures motorbiking and read articles about what the best motorbikes for travelling the world would be.

As soon as I turned old enough to gain my driving licence I licenced for motorbikes as well. And so did my buddy Mike.

Mike got himself a small Suzuki 500ccm naked bike and a second one soon after that.

My parents became quite worried about the motorbike thing and were smart enough to offer a deal: I could use their car at any time if I wouldn’t buy a motorbike. Since I grew up in a small village where having car available any time is a real big thing, I quickly agreed.

I still rode the bikes together with my friends, most of the time as passenger.

But the riding we did had nothing to do with what we had in mind originally. Instead we flew through the winding streets of the black forest with high speed, always cranking it up. If I think back on these days I can only thank god that none of us had a bad accident. At the time I was just like every 18-year old kid: young and invincible.

After finishing high school I left the area to go to university where other hobbies found my interest. And the dream of riding a motorcycle on a long trip drifted away.

It was until I moved to Munich that I got reminded of motorbiking again. In Munich I lived in a community with some other people and after a long working day I sometimes went to a little bar around the corner of the little house that we lived in to relax with a beer or two.

Sitting there and enjoying the cold brew I noticed a chap sitting there by himself, obvisouly just enjoying a quiet evening with a beer as well.

He seemed familiar and it took me quite a while until I recognized this fellow with his long wild hair. It was Michael Martin, my hero of juvenile motorcycle dreams.

It made me think quite a bit about these old dreams I had. And even though riding a motorbike seemed incredibly far off my daily routine, the undefined feelings of a strong dream came back to me immediately.

Later that year I packed my bicycle to go for a 5 week vacation in Iceland. A great trip in one of the most incredible landscapes I have ever been to. The country is very vast and empty, with no trees. There are only few roads and so I met the same people over and over again. Most of them were other cyclists, but among them was also a motorbiking couple from England.

They told me their story: They met on a party and immediately fell in love with each other. The problem was that this was few weeks before the guy was about to leave for a one-year motorbike trip from Alaska to Chile. She visited him a couple of weeks in North America on his trip, made the motorbike license at home and joined him from Columbia for the rest of the trip.

Ever since they explore the world on small off-road motorbikes. I met them in the middle of nowhere in Iceland. And after a nice talk they jumped on their motorbikes and took off. I stood there and watched them disappear, leaving a cloud of dust behind them.

At that point the idea of maybe buying a motorbike was getting pretty intense.

I returned from my trip to Iceland with my head full of impressions and loads of stories. My sister was supposed to pick me up from the airport. Instead my brother in law was waiting for me at the exit. The moment I saw him I knew something was wrong. He opened the news to me immediately: my father was not well at all. They discovered pancreatic cancer. My sister was there to support him and my mum.

We all went through a tough time. Most of all of course my dad who went through that time with great dignity even though he suffered. Not only physically but also mentally. He was retired, but full of ideas and energy. He had so many dreams he wanted to turn into reality. But this illness robbed him of all his plans.

After he passed away I took my time to really deal with this loss. I went hiking a lot by myself. Quite often I walked up a beautiful little mountain in the Bavarian Alps. The Jochberg offers an incredible and very peaceful view on a little mountain lake. I sat there very often and thought about my dad and how he lived his life. He was a very upright person: absolutely honest in every way. He was a character who had dreams and ideas and turned them into reality. He was well travelled and quite an adventurous guy. He climbed in the mountains, dived in the Red Sea, sailed along the Adriatic coast, all as a young fellow with very little money. As a young student he travelled to Tunisia on a small motorbike, at a time when this was far from being as easy as it is nowadays.

Inspired by this I decided that I should not hesitate any longer and I bought a motorbike few weeks later. Five months later I packed the bikes together with my mate Nobi and we rode through Tunisia into the desert. A life-changing experience.

Ever since I made little motorbike trips. I also got into off-roading a lot. I love the playing aspect of it, to learn what you can actually do with these bikes. I even participated in a couple of rallies among them some desert rallies.

But the dream of a really long motorbike travel was always in the back of my mind. In 2011 I started planning to ride from Germany to South Africa. In the very beginning of my planning the news of the separation of North and South Sudan spread. With the situation in Sudan being very uncertain, it was clear that I would not risk a trip on my own at this time in this area.

Instead I scratched all the vacation I had together and made a fantastic bike tour around the Black Sea.

A year later I met Christy, a wonderful woman. She didn’t ride the motorbike herself, but enjoyed riding on the back of my bike. We started dating and eventually became a couple. One day, I carefully told her about that dream that I have and asked about how she would like to join for a few weeks if I did this. We discussed this and very quickly she surprised me with the idea of doing such a long travel together with me on her own bike.

We originally had the idea of going east from Germany to Mongolia. But due to the fact that I would very much like to go through the “Stan”-countries and the Iran, and her being US-citizen and some other issues we decided that this would be a little bit too much for a first trip. Instead the idea of a road trip through South America slowly took shape.

After we officially released this information to our friends and colleagues the real planning for this adventure started…