Ecuador.

South America » Ecuador
October 10th 2005

Published: October 19th 2005

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Jo and Mark

Volcano near Rio Bamba.

After finishing the Inca Trail it was time to get a move on, the original plan was to go to Nazca to see the Nazca lines, however, all of the buses were full on the day we needed to travel, also the weather was very unsettled and we were worried about arriving there and being holed up for days waiting for a clear day so that we could take the flight. We decided to not bother with Nazca and instead bussed our way straight out of Peru into Ecuador. This turned out to be a mammoth journey, we spent a total of 56 consecutive hours on buses, only stopping for an hour here and there at various bus stations to change buses along the route.
Ecuador wasn't exactly our favourite country, it's quite beautiful but a bit too cosmopolitan and developed for our liking. The first place we visited was Riobamba, here we took a train journey to The Devil's Nose, riding on the roof of the train, which was certainly different! Plenty of action due to the train de-railing on at least 3 occasions! Luckily it wasn't going very fast and it just bumped us about a bit on the

Boarding the train for Devil's Nose.

A famous Ecuadorian Train journey where you get to ride on the roof of the train down through Devil's Nose.

roof!
After Riobamba, we shot off to Banos, a beautiful little village nestled amongst an impressive mountain range, very close to Banos is an active volcano which threatened to erupt back in 2000, the town was subsequently evacuated and remained so for about a year before disgruntled locals stormed the police barricades and re-populated the town. It's no longer in danger of erupting now due to a new volcano in the Galapagos islands forming underwater and taking the pressure off it.
While we were here, we hired mountain bikes and rode a famous route down to Rio Verde, only about 23 km's away, the road was really spectacular and great fun on a mountain bike as it is almost all downhill!! Unfortunately, on the way back in the bus we passed a quad bike rider who had just been killed on the road, not a pleasant sight, no one had even covered him up yet, it shook us both a bit as you could imagine.
Whist here we also went horse riding which was great fun, the area was beautiful, the scenery quite breathtaking.
My horse was the exact clone of me too! all the way up the hills, he

Off we go

farted non stop, he was really clever though, he made sure he was in front all the time so poor Jo ended up taking the fallout throughout! That's my horse!!!
After that we travelled to Quito near the Colombian border for the start of the journey we've been a bit worried about for.................Oh..........all year! As it happened, we should have been more worried about Ecuador, while we were travelling to Quito on the bus, a thief went through our backpack that we carry and stole our mobie phone......Little Shit!!!
Next stop........................................COLUMBIA.

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