Day 55 Temperature shock and bananas everywhere

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Distance driven today: 194 miles / 312 km

Cumulative distance driven: 9,842 miles / 15,839 km

Today’s trip: Riobamba to Machala, Ecuador

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We started riding around 9:30 in the morning and immediately we felt that it was cold enough that we needed to dress much warmer. On top of that, it had started raining as we were leaving the city of Riobamba. We stopped and put on our full rain gear, warm long sleeves shirts, and had to dig out the winter riding gloves from the bottom of our duffel bags. I hadn’t used my winter gloves since riding through Montana back in early June and for a moment it felt weird having them on. The road heading westbound towards the Pacific coast took us initially over a pass over the Andes at almost 4.000m / 13,000ft and the temperature dropped to just a few degrees above the freezing point. On the positive side, the road was very lightly trafficked, and its condition was in a very good shape.

Once we reached the highest point of the pass, it was all downhill riding during no less than 2 hours until we reached sea level. During those 120 minutes of continuous downhill driving the temperature went from close to freezing, all the way up to 32C / 90F. In other words, we experienced temperature shock and had to stop multiple times and remove clothing layers in order to accommodate for the rapidly increasing temperature. A few ice creams stops also helped alleviate the situation…

Once we reached the southwest coastal regions the landscape had completely changed. All the volcanoes and mountains had been replaced by endless plains banana plantations surrounding the road on either side. It is fair to say that there were bananas everywhere. With an annual production of 8 million tons of bananas, Ecuador is one of the top banana producers in the world. Perhaps no other country can be said to be associated with the term banana republic in a way that Ecuador is today. The bananas grown and exported from the lowlands we drove through all afternoon along the Pacific coast, account for almost 30%!o(MISSING)f the world's production and produce 5 percent of the country’s GDP. I guess it is hard to not go bananas when in this region!

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