The avenue of the volcanoes

Type these magic words into google, hit "Images" and enjoy pictures of towering mountain peaks, stunning sunsets and erupting volcanoes. If on the other hand you decide to cycle through this route in May don't forget to bring your rain gear. I spent about a week toiling up and down the valleys that run at right angles to my route. This means to get to that point, just over there on the other side of the valley, so close you can almost touch it, you in fact have to turn to your left and follow the road for km after km down to the unbelievably inconsiderate river cross the bridge and then sweat your way back up the far side. This maybe would not be so bad if it was an occasional punishment but it is continuous, in the Ecuadorian Sierras the word plano (flat, for the linguistically challenged out there) does not exist. It also would have been bearable, maybe even enjoyable, if these alleged views had been visible. However in my week of Ecuadorian mountains I developed a vitamin D deficiency and turned from carribean-tanned to bed-sheet-white from lack of sunshine. Hyperbole aside, I managed to catch a glimpse of one volcano for about 5 minutes before it was again swallowed in cloud and these "stunning valleys" were 9 times out of 10 no more to me than a swirling mass of cloud and fog.

There were a couple of highlights to this section and, as always seems to happen when nature lets me down, these came from people. The first was when the weather let up enough for me to camp next to a river in, what I thought was, a secluded cannon. Above me, perched on a shelf in the cannon, lived a family of indigenous farmers. When they realised that they had a gringo guest camped out below them they whipped out the welcome mat and, after my futile protests, handed me chocla (corn on the cob), peaches and apples, straight off their respective plants. Never has corn tasted so good as it did in the mouth of a hungry cyclist, after a day of struggling through valleys and so fresh it was almost alive. The second highlight came when I eventually met up with two Austrian cyclists. I had first met Phillip and Valeska way back in December on the Baja. We had got seperated by the crossing to the mainland and had since taken different routes. However we had kept in pretty good contact and finally in Ecuador we managed to meet back up and have a few days of riding together to Cuenca and finally into some sunshine. This Austrian couple are exceptionally inspiring, having now spent over three and a half years pedalling the globe, at a much faster pace than any other couple-bikers I've met. Their attitude to what is an amazing feat of endurance however is incredibly relaxed, in Phillip's case utterly childish in the most entertaining of ways, and is summed up by the name of their website: http://www.2-play-on-earth.net/. So with many an entertaining story from their travels and the occasional fart-gag from Philip the rainy km's to Cuenca slipped by.

Cuenca itself is a good looking colonial town, something seemingly scarce in these parts, and I enjoyed a few days there, waiting for my cycling shoes to finally clear customs. Here I departed from the Austrian duo as they decided to get down to the coast and out of the rain, while I, ridiculously, decided to stay in the mountains and give the elements another chance. After two and a half more days of pants weather I finally cleared the last of the clouds with a pass out from the town of Loja. That evening just as I was searching for a place to camp, I came round a corner and saw the town of Catacocha perched on it's hill, with swirling cloud, golden with the setting sun, surrounding its base. I have never seen a sight that looked more like it belonged in a book of fairy tales. The next day saw me pass up and down my final Ecuadorian valleys and into the flat lands of Peru.