South America Road-trip in an old-timer
Ecuador is a nice country to drivethrough in your own car. After having made it without problems to Loja and onto Cuenca, we were headed to Quito, the capital of the country. In Quito weplanned to stop and take a rest, but before that we had to cross 450km alongthe ‘avenue of volcanoes’, a route that promised some spectacular views.
We wanted to leave Cuenca on time to makesure we’d have enough time to take the drive easy and stop for some picturetaking. However, we were confronted with a slight electrical challenge. The carbattery was not charging and after checking the fuse-box and wiring we decidedit had to be the dynamo/generator. We asked one of the hotel’s drivers to giveus a jump-start and for directions before we drove to a near-by garagespecializing in car-related electricity issues. The owner took one look at ourbeautiful Amazon and decided that he would help. It took him about 15 minutesto disconnect and take out the dynamo, another 15 minutes to completely take itapart, clean it up and find a small part being worn out to the bone, for whichhe of course happened to have an Eastern-European-made generic spare. Puttingit all back together whilst charging our battery to the max took another 30minutes, and the total operation cost us about 15 USD. Even so, we did notleave Cuenca before 1pm and so we prepared for a late arrival in Quito.
The first part of the route was veryhilly, full of hairpin bends and in bad condition. On top of that, a thick fog confirmedour feeling that this would become a long day, but after passing the town ofAlausi, just like a couple of days before, the mist disappeared as we droveinto a wide valley and onto a beautiful 4-lane highway. The odds had changed toour favor. During the last part of the journey we hit the Volcano Avenue, andthe landscape was indeed spectacular. We managed to get a glimpse ofsnow-capped Chimborazo; the highest active volcano in the world, and we sawclouds and gasses rise from the Tunguragua Volcano. Sadly, around these partsthe sun sets around 6pm, so we missed the perfectly cone-shaped point of theCotopaxi. We eventually made it to Hotel Quito at 8pm, which given the hecticride into the city, wasn’t bad going at all.
Hotel Quito is situated in the LaFloresta neighborhood, a nice part of town from where one enjoys a beautifulview over the city. The next day was our allocated resting day, so we took iteasy and both decided to visit our local business partners.
Thursday we made our way towardColombia, crossing the equator en route. We left at 9am with the sun high in thesky and it promised to be a beautiful drive. From our hotel we made itrelatively quickly to the highway, taking us out of town before we knew it.Whilst driving further north and away from Quito the landscape turned dry androcky around us, completely different to what we had seen before in Ecuador. Wepassed some of the many rose-nurseries this region of the country is famous for,and in which the Dutch have made some heavy investments, and after about 40kmreached the equator. First we made a stop at the ‘previous equator’, initiallyindicated by the Inca people as the line where the earth is at its widest.However, correct GPS measurements indicate that the ‘real equator’ lies about30m further north, so we were obliged to make another stop at the officialmonument placed there a couple of years ago. We did not spend too much timehere (I lived in Ecuador for half a year in 1994 and have been to this spotmany times before) and drove on. We had a long way to go still and had no ideahow much time we would need to get to the Colombian border.
On our way we passed through the townsof Otovalo and Ibarra. Otavalo is famous for its textiles and the huge Saturdaymarket. The indigenous people are proud of their legacy, much stronger than manyother indigenous people elsewhere in Latin America. They are happy todemonstrate where they come from through their costumes; this is one of the fewplaces where one still finds men as well as women fully dressed according tothe local codes. We drove on and passed a beautiful green valley, a lot lower downand warmer. Sugarcane was the main crop here, planted by the Europeans soon aftertheir arrival. The Europeans brought many African slaves to work theplantations and therefore this still is a mainly black region, which issomething one would not expect driving through the Andes with its typicalindigenous people. The sun was strong and we enjoyed our trip to the Colombianborder, arriving there at around 3pm. Without warning, the 2-lane road we weredriving on turned one-way leaving us no way out of an enormous traffic jam; itseems there were other people wanting to get into Colombia…
After about an hour in the queue theweather changed; clouds appeared in the sky and slowly but surely it started torain harder and harder. At some point it felt like there was no space betweenthe huge drops anymore. For some reason our car was not washed of the road andwe slowly crept toward the border facilities where we had to get out of the carand were soaked in a matter of seconds. Paperwork went smooth, helped by thelaughs and giggles we caused running from window to window, leaving puddleseverywhere we went. Colombians like a good laugh and we realized we would havea good time in this new country.
The Amazon was not prepared for theamount of water we brought back in and her fans did not manage to clear ourwindscreens, forcing us to drive on while constantly polishing the glass on theinside, with our windows open, allowing more rain in. One of the customs officers,between great outbursts of laughter about our appearance, had given us a goldentip; when your windshield wipers cannot process the amount of water falling outof the sky anymore, put on your darkest sunglasses; for some reason, they breakthe light filtering through the film of water on your windscreen, creating analmost perfect view again. Sounds odd, but we tried it and it works… kind of.Only do this when nothing else helps and you really have to push forward, andthen only at a very low speed, as the images are distorted enough to createaccidents, but it helped us get out of that valley and onto dry land back onthe road to Pasto.
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