Bikepacking volcanos in Ecuador
Empty farmhouses
As was the norm late afternoon I found myself looking for cover as rain set in and thunderstorms rolled through. Although rural, I was still in a reasonably populated area 40 kilometers or so from Quito. It was fairly easy to find a farm without any lights on to sneak in to for the night.
The next morning I got up early so as not to have any altercations with anyone for utilising a vacant farmhouse. So I headed up the road and found this roofless house in a small friendly village where every local seemed to go out of their way to say good morning.
I had a dehydrated breakfast skillet which only needed boiling water. While I waited for the water to boil, locals walked by making their way to their designated pickup spots for work. All of them had in their hands either a pickaxe and or a hand plough. A few wandered over for a chat and asked me about my bike while another squeezed the tyres and another bloke asked me how much a bike like this costs. They were pretty stoked with the push button ignition on my camping stove too.
A truck rolls in during our conversation, hits the horn and everyone piles in the back. They all seemed pretty happy to be heading off to plough fields, and they wished me "buen provecho" waving from the back of the truck. Not long after the truck left, 8 or so horses wandered down the road and had a look into the grass right in front of me. It was obviously not ideal grass as most of them took off except one grey horse. I setup a quick photo to get the horse and me in the shot but he wandered out of the photo. So this is a photo of me, watching a grey horse walk out of the frame.
After my chat with some friends, answering questions as best I could in Spanish and all packed up I hit the road. For some reason the road was cobblestone so it was bumpy going for the first couple hours. Beyond the cobblestone and into some remote farmland the road just continues to climb and climb. I pass by some farmers from time to time and ask to pass as per my guidebook and they wave me on.
Eventually I reach a fence with a locked gate it’s simply too high to lift my bike over and it’s too low to be passed under so after some thought, I jump the fence and head off looking for someone to help unlock the gate. It’s not long before I find two women milking cows and as best I can I ask to pass. They talk among themselves for what seems to be a very long time but eventually they both look at me with smiles on their face and say “three dollars”. It seemed like a reasonable deal, I paid and they opened up the gate.
I ride onwards and upwards, the climb is relentless and as the hours tick by the skies grow more and more angry. Huge storm clouds mill about overhead and i’m well aware of what this means. The climbing has really caught up with me and I develop a decent headache. Hopeful to make it to Cotopaxi by the end of the day as per my plan I push on, but my headache is throbbing and the skies start to rumble.
Tent poles and lightning
Rain begins to fall, my head is banging and the clouds swirl and rumble around me and overhead. I do my best to ride til I find some sort of cover and do so by jumping down a rock wall and nearby a stream. I setup my ultralight shelter next to this stream as I also needed water. Of course, my ultralight shelter doesn't have a floor so as rain turned to sleet and then to hail the amount of water running under and through my shelter was essentially a stream itself. I dragged my bike half underneath the shelter and stacked all my gear on top of my wheels to prevent them from getting wet. I had to hold the shelter down at the sides to prevent it from blowing away. As I did so, the hail was hammering down so hard it was difficult to hold the shelter. It’s difficult to communicate the level of migraine I was experiencing at the time. One that makes it difficult to see, difficult to move, difficult to think straight, difficult to manage myself in a storm so violent and so far beyond anything i’ve experienced before.
As the hail and sleet came down, constant body shaking thunder ripped through me. The loudest, scariest thunder i've ever experienced, and although the thunder was scary loud it was the lightning, which seemed to be constant, was the most concerning aspect of this storm. I was obviously in a little ultralight shelter, with a single metal pole trying its best to stay upright and a steel bike next to me. I stayed crouched down holding the sides of my shelter down with water streaming through my shelter for about 5 hours that late afternoon and into the night. The hail, rain, sleet, thunder and lightning didn't let up the entire time.
I had run out of water earlier in the day and chose this little spot next to the stream because the water was nice and clear and accessible. I did have to lift my bike over a rock wall to get to it however. Just as the final moments of day turned to night, I arose from the shelter and planned to head down to the stream to filter some water. The stream was no longer a cute little, clear water high altitude stream running off from snow melt on Cotopaxi. It was not a raging torrent of rich reddish brown sludge threatening to break its banks. I realised now the rock wall I had to jump over to get to my camping spot was a retaining wall to stop water from washing away the road at times like this. I was so tired I filtered some of the sludge, ate, drank and setup my bed and fell into my sleeping bag as the rain continued to hammer down. It was hard initially to sleep because I thought if I don't get electrocuted there's a fair chance i'll be washed away and or drown. I had a couple amusing conversations with myself at that moment; about how it would be funny story to drown on a bike riding trip while camping at 4200m; and that I sat next to a steel bicycle during an electrical storm for 5 hours and got electrocuted. Funny self talk and all, I guess I was so tired exhaustion overwhelmed me and I fell asleep.
I woke up early after the electrical storm from the day/night before. The "stream" was still a reddish brown but had backed off from the raging torrent it was the day before. There were glimpses of blue in the sky and I took a couple quick photos of Cotopaxi before packing up. Although my map suggested I was close, visibility the day before was so low I had no visual proof Cotopaxi was towering over me. This one is taken mid morning as I ride with some wild horses and clouds once again move in and cover the higher elevations of Cotopaxi.