Following on from Pt 1…
Declining a feast of freshly plucked guinea pig in Simiatug, it was time to move on again. My original plan involved following a dirt road that zig-zagged up and over a pass towards Volcan …
[ Read More → ]
My obsession for riding dirt roads, and linking dotted lines on my well-thumbed map, is getting a little inconvenient – at least if I intend to make it down to Peru… I’ve struck a rich vein of backcountry potential here …
[ Read More → ]
After several hard days of backcountry riding from Quilatoa, I’ve finally made it to Riobamba – Quechua/Spanish for the ‘river on the plateaux’. Unfortunately, my lax attitude towards water and street food may have caught up with me (though I …
[ Read More → ]
I love markets… For their boundless vibrancy. Their towering displays of food. The sense of community. The people watching potential.
As tempting as it is, I try not to take too many portraits of people unawares. I’ll snap a few …
[ Read More → ]
Inspired by the dirt road antics of Tom and Sarah – a couple who left North America in 2010, but leapfroged me during my touring hiatus – I set off to ride the ‘Quilotoa loop’, so named for the water-filled …
[ Read More → ]
I guess I must do, as I’ve found myself back at Cotopaxi once more… And I certainly took enough photos of this beautiful, symmetrical cone of a volcano to suggest some form of obsession…
This time round, I took the …
[ Read More → ]
Rising from a highland plateau, 5997m Cotopaxi is often touted as one of the highest active volcanoes in the world. It’s almost perfect cylindrical cone is picture-postcard Ecuador, and makes for an epic circular ride… la Vuelta al Cotopaxi.…
[ Read More → ]
I’m just back from the fabled Vuelta al Cotopaxi. Ok, so it wasn’t the official mountain biking race that’s encircles Ecuador’s most famous volcano, but a similar route of our own doing. Here’s a first round of photos – …
[ Read More → ]
With Ecuador famed for its Avenue of Volcanoes – as coined by German explorer Alexander von Humboldt back in the 19th century – I took the opportunity to stretch out my legs by tackling the climb up to Volcán Pichincha, …
[ Read More → ]
After a medley of trains, planes and even a nocturnal bicycle ride across LA (with dumpster-diving feed en route), here I am back in Quito. Or rather Tumbaco, a small town squeezed between steep, quilted hills, set some 12 kms …
[ Read More → ]