One morning in January, we are still in Mexico at the time, we wake up to find plenty of messages on our phones all with more or less the same message: “You are not planning to go to Ecuador, RIGHT?”….Euhm yes we are! We quickly google ‘Ecuador’ and immediately get what is going on. The president of Ecuador has announced ‘Decreto 111’ (aka ‘state of emergency’) after a steady rise in organized crime that has cumulated into a ‘take-over’ of the biggest prisons by criminals and a ‘hostage crisis’ live in the TV studio. In their usual style, international media, that never or hardly reported on the country for years, now confidently make the world believe that the gates of hell have opened in Ecuador. Even though we have no choice to drive around Ecuador, we are not really worried yet. We are still 6 months away from the country and this is an eternity in South America. There is however one annoying consequence of this situation for us.
In an effort to stop the influx from ‘foreign criminals’ (he means Venezuelans), the president makes ‘overland border crossing’ very complex. Everybody now needs to provide a ‘clean criminal record document’. That is not the big issue (we can download that in a minute). But it also needs to be in Spanish and ‘apostiled’. That last part (we still don’t know what it exactly means) makes it a very difficult and costly process. In comes one of the Pan American overlander community’s most famous persons: ‘Hans from Finca Sommerwind’. For over 15 years, Hans from Germany has had a campsite in Ecuador where nearly everyone overlanding the Americas stops for a couple of days. In all these years (and thanks to his networking skills) he has managed to build up some good contacts with the ministry of Tourism. And now he has been able to negotiate an exception to the ‘criminal record requirement’ for ‘overlanders’ like ourselves. All we need to do is send him a Whatsapp a week in advance with our passport details and border crossing date. He then sends this info to the ministry who puts us on the ‘exception list’ that is sent to the border office. Sounds complicated but it works like a charm. The border crossing is one of the easiest and fastest so far. Of course we pay a visit to his campsite to thank him and we have some delicious German cake to celebrate the end of school year for Lucie.
Hanging out at these ‘overland gathering places’ is really nice to socialize (and even ventilate) with other travelers but it also is so useful for planning and get ‘secret tips’. While at Finca Sommerwind, we hear from a traveler who has heard from another traveler that there is a place in Northern Ecuador where it is possible to spot the ‘spectacled (aka Andean) bear’. This species is very hard to spot in the wild and we didn’t even have the slightest hope to see one. We find out about a valley where the bears come often. Danilo a local conservation activist, has set up tower on his property from where the bears can often be observed. It’s a bumpy road to get there but our Ducato does the job without complaining. The valley itself is gorgeous and is already worth the visit. The bears are far away at the other side of the canyon so binoculars and big zooms are needed! Late in the afternoon we spot a mom and two cubs as they move through the forest. In the distance there is also a bigger male! For such an elusive animal, we consider this a big success. But Danilo tells us the mornings are even better. We are allowed to camp in his garden so we will be able to get back to the observation tower first thing in the morning.
During the evening it starts raining and it does not stop. It is pouring down all night. At dawn we go back to the observation tower anyway. We heard that the bears don’t mind the rain. And the bears are back. For 3 hours, still in the pouring rain, we observe 4 big bears as they are moving up and down the ridge in front of us. We even get treated to some serious sparring/fighting action. (link Instagram reel) 8 spectacled bears spotted in less than 24 that’s what we call a success!
After all the rain of the last 12 hours, we are bit worried about the bumpy road back. The rivers in the valley are really swollen and almost bursting over the small bridges that we need to cross. But we make it back safely to the main highway. We don’t know it yet, but these torrential rains have caused major landslides all over the country and have even killed 10 people.
Once back on the highway we continue driving to one of the biggest milestones of our trip. we are crossing into the Southern hemisphere. There are a couple of ‘equator’ memorials in Ecuador (what’s in a name). They are a result of several attempts to determine the location of the equator over time. Some of them are kilometers off, others just a couple of hundred meters but the one we visit ‘en route’ to Quito is (according to our satellite phone) right on the equator.
Quito at 3000m claims to be the highest ‘constitutional capital’ in the world. The addition ‘constitutional’ is important because La Paz in Bolivia is almost a 1000m higher. However Bolivia has two capitals and the ‘constitutional capital’ is Sucre at 2800m. We spend a day visiting the old town and are pleasantly surprised by its beauty. However the things that we will most remember about Quito are the amazing city and volcano views from our campsite (Coda Vista) and the equally amazing Belgian fries and waffles from Lies at la Galleta de Bruselas.
After just two days in the city, we quickly flee to nature again. Mindo is the place to be to see birds in Ecuador. The town itself isn’t that special (except for a great Persian restaurant) but we absolutely loved the small ‘San Tadeo reserve’ just outside of town. The place is known for the incredible number and variety of Hummingbirds. And they even let us feed them. The kids love it!!
But there is also another observation deck and if you have some patience, you can see so many toucans and tanagers there. We spend at least 4 hours at the reserve and spot green toucanets, red headed barbets, plenty of tanagers in all colours and also our first barbet toucans.
After leaving Mindo, we got a great tip on another great place to see birds in the area. On a small gravel road we drive high into the cloud forest to Bellavista Cloud reserve. What an amazing place this is! Not only is it the most beautiful cloud forest we ever saw but there are so many animals also! We came for the birds and are not disappointed!
This is a quite expensive ‘all inclusive’ reserve but for a small fee we are allowed to camp in the grounds and the guides and staff happily help us spot animals. In the morning all guests are bird spotting right next to our van. We don’t know where to look first! The trogon that had been hiding for us for months ever since Costa Rica, finally shows himself… and he brought his gorgeous wife! There are all kind of toucans too.
But a very nice surprise are the different mammals we get to see. We had never heard of a Tayra until it showed up there. The Kinkajou on the other hand we knew very well from a board game at home. Leon is keeping a diary where he draws all animals we see on the trip. He is ecstatic about all the new birds but we also see some desperation in his eyes on his quickly growing backlog of drawings to make.
And then there was still a special guest. A young Andean bear sometimes hangs around the reserve and we are able to spot it really close in a tree. We felt so privileged with our bear spotting of the previous week, but this ‘close(r) encounter’ really made our day!
We had been observing the Cotopaxi volcano going in and out the clouds from our Quito camp. When the forecast predicts a couple of days of fine weather we quickly drive over to the Cotopaxi National Park and go for a hike on the volcano! We need two tries to get to the 4600m high parking lot with our van. The gravel road is in good shape but the last curves are very steep and a wrong maneuver stalls the van and there is no way to get it going up again. We have to drive a long way down to find a flat spot to get some speed and try again. But this time we (just) make it. We all hike to the refugio. Leon and myself want to get a bit closer to the glaciers and continue a bit further up to 5000m. As it is the first time we take it to such altitude, we are a bit worried about whether our Ducato will start again, but it does the job without hesitation.
With this acclimatization hike behind us, we feel rather confident to tackle our next hike around Quilotoa lake. This lake formed in the crater of the collapsed volcano. The colour of the water varies between blue and green depending on the time of day. The 10 km hike and around 800m elevation seem very doable on paper. However, being at 4000m altitude, makes this a very tough hike. On our way out of this Altiplano region we make a strange observation: The first is that there seem to be hardly any men around. We only see women that do all the work. Hotels, shops, restaurants everything is managed by women. But also taxi, busses and trucks are often driven by women. We never find out where the man are… But we suppose they are working in mines or industry elsewhere in the country.
For our next stop, Banos, we had planned to visit the waterfalls around town but due to recent floodings, the roads to the falls are still blocked. We do enjoy the thermal baths after which the town is named. And we also drive up the hills to visit the Casa del Arbol, where we have great fun on the giant swings and zip lines.
In Chimborazo National Park, the weather is not really working with us. Although it was supposed to be the dry season in the high Andes for some time now, rain is predicted for a week. Luckily, we find a great camp at a farm just around the corner. When the forecast shows a small window of better weather one morning, we quickly get up and drive to the volcano. We had some very nice views on the way, but we see the clouds drifting in. It is going to be a race against time. But unfortunately, the severely potholed road does not allow racing (neither does the altitude). By the time we make it into the park, the clouds have completely taken over. We still hike up to 5100m to a lake that is supposed to have an amazing view of the summit. It is weekend so a lot of Ecuadorians also make the excursion and we see some crazy scenes. People who are hiking up but clearly suffering from AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) taking little breaks to puke their guts out before continuing to walk on. We make it to the lake (without the amazing view) but then we have to hurry down when a small snow storm starts.
We say goodbye to the wonderful family that hosted us and we start a long drive south. During our month in Ecuador, we managed to miss all of the colorful weekly markets for which the country is known. But just stopping in smaller towns along the road, also gives us a bit of an idea of what we missed out on.
We end our long trip at the Ingapirca ruins where the friendly security guard lets us sleep on the parking lot for the night. Ingapirca are the first Inca ruins on our trip through South America and also the most important ruins in Ecuador. We get a really good introduction on both the Inca ruins themselves and on the local fauna: Llama vs Alpaca.
Peru is now getting closer and we hear it call us, but we still want to make two last stops. the first one is the colonial town Cuenca. We get a load of tips from our camp host and with those we set off for a day of walking around town. Museums in Cuenca are nearly all free, so we hop into a couple of them on our route. The most memorable was Pumapungo museum. It is a bit of a dusty old museum but it has one really cool exhibit the ‘shrunken heads’. The kids immediately recognise them from a comic book. A shrunken head is a human head that was cut off and specially treated to shrink to many times smaller than typical size. It is then used as a trophy, for rituals and trade.
We end the day with Belgian waffles & beers at the local Belgian restaurant where we meet up with fellow Belgians Jean-Pierre and Caroline who are travelling through South America in their MAN truck. It was great to hear their amazing story and we leave with a bag full of recommendations for the coming months!
Cajas National Park is our last stop in Ecuador. At first, we did not plan to come here but when a friend told us that it was like walking through the Lord of the Rings movies, we were sold. We do a great hike through the Paramo tundra landscapes at 4000m and experienced 4 seasons in one day. From there it was straight down to the coast and the border with Peru! What a wonderful country Ecuador has been. We had very little expectations but were so pleasantly surprised! An then to know that we did not even visit the two ‘main attractions’: The Galapagos Islands and the Amazonian jungle…next time.
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