Mountain Highs

November 9, 2010
Edit note: Have posted a couple of photos to the previous blog entry.
Yesterday we finished our ride through Colombia. Colombia is a wonderful country that is recovering from a tough 30 year civil war. There is still periodic fighting and kidnapping, but the Colombian government certainly has the upper hand. There are army and police check points throughout the country. We were only stopped once and asked for our papers and insurance. Generally, the soldiers waved us through with a thumbs-up sign.
Our ride out was through the high mountains of southern Colombia. We topped 9500 feet approaching Pasto. Pasto is probably the most modern city we saw in Colombia. On the way south of Pasto we topped 10,400 feet.
Before leaving Colombia we visited the Sanctuary of Lajas in Ipiales. The Sanctuary is a cathedral built astride a deep river gorge and is supposedly located where some peasant saw the image of the Virgin Mary on the hillside. I made the walk down the 265+ steps and sloped sidewalks with good time. I thought I would need a miracle of my own on the way back up. I was rushing back up the steps so Roger could visit and to try and get out of a threatening thunderstorm when I became winded. I realized I was at 9000+ altitude with thin air. I slowed my pace, but still had a headache when I returned to our parking place.

Ipiales is on the border with Ecuador where we spent two hours processing out of Colombia and into Ecuador. There was nothing complicated about the procedures as opposed to our experiences in Central America – just time consuming.
We stopped in Tulcan Ecuador for the night. We were surprised that the room with hot water cost us $12.00 and a pork chop meal with soup and freshly squeezed juice cost us $3.00 each.
What has really surprised us is how clean and orderly the roadsides and villages are. The transnational road – the Pan American Highway – is by far the best road we have been on. At times it is a little slow as we climbed through the curves at altitudes that have varied from 6,000 feet to 11,400 feet.
We did stop and take a photo of workers harvesting a potato crop on the slopes of a hill. We were at about 10,000 feet when we took the photo and they were well above us.

Later we stopped for a morning breakfast snap and a nice Ecuadoran family wanted their pictures taken with us. Within a few miles of this stopped we crossed the equator into the Southern Hemisphere. We were a little disappointed that there was not a roadside marker denoting this fact – you’ll just have to take our word on this one.


The only complication we had today was transitioning through the capital city of Quito. The highway went through the middle of this city of 2.1 million people. Amidst the congestion and diesel belching busses we missed a couple of turns.
South of Quito we crossed a pass at 11,400 feet and off to our east was the Cotopaxi Volcano at 5897 meters – 19347 feet. The peek was clouded but snow was on the sides of the volcano.
We are spending the night in Abato Ecuador which is a large city in itself.