2 up, over the Andes
 

This is an old report but I thought I would try to contribute something to this fine site!

We set out for a long weekend ride from our home in Salinas, Ecuador on the coast up to the town of Cuenca, a historical mountain town and the 3rd largest in Ecuador. A friend's wedding, and all the free booze that comes with such an affair was the main reason but why not do something stupid on our little 200cc china bike at the same time!
We rode past my favorite billboard…
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and headed towards Ecuador's largest city with a short break to say adios to my riding buddy Kiwi Steve where he noticed I had a broken spoke…
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Steve rides a different model of the same bike as mine but his has some differences we are still tryin to figure out. Mainly his is blue though.
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Through Guayaquil and across the bridges over the river.
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stopped for gas on the island between the 2 bridges and even got some McDonalds as we dont have one in Salinas, yep it sucked:D and then headed through the farmlands, mostly rice and sugarcane.
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Finally getting to some hills, but not the big ones yet.
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There, dead ahead are the Andes!
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I would guess after climbing around 3000' to 4000' we got above the 1st layer of clouds.
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A few thousand feet of climbing later we noticed that we were maybe half way up the hill, but hell the bike was still pulling 55 kph so no worries!
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By this time I had put a long sleeve shirt on under my jacket and zipped it up while my fearless wife had donned her snowboarding gear. Not going to lie, I was jealous!
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High in the mountains we started coming across trout farms which also allow "sport fishing" where if you bring your own rod they will sell you feed pellets to put on a hook and pull as many fish out as you want for a few bucks. They will also cook them up for you for a few dollars more! Not my style of sport fishing so we chugged on up the hill at a steady 35 kph sometime as low as 25kph and sometimes ecen slower through thick fog!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...o/IMG_3008.jpgFinally we had reached the summit in Cajas National Park, above the tree line, full alpine beauty! My crappy pictures do not do this place justice!
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I am pretty sure these three crosses at Tres Cruzes are where they buried the previous 3 china bikes that didn't make it.
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More pics of Cajas!
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From here it was pretty much all fast down hill to Cuenca and this ride report seems to go down hill even faster as the only other pictures i have are some of the wedding and a few around town…
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one of Wonderwomen's saintly sister…
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one of the door on the New Cathedral, way better than the old cathedral…
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Here is that new cathedral on the new side of the Parque Central, the old, crappy side is directly opposite but no pictures of that obviously…look at those awesome new blue domes!
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These are some famous stairs leading down to one of the 4 rivers of Cuenca (full name is Santa Ana de los cuatro rios de Cuenca).
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This is an Incan ruin.
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Here they are again. Hey I was riding a bus so this is a ride report right???
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...o/IMG_3026.jpgCuenca has lots of street art and this one really spoke to me!
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This is a great view of the city and that canyon in the hills there is the one we rode out of and would be riding back up the next day!
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This is a dog.
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We woke up, rode through freezing cold rain and then descended through 10,000' of thick fog so I didn't get any pictures of the ride back.
El Fin,
Mike

A spooky dog with dissimilar eye colours!

Thanks for the terrific ride report. I'd love to explore an area like that someday.

Looks like a memorable trip.

Hey, crappy pics are better than no pics.

Looks like a great ride!

Thanks for posting the great photographs. :)