Last days traveling this country.
Ecuador and what was it like to travel along this fascinating nature? Somewhere between all the uphill and downhill, I took Ecuador to my heart.
We are bicycle travelers
In contrast to most cycle travellers in South America, we travel on the routes that are less well-trodden for cycle tourists, on the paths that are not always defiantly beautiful. We don’t take any of the countless trails and perhaps meet another cycle traveller every two months. And then there is a lack of understanding as to why we are not travelling on the trails? Well, we’re travelling around the world and not on the picture-book trails. But it also seems as if there are the most wonderful things to see and experience on our routes. We’re not travelling to experience “untouched” nature day in, day out. By the way, nature can also be quite annoying :-).
Our bicycles are not made for racing or off-road. So why should we go off-road? When we talk to other cycle travellers about this, it always raises a lot of questions. Yes, we are neither hip nor trendy with our equipment and our routes.
A bicycle like something out of a brochure
And here we meet a cycle traveller from Italy who could actually score points in any cycle travel magazine with his bike. Perfectly decorated with dirt from the last off-road trail and the perfect bikepacking. And of course backpacking is not about how I pack my bike perfectly, but how I attach all my stuff to it.
It’s fascinating how new necessities are constantly being generated and consumption is being fuelled.
Bikepacking is more a life style then about traveling
An argument for this style:
“THE ADVANTAGES OF MINIMALISM AND SAFETY IN BIKE PACKING! Bikepacking is more than just a way to get from A to B. It’s a lifestyle, a way of travelling. It’s a lifestyle, a way of travelling that combines the freedom and independence of cycling with the adventurous spirit of discovery. For many bikepackers, it’s all about travelling light and minimalistically to experience nature in its purest form and free the mind.”
Well, it doesn’t look like travelling light and our new friend also confirms that the chaos really annoys him. Freedom and independence, I’ll stay out of that now, but we also have a thirst for adventure and exploration.
Don’t misunderstand me, I absolutely love to see this shabby chic lifestyle.
But there is much more to the bikepacking
There are the special bikepacking routes and lots of tutorials on bikepacking – backpacking tours by bicycle and of course informations about how to find the right bicycle for bike packing tours.
Oh man, I’m too old for that too. Our bicycles are now 16 years old and I can’t think of any reason for a new one. Maybe one day one with a motor, but not yet.
We have switched our lives to cycling
And yes, we have a lot of luggage with us. It’s our journey and that’s just the way we are traveling. With all the restrictions that entails in terms of route planning. It doesn’t bring any restrictions in terms of adventure.
And just in case you think we can’t do it with smaller luggage, take a look at our Planet Brompton page. There we are certainly travelling in a truly minimalist way. Namely with our small folding bikes and a bag with a maximum volume of 30 litres. As we take the bag on the plane as hand luggage, we are never over 8kg. So a setup of approx. 23kg for 4 months of bike travelling. Just to say, we can also go “light”.
Back to Ecuador
We cross the equator and we almost stay at an altitude between 2.000m and 3.500m, which gives us quite cool temperatures. We always have a volcano or two in sight and we enjoy the view of all the greenery. We reminisce about the weeks we spent travelling along the Atacama Desert in Chile and Peru and marvel at the diversity of our beautiful planet. So, if there is another habitable planet, it couldn’t be more beautiful.
Ecuador is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. The mangrove swamps on the coast, the mountain forests of the Andes, the tropical rainforest of the Amazon region and the Galapagos archipelago are home to numerous unique animal and plant species. And we have only scratched the surface of all this nature. Perhaps Ecuador is also worth a longer visit.
Nature has rights in this country
In 2008, Ecuador was the first country in the world to recognise the right of nature not to be harmed or polluted and to write this into its constitution.
And so, in July 2024, a court ruling based on this right was issued, recognising the Machángara River, which comes from the Andes with wonderful drinking water and also flows through Quito, where it is terribly polluted, as a “legal subject” and ordering its clean-up. A river, nature, has the right not to be polluted. Fascinating.
And so we finally reach Tulcan, the border town to Colombia. We stay there one night with Caliz and his family and cross the border the next day. Colombia, country no. 24 on our cycle world tour.
Why are we doing this again?
I still don’t have the right answer to the question “why are we doing this”, but perhaps this fits a little:
- We can eat a lot
- We get to remote places
- We have fun
- We get out of our comfort zone
- Home is wherever we want it to be
- We feel free
- We get to know people intensively
- We learn things we had no idea about
- … to be continued
Let’s see what else comes along and how Colombia will treat us.
And hopefully we’ll be as lucky as we were this time. 5 seconds earlier we would probably have been in big trouble. When we came round the corner, the car’s tyres were still spinning. Fortunately, the family in the car escaped with a scare.
