Expect the unexpected

Dear future me,

I can’t believe I have already left Ecuador! Seriously, I could have travelled there forever if Mister Time was not pressing me to move on to the south. Even with him on my side, I still have a lot of South America to cover. And I am going very slowly if you compare my tracking’s to the others in the ‘Motos heading south’ WhatsApp and Life360 App. There are three groups to distinguish. The first group is currently riding in Bolivia and Chili. These people started about the same time in Colombia as I did. The last group of bikers are the ones that still need to kickstart their South America trip and are somewhere lost in either North America or Central America. And then you have this particular group in the middle. The participants are called: me, myself and I. That doesn’t mean I’m really the only one around here, but I hardly see anybody and the ones I’ve met travel by the speed of light. However, they all became much appreciated resources for me to keep up to speed what is further up the road.  They guide me through border crossings, road conditions, where to sleep, eat, drink. And today, unfortunately also told me that my highly anticipated visit to Kuelap in Peru isn’t worth the trip. The site, the Machu Pichu of the north, is closed due to rehabilitation works. Some walls couldn’t stand the heavy rainfall in April and since you can only visit the exterior of this very ancient pre-Inca Fortress. My fellow biker Fernando, whom I met near Cuenca in Ecuador, showed me a video of what you can see: just the walls from the outside, nothing more. So, here I am in Chachapoyas, changing my plans for the coming days and instead I am going to visit other archeological sites in the area. What a place, if you can’t go to one thing, there is always plenty more to see!

It helps that the sun is making its appearance again in the skies above. My first two weeks in Ecuador, including my paradise stay at the beach, were completely clouded, misty or worse rainy. So “seeing” was sometimes left to my imagination. Instead of the dark grey colors that I saw in between wiping my face to get rid of all the rain, I visualized a deep green and blue shaded lagoon inside a volcano crater (Quilotoa). Or instead of the white fluffy stuff just in front of my visor, while cruising through the mountains, I envisioned a sharp contoured volcano with ice on top and some nice white clouds surrounding it (Cotopaxi or every other volcano in Ecuador that I just couldn’t see). Thankfully I have a lot of imagination so no harsh circumstances will keep me away from the places that I want to visit. Not even if I am at 4000 meters, feeling cold and knowing that I have to spend hours in the heavy rain, just to catch a glimpse of something that looks way better on internet (when the sun is out and Photoshop did its work). And despite of all of the weather issues, I still love Ecuador. And Ecuador loves me back, because it rewarded me with some nice sunbathing beautiful places in the second part of my trip. Visiting waterfalls and soaking in thermal baths in Baños, getting a feeling of the Amazones without too much heat in Macas, relaxing in the jungle in Vilcabamba and have this amazing jungle road trip to a very remote border, called La Balza. I was the only person there!

I didn’t mention Cuenca yet, but that city in the south of Ecuador is a jewel on its own. The inner town does its age well, cause this lady was founded almost 500 years ago and it has a very pleasant vibe. Weird as well, with all the Halloween going on which they apparently love over here. They go for it big time while at the same time the Cuancan people are in a festive mood because of their independence of Spain for 200 years. So while they were having parties all over the place, I was happily meeting new and old friends at the same time. I love that part of travelling, when you meet 1000 kilometers further up the road and enjoy your time like you already know each other for ages.

But as I mentioned at the beginning, I left Ecuador behind me and entered Peru. Now there is something really strange going on. At the first place I stopped, Jaén, I had to acclimatize again to all the motorcycles, tuk-tuks, honking and lots of noise that vaguely reminds me of a place I visit before. Colombia! So my guess is that once upon a time Peru and Colombia were part of a happy family, but as in all good families, siblings start to pick fights between them and at one point you have to separate them physically. Just like my sister and me, on the backseat of the car going on long, long vacation trips to France. My parents had to build a fortress of bags in between us just to prevent us smashing each other’s heads. And there it is! Ecuador at some point in time has been put in between Colombia and Peru on purpose, just to create an ocean of tranquility in between these loud, noisy countries. In the next few weeks I will test this hypothesis while further exploring the north of Peru.

See ya later,

Annemieke