Quito to Riobamba

I was finally ready to leave Quito. The Plan was to go by car over the Andes to the coast stopping off along the way to see things on the route. I got a new guide for the drive my first male guide so far. He turned out to be very good as well. I have been very happy with all my guides so far. I have never traveled like this before. I have traveled through about a hundred countries on my own without a guide. My travel agent in Quepos talked me into the guided tour and it cost me less than renting a car to get around.

We left Quito early in the morning after a good breakfast. The drive out of town was a bit slow due to some construction on the highway but we managed to get through the congestion eventually. The roads in Ecuador are generally very good roads. This one was a main artery and it was concrete 2 to 4 lanes with just a thin yellow line separating the different directions. The drivers are the weakest link in the system. Some of them are terrible drivers. I saw lots of accidents. We climbed up in elevation as we went along. Our first stop was going to be Los Banos a small town that had a mostly indigenous population but also was a popular location for American expats to live. We made it to Los Banos by lunchtime. I enjoyed sitting at a sidewalk table watching all the people walk by while we ate. I was seeing flags all around that looked like the international gay flag so I asked my guide about them. They were an original flag for Ecuador not the gay flag.

We did a walking tour around town and my guide gave me a good run down on all the history and sites to see. There was the usual Cathedral and square then we went on a car tour to see the local scenery which was very nice. We stopped and watched people riding across a wide gorge on cable cars suspended over the deep gorge. There was a large crowd watching for some reason, maybe just not much excitement around town or something. Then we watched some people bungee jumping off of one of the numerous suspension bridges along the gorge. The crowd roared when the first well endowed woman popped out of her top as she hit the end of the bungee. I had to laugh at the reaction of the crowd. It almost looked like a planned accident to me. They had a nice new power plant that was on the tour also. I crack up sometimes when I do tours that include things like this. I actually love to see how the infrastructure works but I think I am an exception to the rule. We hit the road again. We stopped a few times to talk to locals that we saw along the roads. They were all very friendly to us. We gave a couple of them lifts for short distances. I encouraged my guide to give them rides but he told me he wasn't allowed to or he could get in trouble. He did anyway.

We drove past lots of volcanoes and other mountains of the Andes on the drive. Overall it was a beautiful drive through the mountains. As we pulled into Riobamba the sun was just about to set and we got some great views of the setting sun and the mountains. My guide was from Riobamba so he gave me a short personalized tour of the town. We checked into a nice little hotel and after a good dinner we called it an early night. The next day was going to be a train ride, then a ride to Ingapirica which was an Inca ruin, then on to Cuenca in the afternoon. These were some long days for me with my health problems.