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As I headed down to Quito I would be crossing the equator, so naturally, a stop was in order. In fact at a town called Cayambe, there is an equator monument. Very cool! I love this kind of stuff.
I had a funny feeling that if I put half of my bike in each hemisphere, it might suddenly turn into a KLR or something.
Nothing like that happened, although I did have a sudden urge to go watch a toilet flush.
Yup, the GPS says that we are on the equator. Imagine that.
I suggested to one of the guys working at the monument that to make the monument really cool, they should install a toilet on each side of the line. For some reason, he failed to see the humor in that and didn’t even crack a smile, but mumbled something about motorcyclists. Sometimes I crack myself up.
Actually, the two guys working there were very nice. When I pulled up there was a bus load of tourists there. One of the guys told me to wait around until the bus people left, then I could ride my bike into the monument and take a photo. The guys are actually pretty stoked when you pull up on a bike. They get a lot of moto travelers here and will accommodate you with taking pictures when you pull up.
The one guy looked at my bike and said, “I like seeing those KTM adventures on long trips, I think its a good long distance bike, and besides that, I get tired of seeing BMW’s and KLR’s around here.” Seriously, when the guy said that I had to chuckle.
Actually this monument is a solar calendar of sorts. during the equinox, the sun rises right over that line. Where you see the two big rocks on the opposite end mark where the sun rises during the solstices. At the bottom of that big orange cylinder, there is a mirror. On the equinox, at exactly mid day, the sun shines right down that tube, hits the mirror and lights up the inside of the tube with brilliant light. Like I said, I love this stuff.
After a couple of more days in Quito I wanted to go check out one of the nearby volcanoes. Volcan Cotopaxi, 19,400 ft, sits 30 miles SE of Quito. I figured it would be a nice ride up to the end of the road at 16,000 ft at the base of the volcano. So I threw my flat repair kit in my pack, found my way out of the city, and took off down a stone road in search of the volcano.
It was a nice ride to the park.
Ah, here we are, park entrance.
OK, so I get ready to pay my 10 dollar entry fee like a good tourist, and the guy manning the guard shack just looks at me and says, “no motos allowed in the park.” “Really? So if I am driving a car, a noisy truck, or bus belching out clouds of thick black diesel smoke, I can go in the park?” “Yes,” he replied, but no motos. Well that’s just great. “Why?” asked him. “Those are the rules,” he quickly replied. I told him I thought that the rules sucked, and he agreed with me, but still would not let me in.
So, shamelessly, I tried to bribe him to let me in the park. After all, that’s the way things usually work in most of Latin America. I started with 5 bucks and eventually got up to 40 bucks. That was everything I had on me, and it didn’t work. Apparently this guy was not going to break the rules for what I had in my wallet.
However he did point me in the direction of a very nice dirt road ride back to Quito and told me that I would enjoy it very much.
So, I turned around, defeated, and headed back to Quito. It was too cloudy to see the stupid Volcano anyway.
I only got up to 12,108 feet.
But, it was a nice ride back.
I was enjoying riding the bike in some dirt without the bags.
Cotopaxi is behind those clouds, but I never got to see anymore than this.
My quest to see a big volcano tuned into a very nice dirt road ride around the countryside. It was a good day on the bike.
So I went back to Quito figuring that I will visit one of the other volcanoes before I leave Ecuador.
This coming week, I have a very special side trip planned that involves airplanes and boats, stay tuned.
Saludos, Vicente