Wandering with Tedder and Tamara

It's worth noting that gas prices dropped significantly when we crossed into Ecuador. Regular unleaded is $1.48/gallon, premium is nearly $2.00, and diesel is a few pennies over $1.00. Yes, those are US dollars. We do have to pay for tolls now- they were free in Colombia. Unlike Mexico, though, there are moto-specific prices- so a moto pays 20 cents at each tollbooth, where a car will pay anywhere between 60 cents and $1.50, depending on the location. We probably paid at 6 tollbooths in 130 miles.

The trip to Quito was much like yesterday. It is all two-lane, very curvy, hugging the side of the mountain. We dropped a few thousand feet, but mostly stayed above 7000 feet the whole day. It was about 130 miles, 4.5 hours, so again the average was about 27mph. Pretty crazy- it's hard to get used to making so little progress. I think we only stopped once, and that was for gas.

We did see a gaggle of bikes going the other way. There were some new BMWs, a KTM 950, and quite a few V-Stroms (both big and small). They were only running topcases, and their plates were black on yellow. That means they aren't from Colombia or Ecuador. I wonder where they are from. It seemed like a mix of bikes, not what I'd expect from a bike tour company. I would have spun around and caught up if they had recognizable plates.

About 10 miles before Quito, we passed the equator. There wasn't a monument or anything- the guidebooks indicate museums, but they must be on a different highway. Anyways, we stopped, moved the bike until we could rock back and forth between 0 deg N and 0 deg S, and took a bunch of pictures. It was a neat moment- there is something really cool about crossing significant marks such as this.

Interestingly, if we went due north to the same longitude as Seattle, we would be about 200 miles north of Toronto, Canada. That is basically well north of Buffalo, New York. It's weird to think that we are so far to the east.

Quito is a fairly typical big city. Traffic is tough, it's hard to get your bearings, and such. We didn't have much trouble finding our apartment, though. The bike is nestled into its secure parking space, we are in a one-bedroom apartment with a nice kitchen and living area. There's a mall diagonally across the street with plenty of restaurants, a supermarket, and a Radio Shack. And we have Internet access.

We'll be here for a full month. Tamara will (hopefully) be volunteering and taking Spanish classes, I'm going to work on some projects and get the photos uploaded.