Jaen, Peru – the Adventure dial is turned up a few notches
So I have now made it to Peru… but it was a very rough road at the beginning . Ecuador has long been disputing their border with Peru, and to keep the Peruvian “Tuc-tucs” out the road is (or so Tyson warned me) the steepest and roughest that I will likely encounter here in South America.
Cotopaxi
Baptiste, the “frenchguy” and I ended up sharing some very cold days up at elevation in Ecuador.
Going around the Quilatola loop we missed an unmarked remote turn, and ended up taking an unmarked more remote route
We had been planning a ride around Cotopaxi, but after 9 days with some rain and nearly continuous fog we decided to head south to Cuenca (a slightly disappointing city). Of course we were overcharged
(by Ecuadorian prices) for food and we received another case of food poisoning. The people generally were less friendly than in the north, not that we did not meet some great people, but they were not as warm as in Colombia and northern Ecuador. And the “Gringo Gringo” cries are out, which is not really a bad thing, something like yelling “foreigner”. I often hear them without actually seeing the people. Still, it is better than the dogs that chase me. And sometimes children would silently chase me while I was slowly climbing up some dirt road, which was a little odd. 
My tent is just visible on the top right of the picture, taken from my first Inca Ruins at Inga Pirca.
A different way to cook pork….
