An Adventurous Week in Ecuador – Riobamba

10 May 2014 – 17 May 2014

The Adventure Week AKA Ruta de los Volcanes

The Leap promised its Leapers an “a week of adventure and expedition, taking the famous “Ruta de los Volcanes” (Volcanic Route), biking to waterfalls, white-water raft, climb Chimborazo volcano and kayak over Quilotoa crater lake”, but it was much more than that, exceeding all of our expectations. It was a crazy week, finally getting EVERYONE out of their comfort zone, with loads of unforgettable memories, and loads of work for me as a leader! Here follows a great story, enjoy the ride! (Part 3)

RIOBAMBA

In the afternoon we left Baños for Riobamba, where I had to go to the hospital with some of my group straight after lunch. I ended up spending the whole afternoon in the emergency room and got back to the hostel to meet my other Leapers to have diner again. So I didn’t do anything special regarding sightseeing in the city, but it didn’t matter because I had been there before in March already.

Now, Riobamba means ‘river’ and ‘valley’ in Spanish and Kichwa, reffering to the topography of the area. On Saturdays there is a great indigenous market, but we were there during week days, and had other (read: more adventurous) plans!

Thanks to Riobamba’s proximity to the Chimborazo, Ecuador’s highest peak, there are a lot of options to do excursions. We left on the next morning to do a one-day mountain-biking trip, where we did a downhill descent from the refuge of Chimborazo!

Road from Riobamba to Chimborazo

The CHIMBORAZO DOWNHILL day tour was awesome! We got to enjoy the beauty of Ecuador’s highest mountain in an active way and hiked from the first refuge to the second, reaching an altitude of 5000m. Well, to be honest, I did not make the second refuge due to altitude sickness. I had a terrible headache as if my brains were going to explode and my heart beat was so fast that I thought I would die. I did not feel sick at all, but I was worried enough to decide to go back to 4800m (first refuge). There I enjoyed a Coca Tea, which has medicinal effects for altitude sickness. And did I already mention it was freeeeezing cooooollddd up there!

Drinking Coca Tea at 4800m

The distance between the Carrel refuge (4800m) and the Whymper refuge (5000m) was only 1 kilometer, but because of the thin air at this altitude, everyone had to walk slowly and it took almost an hour before they were back to have a hot coca-tea.

We prepared ourselves and our mountain bikes for descending from 4800m to the lower hut, where we had no visibility at all. That first part of 8 km on a dirt road was crazy! I decided to take it slowly and easy because it was very hard to control your bike having that much speech without being to see 5 m in front of you, passing to a lot of corners and bumps in the road. It was super cold and I passed some people who went to fast and crashed!

Start of the downhill ride from 4800m

After that first part on the dirt road, we checked our bikes and continued descending from 4800m to 2900 m altitude, over a distance of 37 km on an asphalted road. It definetely sounds harder then it was, because downhill means no need to put loads of effort in your biking as your bike takes you.

Me descending the Chimborazo

I had the feeling I was flying over the landscape, fast as I went. At certain moments I went so fast that I passed cars and it felt like 75 km/hour (which isn’t of course). After +/- 2 hours we arrived at San Juan village, where we met the staff at the church. It was pretty cool, because we were followed by the guides and supported by vehicles all the time. Like real cyclers, felt like ‘Tour de France’ but in Ecuador. 😛

Anyway, here’s a movie of our CHIMBORAZO DOWNHILL adventure, made by our travel agency guides:

The next day it was time to head back to Quito, spend some nights there and go to the next and last community to do some more volunteering in the Andes.

But that last weekend in Quito turned out to be at least as adventurous as the Adventure Week itself, because while we went out for someones Birthday dinner and a cocktail in the Irish Pub in the Mariscal, we got followed by strange people that tried to be “our friends”, but turned out to have other plans as they didn’t stop following us. I had to stop the police to make the situation come to an end, but the police did not do anything, and before we were able to ran away from them, they got us again and started to beat me up because I stopped the police for them… Horrible story and had to run for my life to a taxi while they were hitting on the car!

Later turned out that a friend of mine was robbed that very same night in the same area, by the same people. Guess we were lucky, and Thank God the hostal had some ice to put on my beaten up face… I have a good guardian angel ! ❤