VLOG 34 - Chasing Santa Claus through Ecuador

All right here we go off on the road with Pedro de Ecuador de Cuenquita. We are heading towards I forget the name of the place but I no longer need a GPS without one at the local. He is on a Yamaha Super Tenere 1000. All right we stopped in outside we stopped up outside of Cuenca at Pedro's buddy's house and there's the bikes and he said we could stop at this little finca and this is about the place that I want to live behind me there's a hotel over there's a restaurant over there we're having lunch right here it's a really low-class lunch yeah really nice. We were talking politics so we almost got in a fistfight. Well a sad day today just drove past an accident just happened and looked like a little Inca lady had been hit by a truck and she was dead and laying in the gutter so really sad. You know I've been on the road for you know whatever two years it's first time I've saw a dead pedestrian. Life is short be careful be confident love. So this is the edge of the Andes and found a nice little dirt road full of cow poop. There's the bike and then back there is the Pacific Ocean. You see it? Right now I'm at 12,500 feet so that's got to be 16,000-17,000 feet and over the horizon over there possibly behind those clouds is a mountain called Cotopaxi. I believe it's the highest mountain in Ecuador better than 20,000 feet maybe even 21,000 feet. I'll put the information down below. Enjoying the highlands Ecuador Cotopaxi. It's raining here it's sunny over there kind of rare to be able to get to see it I think. I'm 1.6 kilometers from where I'm staying tonight. Okay so here in Cotopaxi National Park. Cotopaxi is back there I took a video of it earlier so you saw it and I was just riding by myself up towards Colombia and making my way because I have to ship the bike from Bogota to Panama. Latin America shuts down for Christmas at about the 20th so I'm rushing on my way up there. In this hostel, this beautiful hostel all by myself I'm sitting there having dinner and this guy walks in. Well these two walk in. So this is Sambor and this is Ola and they're from Poland. Holandia? Polandia? Polonia. So why is this interesting you ask? Well this guy I met in Tajikistan on in the most remote corner of Tajikistan. I had a flat tire and this guy helped me to get back to Morgat Portel etc etc. And then without any planning I run into him in this hostel in the middle of nowhere Ecuador. Yeah. So this is Sambor. ADV factory he does tours in Central Asia all over the world don't you? Now in South America. I'm really happy to help you again with shipping your bike. Oh yeah he also helped me with shipping my bike. So anyways it's such a small world on the road. He can have any bike in the world that he wants and what bike does he choose? What's his first choice of motorcycles? A KLR. He's on a KLR. It was not a choice. Yes it was. Thank you. Yeah thank you. All right so yesterday was like a super trying day. I was expecting the Ecuador-Colombia border to take an hour at the most. It took almost nine. Reason is on the Ecuadorian side there was Venezuelans moving down the continent because they're escaping their country which is sad but that line was five hours. And on the Colombian side he took his time. Anyways I like to play a game with those guys saying I can wait longer but the fuzz is since I was standing every minute of those nine hours my calves like got really sore for some reason. I don't know if it's standing in the boots. And in the middle of the night I got one of those cramps where your leg just goes just cramps up and you want to scream. Well I did scream. Heading north towards the horse of Philandia. It's a well-known hostel for motorcyclists kind of between Medellin and Colombia. So let's go have some fun today. Off we go.