Day 16: Angelita's To La Tomba (19.6 Miles)

After a restless night of sleep listening to chickens, highway traffic, and barking dogs, we enjoyed Angelita's bathroom and a simple breakfast.  We also grabbed a few humitas and tamales to pack in our panniers.

Moreno bids us adieu and even Angelita can't help but peek out the door to see us off.

And then we were off for our first miles on the PanAmerican highway.  We had managed to stay off this beast for over two weeks, but since we had not planned much of this part of the trip, we just sucked it up for 3 miles before we turned off onto dirt roads again.

This part of the country was grazing land dotted with countless cows.  The road was lined with silver 5 gallons jugs, which we surmised were filled by the locals and picked up by one of the many milk trucks we saw bouncing down the dirt roads.  As we continued on, we came up on a rocky landslide.  Maps.ME showed that this "road" (okay fine, it showed up as a dotted line trail) connected so we had an epic hike-a-bike up the landslide and onto a steep dirt trail.

Lone milk jug.

Ani rides towards the ridge.

Landscapes and empty roads and stuff.

Riding on the horizon.

The end of the road.

After a while, the trail finally mellowed out enough to ride.  The terrain was super challenging but this may have been my favorite day of riding because of the solitude and the views.  This summit was around 12,500 feet and blissfully unpopulated.  We stopped for a bonk-prevention lunch with views into the valley and then bombed down the mountain into Canar.

Turns out tamales in Ecuador are filled with peas, carrots, chicken, and egg!

Views on the way into Canar.

The obligatory fruit stand stop... found our first chirimoya!

Canar was a lot bigger than I expected.  Before I lost my pannier, I had been reading a really good book about a photojournalist that did some cool work in Canar back in the day and her descriptions made it sound like a dusty village.  Nope.  It was a full blown city.  We sat in a park in the center of town to eat some fruit until a guy came over and made some strange conversation with us.  We didn't feel unsafe, but he wouldn't leave us alone so we decided to move on.

Leaving Canar (at least I think this was a picture of Canar).

Just give miles down the road from Canar was a town called El Tambo and we figured we would aim for there and see what options we had for somewhere to spend the night.  On the way, we met a hilarious old woman who was carrying a huge load of plants.  She wanted to know all about our trip and was a joy to talk to (especially after we survived yet another alley of shitty Ecuadoran dogs).  We continued onto La Tomba and Maps.ME told us there was a hosteria on the edge of town, so we decided to check it out.  It ended up being this oddly manicured empty convention center resort of sorts, but the caretaker Angel said we could camp there for $10, which is about the same as renting a room.  But we were so taken with the resident alpaca and llamas that we decided to stay.

We made a new friend!  Really, who could resist that face.

Our "campsite" at Hosteria Cuna del Sol.

Angel calls his dog la policia, but he wasn't doing his job right as we rolled right in with no problems.

I suppose he did a pretty good job of guarding our tent though!

A few tips for cycle tourists:

• Hosteria Cuna del Sol is an odd place, but it has showers, a pool (that was under construction), wifi, some limited alcoholic beverages, and they do make food if you ask.  There were also plugs outside near where we pitched our tent so we could charge our devices.  We felt safe at night as they locked the gate to the grounds, and there were a few really nice workers who asked us about our gear and shared some cerezas with us, which are a type of fruit kind of like a sour cherry that grows on the grounds.  I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as Angel, the caretaker, was almost too schmoozy and charismatic... that is, until he yelled at his wife and made her cry behind closed doors.  And, at $10 per person, it wasn't particularly cheap or a good deal.  It was, however, otherwise quiet and away from the town and prying eyes.