Day 2: Quito

Despite being exhausted, we dragged ourselves out of bed to make sure we could catch the end of breakfast at our hostel.  Colonial House is a brightly colored quirky three story hostel with tons of hangout nooks, basic kitchen amenities, filtered water, a book exchange, WiFi, a green backyard, hammocks, and pet rabbits that freely roam about.  The vaulted ceilings give it a spacious feeling and the staff was welcoming.  Not only did they let us store our bike boxes for free, but we had a ton of space to rebuild our bikes.  We were also conveniently located at the edge of the touristy old town, but still convenient to all the practical amenities of the new town.

Sunny backyard!  There was also a large covered area in the back as well to protect our bikes from the rain.

Bunnies!  These two lovebirds produced a bunch of baby bunnies while we were gone...

Breakfast was a lovely affair done family style for an additional $3.50, and included real coffee, fresh juice, a tropical fruit salad (fresh cut strawberries, papaya, dragonfruit, and whatever else was around), granola, yogurt, 2 eggs scrambled or fried sunny side up, and fresh bread.

After breakfast, we assessed the contents of our boxes.  Ani had lost one of the wire spokes of her fender and Ed had a much bigger problem.  The cantilever brake boss on his new Surly Long Haul Trucker fork had broken in transit.  He figured out it would still probably mount okay with a longer bolt.  We set out to do a bunch of errands, including getting some washers, nuts and bolts, a fix for Ani's fender (or maybe a new fender), fuel for our camp stoves, and provisions for the first few days of cycling.  About 3 hardware stores, a bike shop, a mountaineering store, a crazy spiral shaped mall, and a few mangled interactions trying to figure out how to say bike parts in Spanish later (fyi, a washer is "arandela plana" in Spanish), it was time to eat.

Shrimp with tons of achiote (aka annato aka the Latin American tumeric)!

On the way back to the hostel, we passed by a park where a guy was welding some sort of metal structure so Ed asked if he might be able to weld his brake boss.  The guy was willing to give it a look, so Ed booked it back to the hostel to grab his bike while Ani and I shopped for food provisions.  I bought some produce from the indigenous women outside the grocery store, and then we stocked up food provisions for the next few days.

Quito has a burgeoning bike infrastructure, including miles of ciclovias and these bike shares!

We all reconvened back at the hostel to finish preparing our gear.  Unfortunately, the brake boss metal wasn't something the guy could weld, so Ed just used a long bolt and hoped for the best.  We finally had everything all ready and so Ed procured us several shots of aguardiente, a cane sugar liquor, and the ubiquitous beer Pilsener to celebrate.  We adopted a young French student named Anaiz and went to dinner where we got an entire roasted chicken, which came with salad, rice, french fries, chicken soup, and juice.  We only managed to eat about half the chicken so we saved the rest for a bike snack for the next day.

Sleep did not come easily.  We were too excited and pouring over the cycling route that Maps.ME had generated to send us on our way towards Cotopaxi National Park.

A few notes for bike tourists:

• We had tried to email the Casa de Ciclistas located in nearby Tumbaco, but got no response.  To be fair, I didn't try very hard to follow up and our super late arrival and short stay before cycling didn't give us much incentive to hunt out this option more.  We had also tried to see about other options through the Biking Dutchman, but this ended up feeling very pricey in comparison to the hostel options in Quito.  We were very pleased with our stay and the hospitality at Colonial House.  They held our boxes for the duration of our trip and were very helpful in arranging transport that would accommodate our huge bike boxes!

• I have a mini Trangia stove which uses denatured alcohol.  In Ecuador, like much of Latin America, it is called "alcohol industrial" and is cheap and widely available.  Ed has an MSR Dragonfly multi-fuel stove and we searched high and low for white gas.  We came across a mountaineering store which sold propane canisters, and the gentleman there told us white gas is basically impossible to find in Ecuador.  So Ed ended up just buying some gasoline on our way out of town (which, according to the guy at the pump, was illegal to sell in other containers, but he did it anyway).

• Supermarkets are great for dry and canned goods, but have pretty awful produce selections.  In retrospect, I would NOT recommend buying the lentils in Ecuador.  They take more than twice as long to cook as quinoa or pasta. 

• If you see coffee being sold out of a big pot, you can guarantee it will have a mouth-puckering amount of sugar in it.  You've been warned.  

• It is always worth emailing or calling a manufacturer about faulty gear.  Ed shot Surly an email about his fork and asked for the burlier Troll fork when he got back to the U.S., and whaddayaknow, they gave him one!