Quito – Cotopaxi – Lasso – Sigchos – Lago Quilotoa – Angamarca – Llullimunllo – Salinas – Chimborazo – Riobamba
9 days | 418 kilometers | 9.450 meters elevation gain
I’ve been on the road now for one year and two months. The first year was all easy: everything is new, everything is an adventure, days filled with adrenaline and happiness. After a year on the road I notice that sometimes it is becoming difficult as well, this life on the road, a life on the move. The most difficult part is the solitude: you’ve found a camp spot, you’ve eaten your rice that you made on your small stove, it’s 18:30 and it’s dark. You are alone. What now? Read a book, scroll on your phone and crawl into your tent at 20h or 21h. The first time you have a routine like that it’s all exciting. You’re camping somewhere in the wild! But after a while it becomes normal and a bit boring. That’s why I was so happy to meet other cyclists to share the road and campsites with in Ecuador. In Quito I’m once again reunited with Gaetan and Dea. We’ve cycled together for a couple of days in the beginning of Ecuador. But then Gaetan decided to check out the asphalt from up very close in the midst of a descend. He crashed and needed to go to the hospital to check if he didn’t fracture anything during this escapade. I’m glad they want to do some more cycling with me now.
In Quito I was staying with Paola. She is great, makes me feel right at home. We talk over a glass of red wine. She has this super calm aura hanging over her, she talks softly like an old wise lady. There is only one problem: her dog is the boss of the house and doesn’t really appreciate another alpha dog taking up residence on his grounds. He basically keeps barking at me and therefore Paola tells me she is not sleeping that well. Latinos are not as direct as we Dutch people, so you really have to read between the lines sometimes.
After Paola telling me a couple of times that she didn’t sleep so well and that she has a busy week coming up I know enough. I need to move. I don’t want to be that guy that takes advantage of somebodies hospitality and overstays. The next day I say goodbye to Paola.
I don’t really know where to go. Mentally I’m not ready to start cycling again. This mostly has to do with the fact that I am still waiting for my bike part to arrive (my suspension broke, I ordered a new one on eBay and it should arrive to Quito any time now). I had this picture in my head of me arriving to Quito, that my bike part would arrive, that I would install it and be ready to tackle the last part to Argentina with it. But like many times during this trip, things sometimes just don’t work out as how you’ve pictured them. You need to adapt, you need to be able to handle disappointment. This is one of these moments. (While I’m writing this, the part still hasn’t arrived.) What will I do? The PVC tube that I installed in my frame is holding up surprisingly well, I’ve ridden with it for a month now and I guess it will work for another month. I arrange with Paola that when the part arrives to her address that she will send it with the Ecuadorean Post to wherever I am. I will have to cycle with the PVC tube for a bit longer.
In the meantime I text Gaetan and Dea and they respond that they are in Quito as well, that they’ve booked an AirBnB with a spare room and that I’m very welcome to come to their place! Such great news! So all my problems for now are taken care off.











I cycle back to downtown Quito where I’m reunited with my Swiss friends. We chill for some days and decide to start cycling on Wednesday again.
Then, on Tuesday afternoon, I start feeling ill. It starts with just being tired but I end the day making little spurts to the bathroom. Throwing up, diarrhea, the whole shebang. I feel miserable.
In the morning I feel a tiny little bit better, but not great. I eat a little bit and hope it will stay in my stomach. Today is the last day that this AirBnB is booked. Dea and Gaetan are going to cycle today. I honestly don’t know if I’m going to make it. I decide to start riding with them and if I feel too ill I will just check into the first hotel I see. Miraculously I feel a bit better when I’m on the bike. I guess being outside, the wind and the effort I need to put into my legs are overshadowing my nausea. Luckily Gaetan is also not feeling a 100% and needs to cough a lot, so I’m not necessarily the delaying factor. Today we are cycling with two half men and one woman. We take it easy. I mostly feel that I don’t have a lot of energy, which is not surprisingly because yesterday I haven’t taken in any calories and this morning I was not ready for a big breakfast yet. I manage to get through the day.
When we opened the curtains in our AirBnB back in Quito we we’re already treated to the volcano Cotopaxi and the plan today is to camp close to it. The perfectly cone-shaped volcano with permanent snow on it’s top is getting closer during the day. Dea couldn’t be happier, she is very happy to be back on the bike after many setbacks of the last weeks. Gaetan and me are just trying to survive.
We climb a lot. It’s hard with a calorie-deficiency but I manage. At one point we leave the asphalt and are treated to the cobbled roads that I’ve gotten to hate so much. It doesn’t make the climbing any easier and the bumping up and down is very unpleasant for my already upset stomach. We have a roadside lunch in the sun and battle ourselves on the cobbles towards the end of the day. We find a very nice grassy patch to pitch our tents. We made it to 10 kilometers from the north entrance of the Cotopaxi National Park. We pitch our tents and rest our legs in our camping chairs. I am super happy because this morning I couldn’t have imagined making it to this point. Also I’ve managed to keep all the food inside my stomach today. I make a nice rice meal for myself and eat everything easily. I’m glad my appetite has gotten back and I can only imagine that tomorrow will be better, with more calories to burn for my body.



Although the wind picked up in the night, shaking my tent forcefully I’ve slept well that night. I wake up among grazing cows. “Oh, hello there!”. When I zip out of my tent I see two sad faces: Gaetan and Dea’s tent didn’t survive the heavy wind and one of their tent poles broke. I completely understand their disappointment. Luckily their tent came with a “fix kit” and they can fix their tent.
After our usual oatmeal breakfast and packing up our tents we start riding. We’re immediately greeted by strong headwinds. Everywhere alongside the road there are trees that fell down during the night due to the wind. Sometimes we’re just blown backwards. It’s a true battle. I still have a light stomach ache but I feel better and have more energy than yesterday.
We cycle into the park on a nice gravel road. Unfortunately The Majestic Cotopaxi is mostly covered in clouds today, but sometimes we get to see half of it. We cycle diagonal over the flanks of the volcano. At some point we start to descend again and we’re greeted by asphalt as well. We zip down back to society. Gaetan still doesn’t feel so well so we decide to check into a hotel.
The next day we cycle down a beautiful valley. The flanks of the green mountains are used for agricultural means all the way up to their tops and it makes for a true patchwork of colors. In the downhill I suddenly hear a loud “pang!” and immediately a wobble in my wheel appears. It makes for a fast diagnosis: broken spoke. It’s the third one that breaks on this trip. Luckily its the front wheel so I can fix it myself (I have spare spokes with me and the tools for it). I decide to fix it tonight because I can still cycle on without problems. We ascend to the little town of Sigchos where Dea and Gaetan check into a room and in the same place I can pitch my tent (saving some money) on a beautiful ridge overlooking the valley surrounded by a llama and some horses.
When I go to bed there is a horse eating grass right next to my tent. It’s pitch dark. I sincerely hope that he won’t trip over my tent lines. I mean, it’s hard for me to see the lines, let alone for a horse. Or maybe horses have better eyesight in the dark than us humans? It’s with these thoughts that I fall asleep.









Gaetan needs to recover a little bit from his cough so we decide to take a rest day. This gives me some time to rest as well and fix my wheel. In the afternoon we walk down to the village to have some lunch. There is some kind of event going on and there’s lots of little food stalls to choose from. I notice that the old people here are so incredibly small! They all wear beautiful hats and have these red blushes on their round cheeks. These are real high-altitude mountain people. In the night we’re greeted by another bike tourist that just checked into the same place as we’re staying. His name is Lando and from the US.
Gaetan still doesn’t feel better. They decide to book two more nights. I don’t feel like staying two more days here, which means that once again I will say goodbye to them. This time, however, I feel more in peace with it than the first time. Back then our goodbye was very sudden and came as a shock. Now it’s my decision to leave them behind. For sure I will meet them again somewhere down the line!
Landon is also cycling south today but gets a head start because I take it slow in the morning. I start cycling south and have lunch in the most indigenous town I’ve ever been.
I marvel at the women in beautiful dresses and beautiful hats and at the women preparing all kinds of dishes along the road. I eat tamales and a dish with corn, potato and chicken.
Apparently I overtook Landon during lunch because at some point I’m having a roadside break and he suddenly catches up with me. We cycle together for the rest of the day. It’s a brutal climb towards our destination for today: a crater-lake called Quilotoa that sits at 3.900 meters.
When we make it to the lake we’re asked to pay an entrance of 2 dollars. Why would I pay to go see a crater lake? I cannot imagine that that crater lake actually belongs to the people collecting the money. I hate paying for nature, nature is supposed to be for everybody to enjoy and should not be treated as a property. We try a road that circumvents the pay booth but get caught. We bargain down to pay 1 dollar per person but it still doesn’t sit well with me.
The wind up here is strong and ice-cold, it penetrates right through your body making you freeze to the bone. Not the best spot to camp. Me and Lando find a hotel where we get a super romantic room with a stove and wood to keep us warm during the night.





From the rim of the beautiful crater lake me and Landon zip down towards the main road. Landon already decided to take the asphalted main road towards Latacunga. I still need to decide. I want to go to the next volcano called Chimborazo, which lies directly south of where I am now. There is, however, no main road going south. So I can do two things: join Landon going east and making a loop towards Chimborazo following main roads, or go south diving right into the mountains, little villages and gravel roads. I choose the latter. I choose adventure.
After a coffee and some bread I say goodbye to Landon. I take a right and make my way down south. Once again I climb to 4.000 meter, luckily the road is still asphalt. But not for long anymore. The wind is a real party-pooper, it throws me from left to right on the road like I weigh nothing. It’s ice-cold. It doesn’t make the cycling any fun. The asphalt ends and I make my way south through agricultural fields. Pigs are enjoying the sun on the side of the road, horses look at me suspiciously and cows roam the fields for the freshest grass. I see my first pack of wild llamas, they cross the road right in front of me and run away towards the horizon. Fun fact: llama is spelled with double “L” so you pronounce it like “yama” and not as “lama“.
I encounter two young boys, one sitting on a llama and the older one walking alongside of it. We exchange some words. After that I meet two beautiful little girls on the side of the road. They look at me with big round eyes. The younger hiding behind her older sister. They keep staring at me. I stop pedaling and ask how they are doing. They answer me with soft voices. Their round cheeks red from the cold and the sun.
I’m still cycling at 4.000m and I can definitely feel it in my legs. The effort that I put into my legs is not translating into the distance that I cover. After a big descend I arrive in the mountain village of Angamarca. I was planning to end up here but I did not know what to expect from the town. Luckily I can find something to eat. I enter a building on the corner of the church square. It’s dark and looks like a barn, but there are some tables with salt and aji (Ecuadorean salsa sauce) so I presume the big woman with the apron can feed me. She throws some potatoes in the frying pan for me. I walk around and am addressed by a man of the local cafe. He puts me in front of a big television and starts showing me all kinds of cringy YouTube videos of this little town. His enthusiasm is catching but at some point I’ve seen enough. I ask him if I can camp somewhere and he brings me to the garden of his sisters house that lives in Quito.








I have breakfast in the cafe of the man that helped me yesterday. After that I start cycling into the unknown. The earth roads are incredibly steep and I have to walk and push my bike a couple of times. I climb 1000 meters in 10 kilometers. That’s an average of 10% over 10 kilometers, which is absolutely insane. I meet Andres, a boy of 13 years old. He asks me if I’ve seen a man on a donkey pass by. I tell him yes and that he was about 1 kilometer down the road. Andres walks alongside of me for a kilometer or so. We talk. I ask him questions and he asks me questions. He pushes my bike on the steepest parts, which is very sweet of him. He brings me to his family that is building a house alongside the road. They are having lunch: a mug of some kind of milk with corn substance. I get a mug as well. It’s not bad and the second mug really fills up my stomach! I get going again and reach the top. However, after that, the road keeps going up and down and up and down.
This hilly part is at an altitude of 3.700m and it’s killing me. After 20km of cycling I’m already dead. I still manage to push out 17km more. I end the day in a tiny little village with three houses made of earth. There are a few man sitting on a bench and we talk a little bit. They tell me it’s no problem to put up my tent here. When I do, more and more people of the village come to check me out. Everybody is very curious for me, and in my turn I’m very curious for them. The people here don’t speak Spanish but Quechua (also known as the house brand of outdoor shop Decathlon), an old Inca-language. The names of the Villages are beautiful: Zanjachupa, Shuyo Chico and the town I sleep tonight is called Llullimunllo. In contrary of the people, the dogs here are less nice. One of them manages to steal my bag of oatmeal (meaning no breakfast tomorrow), and two others piss against my tent.



It’s the first time that I’ve really felt cold in the night. I wait for the sun to rise over the mountain tops to dry my tent from the condense. In the morning the village people come check me out again. I get milk from a bucket, probably freshly and straightly milked from the cows that morning. The people here are busy with the basic necessities of life. People are fixing water lines up in the mountains providing drinkable water for the town. A young man is washing some clothes. I see a young girl walking a little pig on a leash. The horses are given hay. Nobody “works” here, which doesn’t mean that nobody works hard here. The food is taken from the land, water from a stream in the mountain and furthermore they just make sure they survive. People from the village ask me shyly if they can take a picture with me, which is nice because than in turn I can make a picture of them.
I start cycling. The gradients once again are brutal. It’s like cycling up a vertical wall. I finally make it to the next bigger village where I’m finally reunited with pavement again.
I lunch and gape at all the activity in the village. It’s bustling and crawling. It seems like all the mountain people are coming here to do groceries. I see pigs, horses and cows parked in the streets. The whole village is one big market. Beans, vegetables, clothes, rice, you name it. On the town square some men are playing volleyball. All the ladies and young women are dressed in traditional gowns and wear beautiful hats.
After lunch I continue on pavement but the gradients are still murdering me. I have to stop and rest every kilometer. I almost fall asleep on a patch of grass alongside the road. I really don’t feel like cycling anymore. It’s not fun this way. This morning I felt like camping tonight but honestly I don’t feel like doing anything anymore. The morale has dropped below zero. I decide to leave the route I had in mind to descend towards a village where I check into a hotel.
I treat myself to a warm shower, a bed and a pizza. Hopefully the morale is better tomorrow.




Yesterday I was seriously considering a rest day today, but in the morning I already feel more energized. I decide to start cycling again. Yesterday I’ve descended 500m to get here and honestly I don’t feel like climbing back to where I left my route. Especially not with the brutal gradients here. So I stop a taxi alongside the road that takes me and my bike back to where I left yesterday. It’s hard for me to “cheat” like this, it doesn’t sit well with me, but after the suffering of yesterday I can justify it to myself.
I’m cycling over fine gravel amidst a moon landscape. When I turn around a corner I’m once again greeted by an ice-cold wind. I watch cowboys chase down their cattle on their horses on the flanks alongside me. I climb towards 4.400 meter, the highest point I’ve ever reached on a bike (maybe without bike as well?!). Or: the closest to the sun I’ve ever been. Cycling at these altitudes is really tough, so I don’t push my body too much and am at peace with the crawling pace.
I make it to my goal for today: Volcano Chimborazo. An absolute beast of a volcano with a height of 6.263m, once thought to be the highest mountain on earth. Actually the Chimborazo is the highest mountain on earth measured from the earths’ center and therewith defeating mount Everest (this is because the earth is not completely round and bulges around the equator, see Wikipedia). On the flanks of the volcano I see packs of wild vicuñas (the smallest of the camel family, same family as the llamas as well) grazing in the meadows.
I end up at the visitor centre at 4.400m, talk to the ranger on duty and he tells me it’s no problem for me to put up my tent somewhere near the buildings.
Everybody leaves at 5PM and the gate is being closed. It’s just me and the Chimborazo now. I cannot describe how cold it is. “Ice-cold” would not do justice to how cold it is. I put on all the clothes that I have and I can still feel the cold penetrating my layers and stroking my body with it’s cold fingers. First I put my tent on a grassy patch. But soon I notice that this won’t be sufficient shelter from the cold. I need to get out of the wind. I put my tent on the tiles in the hall of one of the buildings.
After I’ve cooked my rice and have eaten two problems unfold themselves. One, my feet are ice-cold and I know I’m going to have a hard time sleeping with two ice-cold lumps at the bottom of my legs. Two, I already felt that my stomach was a bit upset during the day, and after my dinner something is not sitting well in my stomach. I try to fix Problem 1 by taking a big walk, trying to get some blood flowing down through my feet. But during that late night walk I start to feel really bad. I walk back to my tent and go inside my sleeping bag immediately because my feet are at least a bit warmer now and I don’t want to get them cold again. But as soon as I lay down, I start feeling really nausea. So I zip out of my tent as quickly as possible. Walk outside on my socks and throw up in the bushes. What a waste! A waste of the cooking, a waste of the calories, a waste of the nice bushes of the visitor centre. My complete dinner and my calories for tomorrow are lying in the bushes now. At least I feel a bit better now, but my feet are cold again. I zip back into my mummy sleeping bag. I think this is the worst place on the planet to get sick. I can feel the cold penetrating through my sleeping bag. Safe to say I didn’t sleep much that night.





The morning is a disaster. I did sleep a little bit but around 4AM I cannot sleep anymore. I wait until 5AM and decide to get up. It’s even colder than last night! I pack up my tent and wait for the sunrise over the Chimborazo. Whilst sitting in my camping chair in front of the Chimborazo I’m actually suffering more from the cold than I’m enjoying the upcoming sun. I have to get out of here! I have to descend to more human conditions! This is just unbearable. I make some last pictures of the volcano and start cycling down wearing all my layers. The wind cuts right through everything and I’m really suffering on the bike. The cold is giving me actual physical pain. I cannot feel my feet and my hands. The only thing that crosses my mind is that I have to get to lower altitudes.
Luckily it’s only descending towards the city of Riobamba. Numb, nauseous and sleep deprived I arrive in the city. It’s 8AM now and luckily some breakfast places are already open. I kill some time with breakfast and coffee and warm up a little bit. I cycle a bit around in the city and at 1PM I can check into a hostal where I take a warm shower and where my feet finally defrost.
The next day I finally feel a little bit better and my appetite and good mood are back. I rest and don’t do much.
My plan for the next week is to leave the Andes with its merciless and ruthless mountains behind. I will drop down into the Amazonas in the East of Ecuador to enjoy some low-altitude cycling.


Hoi Marijn,
Het zoveelste boeiende verhaal. Gelukkig kan je de sombere momenten van eenzaamheid regelmatig onderbreken door alle contacten die je onderweg opdoet. Uiteindelijk zal je dat alleen maar sterker van worden.
Wens je wederom een goede voortzetting van je reis.
Hartelijke groet,
Jeanny en Kees
Zeker te weten, Kees, Dankjewel!!
Vol trots jouw vlg boeiend verhaal gelezen , wat maak je veel mee en wat zoek je de randjes op van wat een mens aankan !
Het maakt je (nog) sterker , fysiek en mentaal en dat neem je de rest van je leven mee
Blijf genieten en uitkijken Xxx
Bert en Miriam ( pa en ma)
Thanks en zal ik doen mamsie! X
Gossie Marijn…jij zoekt wel erg je grenzen op. Respect…… en wat heb je deze ronde veel tegenslag gehad met je ziek zijn. Hopelijk brengt je volgende verhaal iets meer vreugde. Groetjes uit de Bus