Day 8

0 Miles today (13,507 Miles Overall)

Banos, Ecuador

I was supposed to head to Cuenca today but my bike has been giving me some issues. The other morning it turned off a few times after I started it and my gear indicator isn’t working properly at times. I decided to stick around Banos for the day while I did some research on the problem and poked around on my bike. I think whats been going on is I’m putting the cheap fuel in my bike which is 85 and my engine has been tapping from the low fuel quality. I hope that’s my main issue for the tapping and not starting properly sometimes. I’ll start with some good fuel tomorrow!

While I was figuring that out all day waiting on replies from people on forums I decided to get a mountain bike and go check out all the waterfalls a few towns east of here. It was mostly downhill and I would have to take a truck taxi back with the bike at the end which was about 26 Kilometers away. I got some food and rented the bike for $10 and was on my way. Most of the beginning was downhill which was nice. I stopped at the first waterfall and hiked down to the bottom. I met two girls on the suspension bridge and they said the gate was locked so you can’t walk up to the waterfall. I asked if anyone was there and they said no. I replied with “Well its south America, if it doesn’t say you can’t do it then you can and if it says you can’t do it and no ones around you can still do it”.

The one girl wanted to follow me so bad but her friend was a party pooper. I made my way over to the gate and snuck in through some barbwire fence and got some shots of the waterfall. I guess the girls got into a little argument because one of them walked over to me and wanted to hop the fence too! We got her some shots and then I made my way back up the hike. I hopped on my bike and went to the second one. Its a huge waterfall with so much power. These things make me so happy. I did some crawling around and went through some tunnels to get under it which was wild. When I got to the top I saw the two Colombians ive been seeing since I left Popayan. I met some guys from the Netherlands at the place where we lock up our bicycles and we rode over to the last waterfall together.

This one was pretty cool too and we could swim under it so we all took our clothes off and jumped in and hung out for about an hour in the water. We met a guy from Spain who was telling us how he was on a hike two days ago and lightning struck a guy 100′ behind him and killed him on the spot and he was dealing with talking to the UK embassy to get a report on what happened to tell his family. Wild! They got caught in a storm on a hike and it was exposed. Wrong place at the wrong time.

Were all sitting there in the water baking in the sun and I was just really enjoying it. I thought about all my friends at home stuck at work and mentioned it to them and we all laughed. Sorry guys! It’s funny for us! hah After a while we hiked back up and rode back a town to a place that had some cheap fresh trout plates. We got a trout and a half with rice, salad, fries and veggies. Ugh it was so good I could eat this everyday for $5.00 a plate. We loaded up the bikes in a truck taxi and got a ride back into town. I walked around to try to hit my 20,000 step quota for the day, got some more food, and just explored the town some more. Im ready to leave tomorrow now that my bikes going to be running a bit better I hope. Also everyone left the hostel that was in my room last night so big score having the place to myself tonight! Oh the small things!