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Sunday, March 14th – Moe was feeling 75% better Sunday morning as we saddled up early for the day’s goal of making the Peruvian border. We jumped on to the main road only to be deviated back off and into the center of old Quito – and of course the deviation signs ran out leaving us lost in a maze of tiny, crowded one-way streets. With some aid from the locals we were soon back on the PanAmerican highway heading south along the mountainous spine of the continent. I had been watching the altimeter on my Garmin Rino GPS, and ever since we arrived in Bogota our altitude had varied between 6,000 and 11,000 feet - mostly around the 9-10,000 feet mark, where life seems remarkably similar to sea level except that the carbureted KTM’s were struggling with their overly-rich jetting. By contrast my altitude-compensating, fuel-injected Ducati engine was running incredibly well, and I posted my best gas mileage of the trip this day with a 150 mile stretch taken around 70 mph returning 60.2 mpg. Problem was the mountain roads were busy and winding, meaning we were making ground too slowly for our goal, so we decided to cut out toward Guayaquil onto the flat coastal plain and run for the border. The pass we took to descend westwards, shown on the map as Highway 60 (but the road signs said 40!?), firstly ran up to 12,500 feet which I was all excited about, and then descended through an absolutely beautiful valley, which made me sad to be leaving the mountains.

The bikes draw a crowd wherever we stop

Beautiful 12,500 foot pass coming down from the mountains in Equador