TEMBR, Covid-19 and Algae Death Flumes…
At the end of 2019 my partner and I were keen to kick off 2020 with an adventure. We started a New Year on a flight bound for Ecuador, full of excitement for what the next few months had in store.
Once we arrived, the plan was to get our kit together, have a couple of days to acclimitise and then head south. We’d initially jump on the Trans Ecuador Mountain Bike Route (TEMBR), which starts in Tulcan on the Colombian border and meanders its way south through the Central Highlands, known as the Avenue of Volcanoes. We would start just south of Quito and take a slightly “spicier” de-tour on a route known as Los Tres Volcanes.
Both routes were put together by Cass Gilbert (of Bikepacking.com) with a lot of input from the Dammer brothers (Michael Dammer is @el_taraumara on Instagram), three brothers who run an organic farm with their family, just east of Ecuador’s capital city Quito. What these guys don’t know about Ecuadorian back country riding isn’t worth knowing! We were incredibly lucky to spend a few days with this pioneering family prior to setting off.
As well as the farm they also run an outdoor education program, hosting groups of school kids on the most adventurous trips you can imagine. Their farm is chock full of beautifully hand-crafted buildings filled with all the equipment any adventurer would be in awe of, we’re talking fully equipped expedition kitchen, complete with dehydrator, a plethora of pots, pans and accoutrements and a wall of barrels, full of dry goods, racks and racks of mountaineering equipment… the list goes on.
To say this was the perfect jumping off point would be a massive understatement. We joked many times that this would be the perfect “base” during a zombie apocalypse, on reflection it was like some awful foreshadowing in a Hollywood blockbuster…
Fast forward two months, we’re back at the farm and have ridden the southern section of the TEMBR route as well as jumping on parts of the Los Tres Volcanes route. I’m picking up the story in the few weeks before we were due to fly back to the UK. We planned to ride the northern section of the TEMBR from the south and finish in Tulcan which we’d missed in our first foray into Ecuadorian backcountry. Before we left we managed to get some Wi-Fi and got our first real update on Covid-19. When we left the UK, news had just broken that there was a cluster of Pneumonia cases in Wuhan, I’ll be honest I didn’t really give it a second thought, my mind was very much on the glorious days bike riding to come.
We left early so we were looking to get quite a bit of riding done, we knew we had an extended road section ahead, this was very rare on this route as you predominantly stay off-road in a mixture of gravel, double track and a few pearls of singletrack. This was the main road from the south of the country to the town of Otavalo, known for its huge market and all the trappings of a town geared for tourism. As soon as we got on the tarmac the road started kicking up and the temperature seemed to increase with each pedal stroke, we had to make a few stops on the climb to get a break from the heavy traffic and to get our temperature down to avoid blowing a gasket.
Something we learnt pretty quickly on our trip was that our perception of time and distance had to adjust while we were in Ecuador, otherwise we would quickly be hollowed out and gibbering at the side of the trail, most days were a battle of extremes. In the early morning we’d go for a quick breakfast, usually something cold that would save the tired-headed fumble of assembling the stove and cooking. We’d then pretty much always start the day with a climb, and when there’s a climb (and there always is), it tends to go on for a long, long time. However, as with all things in life there’s two sides to the story, good and evil, the light and the dark and the up and the down. After the trudge of many mornings heading up there was often an entire afternoon (really!) of descending. I’m a big fan of pointing the bike downhill, but these descents were ridiculous, to the point of having to pull over occasionally to let your body (and brakes) recover from the constant demand.
After a big day, and a night under canvas en route to Otavalo, we passed through a small town called Malchingui, a quiet town that had the feeling of the frontier about it, a quick restock and a chat with some locals, who confirmed we still had a lot of climbing to do, we continued on our upward trajectory on progressively deteriorating terrain making our way up to Laguna Chiriacu at roughly 3700 masl. As we climbed higher the mist rolled in and the air cooled, the weather started to feel very British as we descended to the Laguna. This would be the perfect place to camp, but we still had daylight left and we were coming to the point in the day where we switch to descent mode. Just as we crested the high point for the day we met a Swedish couple who were doing the route in the opposite (more usual) direction, they told us they’d had a long slog up a cobbled road pretty much all the way from Otavalo and we were happy to inform each other that we had a big descent waiting, and as we chatted we all took a moment to take in the epic vastness of Laguna Chiriacu before we said our goodbyes and headed off on our independently earned descents.
The plan was to stay in Otavalo for a couple of nights, mooch about, drink coffee and chill and then keep pressing north. As the route goes on the days get bigger and the amenities become sparser. With all the climbing you could want remaining, the plan leaving Otavalo was to make as much of a dent in the climb up to the Piñan paramo and get sleep at the first decent spot we could find just before it gets dark. As with all great plans made the previous night with a beer in hand this one got going with a pretty late start, the lure of the coffee shop and the hearty breakfast was too much so we just went with it and embraced the second and third coffee (and a second breakfast).
After dragging ourselves from the coffee shop we got going and made good progress until we stopped for lunch mid-afternoon, on the gps I could see the slightly intriguing waypoint that read:
“2 water channel bridges. Short distance between bridges – remove shoes!”
I’d seen this when we were planning the route and it raised an eyebrow, but I hadn’t thought too much of it until it was the next feature. When we finally made it to the “bridges” it all made sense, the trail narrowed to the point where your only option was to jump in the water (shoes removed as per the advice) and then wade/shuffle with your bike. It took a while to master the technique as the water channel/bridge was only wide enough for a bike, when I first got in the water I almost instantly went on my arse due to the thin film of algae that the fast flowing water was moving over. If you were taking the more usual route of north to south you would be going with the flow of the water, however because we were going the opposite direction this meant we were battling the slidy algae death flume moving upstream. After the two crossings were complete we agreed that although it had been a lot of fun and had made a change from riding up, we were glad it was done.
After the crossing it was getting close to 4 and we still had quite a bit of up to do so we kept moving with the hope of finding a camp spot just before dark. 5km up the road I stopped to get water while Maria carried on up the hill. I caught up with her sooner than I thought, as I rounded the next corner she was at the side of the trail with her wheel out fixing a puncture, weird place to puncture I thought!? Slow climb, with a fairly innocuous surface, but somehow she’d managed to get a pinch. On closer inspection we realised a spoke had snapped and broken the seal on the rim tape, we didn’t have a spare spoke and the wheel was pretty taco’d, we sat for a while and chatted through the options. Pushing on meant no bike shop until the end of the ride, not an option as the wheel would have inevitably got worse, so our only real option was to go back to Otavalo...
After a late night arrival and a very well deserved sleep we got the wheel sorted at a local bike shop the following day, we then had another night over and got going the following morning. With good rest we soon found ourselves back at the water bridges, this was our 3rd time on them now so our technique was dialled. We pushed on until we reached the Piñan paramo, a big day, and by the time we reached our planned stop for the night at 3850masl it was dark, cold and we were very hungry. We ate, I’m not even sure what, and then we were out for the count.
As is usually the case in a night out under canvas we woke with the sun, a shorter day was on the cards with the plan to stop at the small town of Buenos Aires. We were a little apprehensive about this stop as the advice had been to avoid this area of late as there had been a dispute between locals and illegal miners. To calm things down the government had sent in the police and the army. When we arrived the road was still blocked but the army chap with the machine gun seemed happy enough to wave us through. After a good feed and a nights sleep at a homestay that was entirely inhabited by police (except us) we cracked on with a relatively short day with a big descent through a view-fest of a town called Carchi, finishing the day at a roadside hostel.
After lots of food, some clothes washing and a good sleep we kicked off what was going to be our longest day. The plan was to ride from the hostel to the town of El Angel some 76km and 3500m of climbing away. We planned to stay at another hostel who were ok with us arriving late so we pushed on, as it turned out we had to as there was limited camp spots available. We finally hit the high point of the day in complete darkness, this had seemed a long time coming and we were happy to see some lights in the distance which signaled rest. As we descended into a town called San Isidro a huge thunderstorm kicked off in the distance with lightning arcing perfectly behind the mountain tops that surrounded our destination.
After a late rise we were ready to set off on the last day of the trip, the day that would have us ride through one of the most iconic areas of the route, Reserva Ecologica El Angel, an area famed for Frailejones, which is a genus of subshrub in the Sunflower family (according to Wikipedia). These things are crazy looking with big furry leaves and beautiful yellow flowers, the sheer number of them is mind-blowing, they literally go as far as the eye can see. The halfway point for the final day was a rangers hut near two lakes called Lagunas El Voladero. When heading north to south people often use the rangers hut as a place to stay, it’s remote with views that are frankly ridiculous. The hut also marked the point that we really started to get a feeling that the whole Covid-19 thing had picked up pace. It seems silly now back in the UK, where for the moment at least the world feels like it has changed forever, but on arrival I went to shake the ranger’s hand and he very clearly stepped back to avoid my hand. My first thought was that I stink and look dirty (both true) but the ranger explained that he was leaving and that the National Park would be closing. This much I understood, but at the time I didn’t understand the reason owing to my poor Spanish vocabulary. After eating lunch we headed out again, we had roughly 50km remaining, but it was mostly flat or downhill so we weren’t in any major rush. We got to Tulcan around 6 and headed straight for pizza, we planned to get the first bus out of town in the morning to the capital Quito and then get another bus to the beach town of Canoa. We had just over a week until we were due to fly back to the UK so why not go and sprawl on the beach?
When we finally got to Quito we had a small wait for the night bus connection, it was instantly noticeable that the anxiety around Covid-19 had picked up quite considerably in the city in the two weeks we’d been dicking around on bikes. People were now wearing facemasks and gloves, with a large range of improvised PPE on show, best in show was one man wearing the remains of a bra as a facemask. We also witnessed someone passing out and generally not looking well in the waiting area, two security guards and a paramedic in full Hazmat suits, respirators and face shields came to his aid and scurried him away, presumably for assistance. This definitely made anxiety levels rise as we were about to jump on a packed bus and travel 10hrs to the beach. In hindsight and knowing what we know now we should have abandoned the trip to the beach there and then. But at the time this was very much being sold as no worse than flu, so in all honesty some of the reactions we saw seemed like paranoia.
We arrived at 4 a.m. and decided to grab a couple of hours sleep on the beach until the sun came up. After a full day at the beach, it felt like the scenes at the bus station certainly hadn’t reached Canoa. This changed the following day when we were eating breakfast with our hosts, they said that the government had announced that all bus services were being suspended the following day and that the country would be going into full lockdown. This came as a bit of a shock and the limited time that was given until we went into full lockdown. This made the decision for us, so we had no choice but to go straight to the ticket office and see if we could get a bus back to Quito, there was now a real fear that if we couldn’t get back in time we very well might miss our flight out of Ecuador.
As a backup plan we had the bikes, it would have been an epic ride on pretty grim roads, but we still had the time. Luckily, after some miming and confusion we got a ticket for the last bus at 1800, which then stopped at another town where everyone had to get off the bus, the entire bus was then sprayed (inside and out?) with some petrol powered crop sprayer by a guy in a hazmat suit, we then all got back on the bus (now smelling of some harsh bleach like concoction) and kept on our merry way to Quito where we arrived at 7a.m to a ghost town. A usually jam packed bus terminal was now desolate save for a few military bods and the police.
The Dammer’s were kind enough to have us back for a couple of days until we flew, but they were rightfully concerned we might bring the virus with us. We agreed to ride to them, avoiding any interactions in the city, ride out to the farm and hole up there ‘til this all blew over. Little did we know when we joked about the farm being a perfect apocalypse base that we’d soon be heading there again when it genuinely felt like the world was in the midst of a meltdown. We spent the next couple of days in a self-imposed quarantine, making use of the beautiful “Chozon” outdoor kitchen, usually the preserve of school groups staying over for educational visits, we got to use the space to enter into a world of nightmarish life admin trying to rebook cancelled flights. During the lockdown the Ecuadorian government had also stopped inbound flights and were only opening airports to get tourists home. Luckily we still had an outbound flight so when the day finally came a few days later we said our thank yous and goodbyes and headed to the packed airport, surrounded by people wearing face coverings and nervously distancing until the time came for us to leave. We left Ecuador with heavy hearts, we had been in the country for nearly 3 months and had been fortunate enough to have had many great experiences. To end the trip in such a stressful, rushed way felt like we’d been unable to say the goodbye the experience demanded, we left a family and a nation going all-in with their efforts to protect their people and going back to Europe felt like flying into the eye of a terrible storm.
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