Our Ride to Puyo

SHARLA: Actually, the title should be our attempted ride to Puyo. We tried to get an earlier start this morning. Up at 7:30, dressed, packed all of our stuff and had La Petit Auberge store our bags for the day. Because, tonight....drum roll please....we get to check in to Posada del Arte, our FAVORITE hostel in Ecuador! If you want to check it out, go to . It was amazing last time we were here, and they have just added the Blue House, where we are staying our last two nights in Banos, and it is AWESOME!!! Okay, but more about that later....I got off track here.

We rented bikes from a different company today, because I didn't want to give one more penny to Wonderful Ecuador because of how they treated Marsha yesterday. The new place was the same price, $5/day per bike, and had better bikes. We made it about 15 minutes out of town, and Camille said she didn't want to go. She was sore and tired from yesterday, and didn't realize it until we started going up some hills. I tried to convince her to go with us, but she turned around anyway. But, as I caught up to Marsha, I realized she was behind us again. But, only for about five more minutes. We were riding up a pretty long hill and stopped in a shady spot to wait for Camille to catch up. We waited, and waited, and waited. For almost 20 minutes. I walked back down the hill a ways, and still didn't see her coming. It dawned on me that she must have turned back after all. The mother in me wanted to get back on my bike, and go find her and stay with her in Banos. But, the other part of me was mad because she hadn't said anything, and I was worried. Plus, she knew that this was the part of the trip that Marsha and I have been so excited about.

The rebellious side of me won out over the mom part, and I decided to go on with the ride. Besides, she is almost 21, and she tells me every day to quit worrying about her....so, that's just what I did. The wind was even worse today than yesterday. It was extremely hard to ride uphill against it, and there was no coasting downhill. We met a girl named Karen from Ireland about halfway between Banos and Rio Verde. She was probably in her early twenties, and she said her friend was sick, and she was biking alone today. We invited her to ride along with us to Rio Verde, and told her about the walk to the Pailon del Diablo waterfall. She wanted to stop there and go look at it even though she was going to try to go to Puyo, too.

About the time we met Karen, Marsha's front brake started locking up. What is it with her luck and bikes this trip? She said that it was like riding with her brake on the whole time. Oh boy...how much fun is that? At Rio Verde, we relaxed a bit, and had some more water to drink. We also a yummy, juicy, sweet orange. We left Karen to walk to the waterfall, and continued our way to Puyo.

We had asked several people what the road is like from Rio Verde to Puyo, and they all said about the same as from Banos to Rio Verde. Some uphills, but mostly downhills. Well, it turns out that it is quite obvious that NONE of these people have EVER ridden a bicycle on this road. Because, I would say 75% of the road is UPHILL. And, there aren't short uphills and short downhills. There are KILOMETERS of uphills, and there were a few long downhills, but definitely more challenging uphills. Even Marsha, who never admits that she's tired or it's hard, said it was the most difficult bike ride she's ever done.

We stopped a lot to look at the gorgeous scenery, or maybe that was just an excuse to rest. The further we got from Banos, the more "jungle-like" the terrain became. More palm trees, and even more lush if you can imagine. We stopped for a drink at the restaurant in Rio Negro where we ate after rafting the other day. The lady there said it was only about 20 kilometers to Puyo from there. We were so excited because we had made it there from Rio Verde in only an hour and fifteen minutes. Turns out she was wrong! And, there are no signs along the way that tell you how far it is either.

We had ridden quite a ways outside of Rio Negro, and had stopped on a bridge to look at a beautiful waterfall, when Karen caught up to us. She decided to continue to ride with us, even though by this time we were stopping and/or walking quite a bit. She had forgotten her sunscreen, and the sun was beating down on us now. She was really burned. We gave her some of our sunscreen, which may have saved her from frying, even though shortly after that, it started to get cloudy.

From this point, the scenery got prettier, but the uphills got longer and steeper. At some points, we were stopping every 20 to 30 yards. It was brutal! We felt like we had ridden forever, when we asked a lady working on the side of the road how far Mera was, which is 16 kilometers from Puyo. She said 7 more kilometers! Which really makes the lady in Rio Negro wrong since we still had 23 kilometers to go, and we had been riding forever since we left her restaurant!

The road is very curvy and windy, and Marsha kept saying just around the next bend, there's going to be a downhill. NOPE! Okay, around the next curve. NOPE! We just kept trudging along, because there was absolutely nothing else we could do. No bus or chiva would have been able to stop and pick us up because the road was only wide enough for two lanes, and it would have been too dangerous for anyone to stop. Too many curves. At one point, somewhere on one of these long uphills when we were actually trying to RIDE our bicycles, Marsha's chain came off. Oy vay! Poor thing. As she was putting it back on beside the road in some tall grass, she noticed that she had about 50 fly bites on one leg. Boy, are those suckers quick!

Back on the road again, Karen said she was probably going to head back for Banos from Mera....if we ever got there! That was the longest 7 kilometers EVER! In the back of my mind, I wanted to say for sure I was done in Mera to, but I wanted to go as far as Marsha wanted to go. After all, this has been our dream since the last time we were in Ecuador. FINALLY, we made it to Mera. There was a big sign over the road, and Karen hugged the pole, and Marsha kissed the road. I wanted to kiss the road, but I was afraid if I bent down that far, I would never get up again!

We rode into town, and bought some water. Right outside the store, the police were stopping drivers in both directions checking licenses which is a very common practice here. We decided this might be a good place to catch a bus or chiva back to Banos. (YAY! Marsha was ready to go back!) Finally, we spotted an empty chiva, and tried to flag it down, but they just passed us by. But, then I looked down the road, and I saw break lights come on! HALLELUJAH! I started literally running down the road to catch them. A lady jumped out of the passenger side, and she said yes, they were going to Banos. She consulted with her husband, and they decided on $1.50 per person. CHEAP! I was ready to pay $20....haha.

On the way to Banos, standing in the back of their truck, it began to rain. But, we didn't care, we weren't on those dang bikes anymore! What took us one hour to return to Banos in the truck, had taken us SIX hours on bicycle/foot. What a relief when we returned the bikes!

We returned to La Petit Auberge to retrieve our backpacks and other luggage, and Camille just happened to be there. She had spent her day people watching mostly, going from one park to the other and listening to her iPod. In the end, I think she made an extremely wise decision by not going with us....she would have been miserable. It was a really tough ride. Sorry, Puyo, we really gave it the 'ol college try!

We got checked into Posada del Arte, and boy, is this room nice! I actually have a really grown-up mattress! Our room as two nice double beds and a twin bed. Everything is sparkly and new, and smells good! We would have stayed here all week, but the owners are from the U.S., and took vacation for the month of October to let their staff have some time off, too. Marscia, who owns the hostel with her husband Jim, just returned to Banos two hours before we arrived to check in. Perfect timing!

We walked up to the thermal baths, and soaked our weary bones for about an hour and a half, and are now enjoying our wonderful room. We plan on sleeping in tomorrow morning, and then getting up to one of the great breakfast plates they offer here, especially their Juevos Rancheros! Yummy! Spa day tomorrow for our last day. YAY! Hasta manana!