Darkness fell before we found a place to stay, for the first time this trip; and also had our first 2000m day of climbing. We started the day with a steep climb out of Aluasì, then stopped in Guasuntos for a fiesta honoring San Luis del Rey. We met Iñez there, who’d worked in New Jersey for 35 years and has now returned to live in Ecuador. She invited us to stay for this sixth day of a twelve day festival. We stayed for an hour and a half, not knowing how much climbing lay ahead. Our elevation stayed between 2400m and 3100m, with views out over the clouds covering the coastal plain; and several times we though we’d reached the high point for the day. (My map only shows contour lines every 800m, and we closely followed the 2600m contour, crossing it five times). We did not reach the high point until 5:45pm. Sun sets in the tropics around six and it gets dark fast. At six we coasted into Zhud, the first town for 40 km, hoping a hotel would be there. A shop women said no, but a hosteria lay ten km away, then after seeing our disappointment she said only 3 km, and all downhill. It was 7 km, and only the first 2 km downhill. That’s where my tire went flat. With daylight waning fast, Julie went on ahead; then I just pumped up the slow leak. With 100 strokes on the pump, refilled every 2 km, we eventually reached the streetlights of Suscal. As a crowd gathered while I patched my tire we learned that we passed the hosteria 1 km back, but needed to eat at a restaurant in town anyway.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 21:32 and is filed under David's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.