TRAVERSE Issue 10 - February 2019 | Page 89

WELCOME TO ECUADOR! E cuador! For a small country nestled between its much larg- er neighbours of Colombia and Peru, Ecuador is one action packed country We crossed the main border from Colombia at Ipiales, mainly be- cause we were told the others were all closed and marked in red by our UK Foreign Office, and therefore a ‘no-go’ area...apparently! Fortunately, it was a swift process and our first land border crossing we’d ever completed on our motorbikes. Yippee! We were accom- panied by our South African friends Michnus and Elsebie, who pointed us in the right direction and kept watch over our bikes while we sorted our paperwork and we reciprocated. We were also fortunate that it was a few weeks preceding the huge influx of Venezuelans, which has been a very sad issue ever since. Leaving the border, we hung a left, following a fantastic dirt road into the Amazon, the E10. I had never seen so TRAVERSE 89