Dear Ecuador, I will really miss your endless mountain twisties. I never get tired of riding them.

Wow! It was an "Iron Butt" day in the saddle. My intended route dead-ended in a landslide and I had to backtrack an hour. That tacked on two hours on to an already long day.

I got much better sleep last night and enjoyed my usual laser focus on the bike. The ride was an endless twisty blast over, through and around mountains, canyons and valleys. At breakfast I downloaded a hard-rock playlist and it propelled me through my day.

I got a little flustered when I arrived at a construction roadblock with about a hundred other vehicles. Evidently there had been a landslide during the night and heavy equipments were clearing the road. The flagger told me that the road would be closed for at least four hours. That was too long. I would be riding well after dark. As much as I didn't want to, I turned around.

I stopped for gas and had a funny conversation with the young man who was the attendant. You have to understand that when you get into these rural areas, the way that people speak Spanish is REALLY different. In this young man's case, he blurred his words together and dropped the endings. Kind of like an Australian. I already struggle to understand people but this was next level. I didn't want to ride all the way back to the Panamerican Highway because it would take too long. I was trying to figure out if the road I was on would go through to Macará. Now I know you think that you can just use Google Maps for that answer but let me tell you... Google, Garmin and Apple are all useless if you get off the main roads. I asked the young man "Este camino va a Macará?" (does this road go to Macará). A simple yes would have been good. Instead he gave me about two paragraphs of information. None of which I understood. I tried again. "Mi español no es muy bueno. Por favor habla despacio y simplemente." (My Spanish is not very good. Please speak slowly and simply). Undeterred he went right on giving me way more information than I asked for. None of which I could understand. This went on for quite a while as I drank a bottle of water. I busted out my phone and showed him the map. I asked if I should go back to E35 (the Panamerican) or keep going on the road I was on. I didn't understand his words but he made a whistling noise and waved his had in the direction I was going. I understood that. Later I would realize that what he was trying to tell me is that they had built a new road that way and it would be much faster. Ha! Language!

When I was 30 miles out from Macara, I encountered a new challenge. Fog. Not your average everyday fog... I've never seen anything quite so dense. I felt like I was punching a Tiggrr shaped hole in it. Even though this road was in good condition there were still areas where rocks had fallen on the road. Often blocking one lane. There were also areas where the road had slipped leaving an exposed edge. I had to slow to about 5mph. Oncoming trucks would emerge suddenly from the murk... why don't they turn their lights on?! Going through a small village I got behind a light pickup truck. I discovered that my best strategy was to follow the truck's tail lights about 20 feet back. I could see when he made sudden moves to avoid obstacles in the road and I figured I would notice if he dropped off the edge or got hit head-on by a bigger truck. Fortunately none of that happened. About 30 minutes of tense, slow descent, I emerged under the clouds in a light rain. Finally rolling into Macara about 30 minutes before sunset. It was an unforgettable epic day.

Tomorrow I'm going to cross the border into Peru.