quito’s old town has been nominated as a world heritage site since 1979. the once neglected quarter has been extensively renovated and equipped with new infrastructure. Today the city has over 2.2 million inhabitants and it is a real gem with a great flair.
Born in captivity – lucky guys!
confiscated monkeys from illegal keeping or also injured animals are handed over by the ecuadorian authorities to the “paseo de los monos” (monkey trail) and nursed there. The sad thing is that the animals are threatened in the wild by poachers and that safe refuges are becoming increasingly rare. More information available here: www.facebook.com/paseodelosmonos / www.losmonos.org
The so called indian culture „san augustín“ disappeared in the 14th century a.d. and left hardly any information for posterity. The oldest testimonies are from the 3rd millennium b.c. and from 1000 a.d. the decline began. In the meantime about 500 stone figures are known and mostly in connection with gravesites. Well, only the dead had survived.
Around 1930 this road was built and its said to be one of the most dangerous roads in the world. Well, here I have only few pictures of this scenically very beautiful road, wait for the video to judge…
On the way we met brett, an american from nebraska, who was following a jonny cash song, following all the places mentioned in the song. “i´ve been everywhere, man”
Ibarra / back on the road / ecuador
After a longer break in germany we are back on the road again. The spare parts were to maintain the truck and then we went back to Colombia, where we didn’t want to miss some things worth seeing …
We overtook Juan Manuel after we had driven uphill for quite some time. And since we wanted to take a break anyway, I waved him to our place and we offered hin coffee and chocolate.
He is a venazuelan guy, left his country some time ago and lives by juggling, clowning and unicycling. He has welded his bike by himself using a lot of iron. His bike weights about 130 kg together with der rider, but he brings hardly anything on the scales. Downhill it is getting fast, sometimes too fast, as his missing incisors prove. Juan Manuel is a happy guy, he always was laughing when he told his stories, then he got on his bike again and kept pedaling uphill.
