{"id":1702,"date":"2009-02-12T14:25:08","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T22:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/?p=1702"},"modified":"2009-02-12T14:29:47","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T22:29:47","slug":"feb-10-pasto-co-to-ibarra-ec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/12\/feb-10-pasto-co-to-ibarra-ec\/","title":{"rendered":"Feb. 10 – Pasto, CO to Ibarra, EC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Levi slept in, and I read until he got up.\u00a0 Our hotel included breakfast, and then we had an easy out-of-town.\u00a0 Road started with a climb into fantastic mountains, but a very tough road like so much of Colombian mountain road.\u00a0\u00a0 Just amazing, dramatic scenery.\u00a0 I have to say, that I am very, very glad that it worked out that we did not<\/span> skip Colombia.\u00a0 Some of our experiences was not the most positive, but the scenery was unparalleled, and I would not have wanted to\u00a0missed it.\u00a0 What a beautiful country, and although they definitely need to work on their tourist industry to make it acceptable to the average US citizen, it was not an entirely negative experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We stopped for some excellent coffee just short of the border, and then entered the border area.\u00a0 A wait in line was all that was needed to exit Colombia, and then The Ecuador entry process was time-consuming, but only due to long lines.\u00a0 There was no hassle, no stress, no fees;\u00a0 every one was helpful, friendly, and pleasant.\u00a0 It still took over two hours.\u00a0 While we were there, we met three Colombians who were heading to Patagonia on their Harleys.\u00a0 It was fun to chat with them.\u00a0 We hope to meet up with them again, somewhere along the way.<\/p>\n

As we headed south into Ecuador, we soon discovered that the mountains here were even more spectacular and impressive than in Colombia!\u00a0 Words fail to describe the grandeurand beauty of the scenery.\u00a0 Soon we were high in the mountains, but now on wonderful, wide, well maintained and well engineered roads.\u00a0 We got cold, and soon had our coat liners and electric shirts on… temps were in the 50’s and it was raining.<\/p>\n

Again, we got confused and briefly off the road in Tucan, but quickly recovered the Panamericano Sur.\u00a0 We stopped for lunch of\u00a0 ‘fritata’\u00a0at a small roadside comidor, and had a friendly local offer to share his beer with us, and welcomed us to Ecuador.\u00a0 We\u00a0finished the stretch into the town of Ibarra before dark.\u00a0 Friendly, curious, helpful people seemed to be the norm.\u00a0 We found a decent hotel, and walked to the town center, which was very nice and easy to explore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Levi slept in, and I read until he got up.\u00a0 Our hotel included breakfast, and then we had an easy out-of-town.\u00a0 Road started with a climb into fantastic mountains, but a very tough road like so much of Colombian mountain road.\u00a0\u00a0 Just amazing, dramatic scenery.\u00a0 I have to say, that I am very, very glad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[21,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1738,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions\/1738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}