CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Tutamandahostel it runs 419 km to Tutamandahostel; allow about 9 h 00 of riding. The stops in between: Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma, Segment Pimán - Caranqui, Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito and Segment Juan Montalvo - Cabuyal. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 3,500 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Quito sits almost on the equator and almost two miles up, and the two facts together explain a lot. At about 2,850 metres the air is thin, the sun is fierce, and the days are mild whatever the calendar says, so the city lives in a permanent early spring. It stretches for kilometres along a narrow Andean valley, with Pichincha volcano rising on the western side and, on clear mornings, the snow cone of Cotopaxi and other peaks visible to the south and east.
Read the complete Quito write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Quito is where the day begins. Next is Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma.
The equator runs across northern Ecuador, a short ride from Quito, and the hills east of the capital, around Cayambe, hold some of the most interesting ancient sites in the country. This segment of the Qhapaq Ñan, the Inca road network recognised by UNESCO, links the pucará at Campana and the hill of Quitoloma, and the word pucará means fortress in Quechua. The Inca extended their empire into this region late, in the decades before the Spanish conquest, and they met fierce resistance from the local peoples, the Caranquis, who fought from hilltop forts. The landscape bears the marks of those wars in earthworks, ramparts and ditches on the hills.
Read the complete Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma comes up about 64 km into the recorded legs. Next is Segment Pimán - Caranqui.
Ibarra sits in a high basin in northern Ecuador at around 2,200 metres, beneath the green slopes of Imbabura volcano, and the Inca road ran right through this valley. The Qhapaq Ñan, the Andean road system, stretched over 30,000 kilometres from Colombia to Chile and Argentina, linking the Inca empire, and it was inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2014. The segment between Pimán and Caranqui is one of the preserved sections in Ecuador, a stretch of old path through farmland and hills, with dry-stone edging in places and the kind of steady, sensible gradient Inca engineers favoured for runners and llama trains. Caranqui, now a suburb of Ibarra, was an important Inca centre, and local tradition claims it as the birthplace of Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor.
Read the complete Segment Pimán - Caranqui write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
At least about 143 km into the recorded legs you reach Segment Pimán - Caranqui. Next is Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito.
High in the Andes of northern Ecuador, between El Ángel and Pimampiro in the province of Carchi, a stretch of the Qhapaq Ñan, the great road network of the Inca Empire, crosses the páramo, the high grassland that blankets the mountains above the tree line. The Inca built more than thirty thousand kilometres of roads across their empire, from Colombia to Chile and Argentina, linking towns, temples and storehouses, and this northern section, near the empire's frontier, was among the last to be built before the Spanish conquest. The Qhapaq Ñan was inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2014 as a transnational site shared by six countries, with hundreds of individual segments, including this one.
Read the complete Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito, about halfway. Next is Segment Juan Montalvo - Cabuyal.
Northern Ecuador is where the Andes narrow and the country almost touches Colombia, and this stretch between Juan Montalvo and Cabuyal lies in the highland province of Carchi, not far from the little town of El Ángel. The area sits in the shadow of the páramo, the cold, treeless grassland above the forest line, where frailejones, the tall, silvery, furry-leaved plants, stand like crowds of strange sentinels. The El Ángel Ecological Reserve, a short way off, protects a large stretch of this habitat, and on a cloudy day it feels like another planet.
Read the complete Segment Juan Montalvo - Cabuyal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Juan Montalvo - Cabuyal sits at 144 km, about halfway. Next is back through Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito comes up about 228 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Segment Pimán - Caranqui.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Pimán - Caranqui write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 277 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Segment Pimán - Caranqui. Next is back through Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma, late in the day. Next is Quito.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Quito write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 419 km.
Quito → Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma → Segment Pimán - Caranqui is 79 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Pimán - Caranqui → Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito → Segment Juan Montalvo - Cabuyal is 13 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Juan Montalvo - Cabuyal → back through Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito → back through Segment Pimán - Caranqui is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Pimán - Caranqui → back through Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma is 79 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma → Quito is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.