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.
406 km from Quito to Quito, about 8 h 32 of riding. The stops in between: Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma, Segment Pimán - Caranqui, Segment Loma Virgen - Chiquito and back through Segment Pimán - Caranqui. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 3,500 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 72 km this is Avenue of the Volcanoes, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The old town of Quito was one of the first places to be listed by UNESCO, in 1978, alongside Kraków, and it is easy to see why. The historic centre is the largest and best preserved in Latin America, a tight grid of steep streets, colonial squares and church domes laid across the slopes below the Panecillo hill. The Spanish founded the city in 1534 on top of an Inca settlement, and over the next two centuries it became a centre of religious art, the so-called Quito School, in which indigenous and European traditions mixed in painting and sculpture.
Read the complete City of Quito write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
City of 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 72 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.
about 151 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 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.
back through Segment Pimán - Caranqui sits at 191 km, about halfway. 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 comes up about 335 km into the recorded legs. Next is City of Quito.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete City of Quito write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
City of Quito closes the day.
City of Quito → Segment Campana Pucará - Quitoloma is 72 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 → back through Segment Pimán - Caranqui is 56 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 → City of Quito is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.