It’s August! That means it’s Ecuador month! Our motorbike tour of Ecuador is in just 27 days – whoooo hooooo!!
Riding Ecuador ~ with Freedom Bike Rental
In 27 days this will be us, tootling round the various regions of Ecuador. Iain will be trying to focus on keeping us on the road while I bounce around on the back getting all excited, taking photos. I’ll be demanding he stops, instructing u-turns and generally pissing him off as I try to capture everything so I can share it all with you!
Check in daily to see what fun & games we get up to each day (& to check he hasn’t pushed me over a cliff!)
Background; ~ why?
We have loved doing our motorbike tours every year but have always stuck with the less strenuous (and arguably safer) regions of North America. As we were sitting around planning what to do this year and where to go, we both kept coming back to the more ‘out there’ places. Places that we’d really like to go to but would require more planning, riding ability/agility and strength. But, lets face it guys, we’re not getting any younger! Iain is 3 years past 50 and I have 50 slapping me straight in the face next year! We figured that if we were going to do something more challenging then we need to get on it quick before age kicks us up the ass and we’re trading the Beemer in for a Trike! It was a toss up between Ecuador & Iceland….Ecuador won.
~ our riding buddies Claire & Mike chose Iceland, you can read about their trip here.
Planning; ~ how?
With that decision made, we then had to work out how to make it happen.
Iain did a little research and came up with this great touring/rental company, based in Ecuador – Ecuador Freedom Bike Rentals. A quick search of their website gave us various different options on how to go about this. We could choose to take either a guided tour, a self guided tour or just rent a bike and find our own way round. Being the antisocial oiks that we are, we knew that guided wasn’t for us. Too many folks having to agree on stuff plus, they would all be lynching me if I kept wanted to stop or turn around to grab another photo! After perusing the self guided tours for a while we ultimately decided that, while each was pretty cool in it’s own way, none covered completely all the regions that we wanted to see. I’ve always been pretty difficult to please, my mother will agree with that! So, with the decision made to just do a bike rental, my next task was to set about planning the route ~ more on that another day.
Now, the next issue was that of which bike to rent. My loving husband and ride commander, Iain, is somewhat, shall we say, vertically challenged. OK, he’s a short ass. Has a bit of an issue touching toe to ground on some bikes. Not a particularly safe issue when riding off into the wild blue yonder (or ever, really!).The very helpful guys at Freedom Bike Rental, Court & Florian, conversed back and forth with Iain and he finally decided on the BMW F800GS – this, we were assured, would accommodate Shorty’s stature and ensure he’d be able to touch ground when necessary. Just to be sure, we ventured down to our local BMW motorbike dealership where we spent a happy 15 minutes jumping on and off their show room models, just making sure that we could do so without toppling off – which has occurred more than once in the past! Success, after trying all the various combos of mounting/dismounting, it appears that the F800 is a perfect height and has enough power to give the performance we need to enjoy the exciting roads and routes I have planned.
I plan to update the blog with details of the days ride, including photos, as often as I can. To be sure not to miss out on any of the fun, sign up here, (scroll to bottom) you will receive an email when a new update is posted. You can also follow our journey by ‘liking’ us on Facebook at Bikes, Hikes and Waterfalls 🙂
Part 2; Choosing the date, available now 😉
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