I continue my adventure through Ecuador and I am in El Páramo! Here you will meet Michael Dammer, the Tembr route designer, and he will explain how the Andes in Ecuador work. “The fact that it's a small country with the Andes in the middle makes for a crazy height difference that makes it a unique place. You can see three different ecosystems on a bike if you are only on the bike for one day, which is of course impressive. The more we work on it, the more people will continue to drive this route.”

Currently I am driving at the back of the Cotopaxi volcano. Cotopaxi is a stratovolcano in Cotopaxi National Park, and one of the highest active volcanoes in the world. Here I can make fantastic shots! At least that's what I thought… it's pouring down from the sky, it's hail and it's cold. But if the weather clears up, that will make a lot of good. The road is going well, the weather is nice, the trail is passable and I haven't had to stand in the mud yet. You can ride most of it, but I don't experience pushing the bike as something annoying as I walk in great terrain.

Later that day I set up my tent and a thunderstorm is brewing. There is no shelter at all at the back of the Cotopaxi and I just hope the lightning doesn't strike here. In the end it all worked out and I can just continue the next day. On the way I notice that there are more people here than in previous places, so small bridges have been built to easily cross lakes, which also makes my route a lot easier.

The next day I notice that I am tired. I make mistakes that cause me to fall and the trail doesn't cooperate at all. Luckily I got out unscathed. Being alone on the road is not only physically demanding, but mentally it is even tougher at times. This way you meet yourself in a different way.

A few days later I'm only busy with one thing; push to the top. Since it has been raining all the time (and still is), it's not making any progress at all. To give you an idea of ​​how steep this is, imagine this. I rise to the level of a 30-storey building with every kilometer I travel. This route is absolutely crazy, but I made it. Now I am on bikeable terrain and I am curious about this route!

One night I was chased by a bull. After driving through several farms for days, I came to a patch of field and I wanted to open the gate to it. Then two cowboys came up to me and said there was a bull there. One of the cowboys walked to the other side of the field and began to challenge the bull, to which it responded and ran there. Then we opened the gate, but the bull saw this and ran towards us with great speed. I jumped up and one of the cowboys opened the gate of another field and the bull ran there. If I had gone through that field alone, not knowing that there was a dangerous bull around, things could have turned out very differently.

It's been a while now that I've been in the 'civilized world' and so have not ridden any real bike paths, but I have now found a fantastic singletrack. Time for some fun!