About Us

Welcome to our blog, describing our voyage aboard the two BRAVO's; the first boat a Kelly Peterson 46 with homeport in Seattle, Washington. The second is a Boreal 52, launched in Treguier, France in February 2020.

We headed south from Seattle in 2010, and have been voyaging in one form or another since. Cheers, Adam and Cindi


"As for me, I am tormented by an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts." -Herman Melville, 1844



Friday, August 24, 2012

Bravo team back aboard

It's been a great 5 week trip throughout Ecuador.  We've thoroughly enjoyed the people of this unique country, seen some beautiful places, and had some great adventures.  But it sure felt terrific to get back aboard 'Bravo' last night after a 9 hour bus ride from Quito, find her safe and sound, and begin to get back into our normal life on the water.  We haven't updated the blog for a while, but we've been on the move.  Here are a few highlights of the past couple of weeks.......

Cuenca
What a sweet city this is.  No wonder that so many folks are retiring here (many surveys rate Cuenca as the top city to retire, in the world!).







 
With a great mix of old colonial architecture and newer, more modern neighborhoods, amazing springlike climate all year around, and close proximity to great adventures in the Andes, we get it!  Spent 4 or 5 days here, enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells of Cuenca.....
 

Who needs a Game Boy when mom sells grain???


 One fun thing about Ecuador is that it's where "Panama" hats are made.  They got the "Panama" name when they were worn by the guys working on the Panama Canal.  We couldn't resist visiting one of the better hat factories which was in Cuenca.  The hats are woven in houses of indigenous weavers around the area, and then finished in the factory.  Worn by rock and movie stars for years, the shop turns out some real beauties!!!











Guamote
Stopped for a night in this small indigenous community.  Got here as the weekly market was ending for the day, but still experienced a very traditional setting.  Only one hostal in town, this place is far off the "gringo trail".  The hostal, Inti Sisa, is run by a non-profit foundation dedicated to providing educational opportunities to the local indigenous children.  Run by a Belgian expat, the place was one of the nicest hostals we stayed at in Ecuador.....highly recommended!


Road from Riobamba to Macas
This new road through the Sangay National Park is a spectacular drive across the Andes.  Although controversial when it was built a few years ago, the dramatic road does travel over and around some amazing scenery.

All that we could find on it through Google searches was info about the deadly bus crash 2 years ago, killing the whole bus load, and info on the controversy surrounding its construction through the park.  Armed with that, we figured, "how can this be bad??"!!!  Turned out to be dramatic indeed, even though we hit it on a cloudy day.  Highly recommend this route to the jungle.


Tena
We stopped for a couple of days in Tena, a small city in the jungle, just about 4 hours outside of Quito.  Pretty touristy being so close to the big city, Tena serves as a gateway to Amazonia, and we enjoyed our jungle walks right around town.

Tena ferry service
There's a park at the juncture of two rivers, and it was chock-a-block with critters and beautiful jungle forest.  Saw our first tapir strolling on the trail, and a family of squirrel monkeys.




Awwwww...ya gotta admit, I'm kinda cute!!!

Cindi makes a new friend
Jungle flowers were everywhere

Quito

We spent nearly a week exploring Quito.  It's a really interesting city, an extremely dense mix of the old colonial town married to a bustling commercial hub, with large public parks and green spaces throughout the city. On Sundays they close several major roads throughout the city to cars, and open them only to bicycles and pedestrians!!!  Very cool.



Small part of Quito, seen from top of the TeleferiQo.
 Visited a historic observatory in downtown Quito.....at one time the largest observatory in Latin America, the viewing of the night sky must have been terrific before Quito got electric lights!!!  Now houses large refracting scope (open to the public on some clear nights), seismic, and metereologic instruments.  Very satisfying for Adam's "inner geek"!!!
Large clock displaying sidereal and solar time....I can't remember which is which!!!

And the time is.......???????

Belfry, seen from the clock tower....."It was a dark and stormy night"!!!!!
Enjoyed seeing the historic sites, including some amazing churches, nearly one on every corner in the colonial city.....the conquistadores really inspired the fear of god into the locals!!! We climbed to the top of the belfry in one, the large Basilica.





Inside the clock tower
Cindi climbing the belfry rampart
Walkway between the belfry and the clock towers




We visited with our friends Isabelle, Alfredo, and Isa at their beautiful home under the TeleferiQo, the gondola up a mountain overlooking the city.  (The TeleferiQo is a very worthwhile trip, by the way....Amazing views of the city below).   On our last night in Quito, Alfredo, who grew up in the old town, gave us a terrific tour of the area.  Nice!!!


We're now getting ready for a trip to the U.S., where we'll spend the month of September visiting family and friends, before returning to 'Bravo' at the end of the month, to begin our travels to Peru, Bolivia, and Patagonia.......

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Biking the slopes of Chimborazo....Mars rover has landed!!!

After our terrific visit with Alfredo and Isabelle, we hopped a bus back to BaƱos, and then on to the city of Riobamba, well known for it's railroad connection through the mountains toward the south....known as Nariz del Diablo....the Devils Nose!!!  Written up in all of the guidebooks as a sort of "must do" tourist thing, we bought our tickets for the steep fare of $25/person.  A "big ticket" for us, as we typically spend no more than $25 total per night for a hotel.  Nonetheless, we were looking forward to the great ride on the Ruta de los Volcans, as the train makes it's way past many of the big mountains of the Andes. 

We were told to show up at 7:30am for the 8am departure.  No worries.  But wait....there is one small one....there's no damn train in Riobamba!!!  In fact, there hasn´t been one for a couple of years, we find out.  We were supposed to catch the rascal in Alausi, a 2 hour bus ride away!!!  Not good, not good at all.  We went back to our hotel to check the internet about this predicament.  Turns out, yup, even though our digital, latest version of Lonely Planet said to catch the train at Riobamba, lots of other websites gave the REAL latest update.  And lots of disgruntled tourists as well, as the train route has now cut out the best portion of the trip while raising the price.  So we headed back to the station when it opened, and asked the ticket guy for a refund.  No way.  OK, how about we go tomorrow???  Ummmmmm....OK.....but only if we pay a $25 penalty.......R-I-P-P-P-P  (sound of tickets being torn up into little pieces!!!)  Bummer, but no point throwing good money after bad.

OK....what does this have to do with biking Chimborazo????  Absolutely nothing, just wanted to let folks know about it if they're traveling around Ecuador.  Now that it´s out of the way, let's get started with the good stuff!!!  And it is GOOD!!!   REALLY good

Chimborazo seen from city park in Riobamba
Chimborazo is the highest mountain in Ecuador, at 6300 meters, a shade over 20,700 feet above sea level.  Much like Mt Rainier in Seattle, it dominates the Riobamba views.  An interesting side note about it's elevation.  Due to the shape of the earth, (an oblate spheroid, for you scientific types....does this blog really have scientific types reading it???? (not counting Ward)) the surface of the earth is further from the center at the equator than elsewhere.  Called the ¨equatorial bulge¨.  This has the summit of Chimborazo further from the earths center than Mt. Everest!!!  An interesting claim to fame.

But I digress.  Although tempting, we decided not to attempt a climb on Chimborazo.  Instead, we heard about a terrific opportunity to do a mountain bike descent of the mountain;  no, not from the summit, but from the Carrel climbers refuge at 4800m / 15,744 feet.  Sounds intriguing, yes???

We headed over to Probici bike tours to check it out.  Met with guide and owner Galo, a great guy and an absolute wealth of information on the history, people, and cultures of Ecuador, and  especially the indigenous people of the Riobamba and Chimborazo region.  He knew the mountain like the back of his hand, and more we talked, the better we felt about biking with this gang.  After we booked for the next day, we were carefully fitted for our helmets, protective gear, and finally bikes.  And the bikes are excellent;  top US makes with hydraulic disc brakes, front suspension, and in great shape.  We picked and tried our bikes, Galo put our names on them, and we were set to go up the next day.


The morning dawned clear and cold.  Perfect!!!  After ace guide Mario picked us up at our hostal at 8, we headed out for Chimborazo, along with German traveler Tim.  What a gorgeous mountain it is, too!!!  The views just kept getting better the closer we got, as we passed through indigenous villages on its flanks.  Terrific!!

We stopped frequently on the drive up to take photos and just soak in the views.  There's one area which is one of the region's top rock climbing areas.  Mario showed us where to crawl out to an overlook of a vertical 500m face.  Quite a rush, unroped!!!

Looking down.....straight down!!
Rock strata show volcanic history and plate interaction



Our route would take us from approximately snowline, and head down about 50km to the town of San Juan.  Although it included a lot of dirt and gravel roads, it also included a fair bit of terrific single track riding.  After arriving at the Carrel refuge, we were allowed to hike up to the Whymper refuge at 5000m (16,400 ft).  The hike was fun, though obviously slow at the altitude.  But neither of us felt badly.  Adam hadn't been to this elevation in many years, and Cindi reached her highest point of her mountain career!!!

The two refugios....Carrel at bottom center, Whymper above


Memorial to the many climbers who have died on Chimborazo

Fire starting in the Whymper Refugio
Eventually it was time to head back down to Carrel refuge and begin our bike descent.  Mario and the other two guides Carlos and Samuel (our group had become 9, including 2 Spaniards and 4 other Americans) had unloaded our bikes, and off we went!!!

The route begins in what is known as the Altiplano, a region which can only be described as a mars replica.  Except for the occasional herd of vicuƱa, the barren landscape could have been right out of the pics from the mars rover.  High, dry, and volcanic, the area supports little vegetation, and we got a kick out of descending across the unique environment.  But the area is a biological reserve created to reestablish the herds of vicuƱa in Ecuador, which had been nearly wiped out over the years. 

In 1988 Peru and Chile each gifted 100 vicuƱa to the newly established Chimborazo reserve (58,000 hectares, 143,000 acres).  Now they number over 4000.  What they are eating up there is difficult to imagine, but this is the terrain that they are made for.  We came upon several small groups as we descended the mountain.


The first leg of the route was on the gravel road down from Carrel to the park entrance at 4000m.  This section was truly mars-like, and with the incredible views it was hard to focus on the road, often like riding a washboard.

I had fun with our GoPro camera, mounting it on the handlebars, and shooting one shot every 10 secs on the descent.  A lot to edit and delete, but some interesting results.














 At last we finished up the gravel road, and headed off road for some terrific single track riding.  Though not too hairball, it nonetheless had enough challenges to require our attention, and in places a mistake would have been a bad thing.















Sadly the single track eventually ended, and we were back on gravel roads.  But the roads passed through beautiful indigenous farming pueblos, and we enjoyed the interactions with the locals we passed.









Although the day was mostly flat or downhill, there was a stretch of about 3km of uphill.  At this elevation, even 3 km became quite a workout!!!  But one of the great things about the trip was that our route often intersected and crossed the main road, and our guides would be waiting there with the trucks.  So we didn´t need to carry a thing, as water and food and warm clothes were never more than 1/2 hour or so away.  Sweet way to travel!!!

One of Galo's goals on his trips is to provide more than just a terrific bike ride, but also to show some unique places in the region and explain some of the local history and customs.  To this end all of the guides did a great job.  We stopped at one spot which used to be an Inca village.  Some of the raised foundation mounds were still visible, as well as a couple of large stones which were thought to be used for animal sacrifices.



Carlos explaining the altar rock
 There was even a mineral spring where the ancient village could get slightly carbonated mineral water right from the ground.  We filled water bottles with the perfectly pure cold sparkling water.  Tasty business!


Finally Cindi and I were still looking for more off road grins, so Mario offered to take us up to the "silver mine".  The mine is a deep hole in the ground where legend has it that early peoples dug in order to find silver.  They were guided by fire coming out of the ground, perhaps from ammonia or methane deposits ignited when fields were burned to clear brush.  Whatever the truth about the history of the "mine", it clearly was a spiritual site of great importance.  The area is still used as a temple site for an annual indigenous worship service.  We felt honored to be able to feel the magic of the place in the dwindling twilight sun before riding the final 8 miles or so to the pickup site in San Juan.  We were back in Riobamba by 7:30.  Beat but happy!!!

Probici http://www.probici.com/index.php is a really high quality mountain bike company, run by Galo, an extremely bright, detail oriented guy. His staff shares his philosophies of guiding, and his respect and reverence for this mountain.   Our day with his guides went like clockwork (save a bit of a forehead gash suffered by one of the riders who took a small spill).  We cannot recommend Probici highly enough, and anyone traveling in Ecuador, and looking for adventure, really needs to check them out.


We're now enjoying the beautiful city of Cuenca, which we'll explore for the next few days.