Trevor still feels absolutely horrible, but we're gonna make it happen.
We got up, packed our bags, went to grab the motorcycles from the sketchy parking lot (yay, they were still there!), and we were off. It wasn't a super fast start, but we were in the road by 10am or so. We filled up on gas and took the 5 minute drive to the border of Ecuador!
Upon arrival, we were first signalled to hand in our motorbike paperwork at the Aduna. No signing anything, literally just hand the papers to the nice lady. Good....easy first step. I like easy. Next, we went around the brick building to immigration where we got stamped out of the Colombia. Again, this was super simple. Step 2 of 4 complete in less than 10 minutes. I can handle that!
We drove across to the Ecuador side of the bridge where we stopped and stood in line for a bit and got stamped in....it was well laid out and easy, so no problems there. Getting the bikes in on the other hand was not so straight forward. We were told to stand in one line, then 15 mins later got taken around by a security guard to a bunch of places where he eventually found the office where we could get our Ecuadorian temporary motorcycle permit. In there, they were nice, chill people, but it took a decent amount of time to enter all the information into the computer and take pictures and verify the VIN and stuff like that. We got it done and all in all it was still one of our better borders. Only took about an hour total.
On the road, we noticed the $1.48 USD per gallon gas. I like this. The roads were also in perfect condition. No complaints there. We set our goal for Quito and gosh darnit we made it! Trev was a champ and pushed thru even tho he felt like garbage. The road stayed super nice the whole way, and our only issue was Dave's directions which led us all the way around the city before coming into the neighborhood where the hostels were. Normally, we'd just stay in some other spot, but Dave's friend Angie is currently living in Ecuador and she gave us the recommendation. Always take the recommendations from locals when you can!
We were originally going to stay at one called El Arupo, but the one next door was half the price and still had motorbike parking so we opted for the cheaper option. We were pretty much the only people there (except one old Canadian guy who might live there?). We got all settled in and got ready to experience Quito.
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