January 10
Like a bird dog seeking a covey of quail, I can find the worst roads.Today was a very tough ride for me. We started out on some of the nicest roads we've had so far, but they soon changed to bad, then worse. We rode on gravel roads again today which wasn't too bad until it started raining. It rained for a couple of hours. I would have liked to turn around, but who's to say the next road wouldn't be just as bad. The roads aren't marked with numbers or anything, you are just guessing most of the time. I didn't take too many pictures, because my camera was starting to get wet. I hope it works tomorrow.

Once we came down from the mountains, we passed numerous banana farms. It reminded me of the cotton plantations of Mississippi. The traffic count picked up tremendously in this area with trucks being a major part of that. You could see signs of Dole and Del Monte along the way. The green bananas hanging from the trees were wrapped in plastic?

Anyway, we ended up in Matchula, Ecuador for the night. The hotel is downtown with some garage parking about three blocks down the street at the owners house.The shower only has one faucet, they don't even pretend to have hot water. It's working out just fine. In the morning we'll head out to cross into Peru.