My first view of the Pacific

So today I had my first view of the Pacific Ocean. It was pitch black and I just got to see the tops of the waves breaking on our beach so it wasn’t much of a view, but I can also hear them crashing ashore as I write this.

The journey was long and arduous; it makes you realise how easy and quick it is to drive around the UK. It was a journey of 437km (around 310 miles) and you’d budget around six hours to do that in England. We set off just after noon and got there around 10.30pm.

I was driving Nidia’s Chevrolet with Nidia and Julia, plus a boot full of cases, and following Tom in the Montero. At 2700m, you really notice a power drop on a small petrol engine, so I was down to third gear on some of the hills, while Tom went sailing up with his 3-litre V6 monster.

After an early cock-up when we lost them completely, he was a little more alert in waiting for me and also on giving signals. We started by heading up the Pan American, turning off at Latacunga to cross the high Andes. There were spectacular views as we headed up the mountains – Cotopaxi was clear of cloud and you could see the broad mass of the Illinizas, which we’d seen the tops of above the Ambato ridge a couple of days earlier. They were still snow covered.

The roads were not too bad, fairly quiet and we managed to get past the few slow-moving trucks fairly easily. Road surfaces were pretty good and you can depend upon a bend here being a nice constant radius (not tricky tightening half-way round). I’m also getting used to the chapa echados, so there’s less panic braking.

Julia did decide she needed a wee on the long climb and after ages looking for a garage (all garages have toilets, but no toilet paper, so all cars carry toilet paper) we had to do a pee-pee en campo. Julia wasn’t too keen on the idea, but bladder beat brain and so she agreed. Of course, we passed a garage about 10 minutes later.

On the high paramo, you’re well above the clouds, but as we started the descent the cloud became thicker and we were driving in fog for a while. The descent of steep and relentless, with straight sections to build speed and hairpins requiring hard braking. I’d got the Chevrolet in third gear, using the engine to spare the brakes as much as possible, but I was conscious that I was giving it a hard time. About half-way down Tom pulled over because poor Lucy was feeling sick. There were clouds of smoke coming from his car. It was his brakes smoking and we also discovered his coolant water level was well down. I suggested a low gear rather than over-working the brakes and we took things a little easier after that.

Our first planned stop was at La Mana for ice-creams in a hotel recommended by Carlos. They were quite good, but by now it was close to getting dark and we still had miles to go.

Darkness does come quickly here and the roads were not as I expected. I thought there would be a steep drop from the Andes (tick) and then a long, straight, fen-type road to the coast. It was not so.

The country is still remarkably hilly, there were several large towns to go through and, in darkness, the chapas got harder and harder to see. Also, the communities start installing their own and their height and width depends on how much tarmac or concrete was available. Often, communities slow cars down in order to sell them things (generally fruit or drinks) and these are the worst. Even crawling over some of them, the Chevrolet scraped something metal against the road surface.

Then Julia announced that she needed a poo. We started the search for a garage, unsuccessfully, and it became urgent. I pulled off the road onto a gravel verge, scraping the underside of the car again, but Julia wouldn’t do a poo en campo, so we set off again. Eventually we found a roadside bar and they kindly let her use the toilet (I scraped the underside of the car again leaving the road).

Porto Viejo was a nightmare. Google took us a very strange way and we passed buildings still wrecked by the 2016 earthquake (this was a 7.8 magnitude and killed 700 people). Roads were also clearly affected. In one section half the carriageway had disappeared, but there were no warning signs or any repairs.

We eventually pulled into the complex and collected the keys for the house. The development looks quite grand from the outside, but even in the dark, it was clear that it was still a work in progress. The place is called Mirador San Jose and it’s a development mainly sold to Canadian ex-pats promising them retirement in a tropical paradise. Paradise or not, it was good to see an end to the journey and the villa was large (three beds) with high ceilings and all white inside (dazzlingly white). What will it look like in daylight?