Being Well in Ecuador: Escape the Winter on a Motorcycle

Peter Sage once compared the news media to walking into the jungle at night, shining a flashlight on one small patch of ground, and shouting, “Look, a snake is eating a mouse!” while ignoring everything else happening in the forest.

It’s a good reminder that whatever is getting the most attention isn’t always the whole story.

So every once in a while, it’s worth pointing the flashlight somewhere else.

Living, working, and riding motorcycles in Ecuador has taught us that there is a lot of good happening outside the headlines: people building lives, families working the land, small businesses growing, communities welcoming travelers, and riders discovering roads they never knew existed.

That’s part of what keeps us here.

Ecuador offers something increasingly hard to find in everyday life: space to unplug, move around, get outside, and pay attention to what’s directly in front of you.

And motorcycles are a pretty good way to do that.

Sunlight, Open Air, and a Lot of Road

Ecuador straddles the equator, but the country’s enormous changes in elevation create completely different climates within a relatively small area. Our Ecuador weather guide explains what riders can expect in each region.

Quito is often called the City of Eternal Spring because of its mild temperatures. Ride higher into the Andes and things get colder fast. Drop toward the Pacific coast or Amazon and the air turns warmer, heavier, and more tropical.

That variety is part of what makes Ecuador such a great motorcycle country.

You can wake up high in the Andes, ride through volcanic landscapes, descend into the cloudforest, and finish the day surrounded by tropical vegetation.

The next morning can feel like a completely different trip.

And getting off the motorcycle is half the fun. You can go zip-lining, take a boat into the jungle, hike to waterfalls, explore Ecuador’s colonial cities, soak in natural hot springs, or cool off in one of our favorite swimming holes and waterfalls.

Eat What Grows Here

Ecuador is famous for chocolate, shrimp, bananas, and coffee, but there’s much more to Ecuadorian food than the products that leave the country in shipping containers.

Agriculture is still a big part of daily life here, and when you travel through Ecuador, you’re often surprisingly close to where your food comes from.

On the coast, that might mean fresh ceviche or seafood caught nearby. In the Andes, soups, grilled meats, potatoes, corn, and other highland staples fill local menus. Drop into the Amazon and suddenly the table is full of tropical fruit, yucca, plantain, fish, and fresh juices.

Stopping somewhere small and local for lunch is part of the ride. You’re not just crossing a region. You’re tasting it.

Get Out of Buildings and Into the Landscape

One of the advantages of exploring Ecuador by motorcycle is how quickly you can get away from the crowded places.

Leave the cities behind and you can find yourself riding through enormous Andean landscapes, small agricultural communities, cloudforest roads, high mountain passes, or remote tracks heading toward the Amazon.

Motorcycle travel gets you out of buildings, out of routines, and into the landscape.

You spend the day dealing with things that are immediate and real: the road surface, the weather, the next corner, the mountain ahead, the person riding beside you, and whatever you find when you stop.

There’s something useful about that.

A Different Kind of Reset

Spend enough time staring at screens, answering messages, reading headlines, and dealing with everyday routines and your attention gets pulled in a hundred directions at once.

A motorcycle narrows things down.

Where does this road go?

What’s around that corner?

Where are we stopping for lunch?

How cold is it going to get at the top of that pass?

Do we have enough fuel to take that dirt road?

For a while, everything else gets quieter.

Your attention goes back to the road, the landscape, the people you’re traveling with, and whatever is directly in front of you.

That’s one of the reasons we still love motorcycle travel after all these years.

Good Things Are Still Happening

Travel also has a way of reminding you that the world is much bigger than whatever happens to be dominating the news that week.

You meet farmers, hotel owners, mechanics, restaurant staff, artisans, guides, families, and people going about their lives in places you had never heard of before you started planning the trip.

You discover that strangers are often helpful, that a wrong turn can become the best part of the day, and that some of the most memorable places don’t have much of an online presence at all.

That doesn’t mean ignoring what’s wrong in the world.

It means remembering to look at the rest of the forest too.

If you’re ready to do a little more of that, take a look at our guided motorcycle tours and self-guided adventures through Ecuador.

Sometimes you just need to move the flashlight.