Inca Royal Roads Self-Guided Motorcycle Tour

The Inca Royal Roads Self-Guided Motorcycle Tour is built for riders who want great roads, comfortable pacing, and a deeper look at Ecuador than you get from simply riding from one destination to the next.

Over the course of ten days, you travel through the Andes and Amazon Basin on carefully selected roads that twist through high mountain passes, farming valleys, cloudforest, rainforest, and small towns where life still moves at its own rhythm. The riding is engaging without being exhausting, leaving plenty of time to get off the motorcycle, look around, meet people, and understand where you are.

The route is approximately 98% paved, with a few short sections of easy hard-packed dirt and some rough stretches of ancient hand-laid cobblestone. None of the unpaved riding is highly technical, although the cobblestones require concentration and a sensible pace. If you have serious concerns about riding away from pavement, let us know before departure and we can discuss available alternatives during your pre-ride briefing.

The real character of this tour comes from what happens between the riding. Your programmed Garmin GPS brings you to Indigenous markets, textile weavers, musical instrument makers, leather workers, rose growers, farmers, and other artisans whose skills have been passed down through generations. You'll meet Kichwa families, taste regional foods, visit working shops and farms, and spend time with people Ecuador Freedom has known for years.

Your daily route sheets give you the background behind those places — the history, culture, practical information, restaurant recommendations, and details that turn a GPS location into something worth understanding. You are riding independently, but the route has been built from years of local knowledge rather than assembled from a list of tourist attractions.

The landscapes change constantly. One day you're riding beneath the volcanoes of the high Andes; another you're descending through cloudforest toward the warm Amazon Basin. You'll stand on the Equator, explore Otavalo, soak in the thermal waters beneath Chimborazo, ride through the Amazon, cross Sangay National Park, look across the blue-green waters of Quilotoa, and follow beautifully paved roads through some of Ecuador's most interesting agricultural country.

The riding days are designed around flow and discovery. We seek out scenic, lightly traveled roads with plenty of curves, but this tour is about much more than accumulating miles. Coffee stops, regional food, viewpoints, markets, workshops, farms, archaeological sites, and conversations with the people you meet along the way are all part of the experience.

Because this is self-guided, there is no guide setting the pace in front of you and no group schedule deciding when you need to leave. Your programmed Garmin GPS handles the navigation to the planned locations, your detailed route sheets provide the background and practical information, and you carry a local cell phone with Ecuador Freedom providing back-office monitoring and 24-hour support throughout the journey.

The itinerary shown on this page represents the planned Inca Royal Roads route. Weather, road construction, landslides, local events, or other changing conditions can occasionally require adjustments. When we know about a change before departure, we update your GPS and briefing accordingly. If something changes while you're already traveling, our support team can help you work through the best alternative.

At night, you'll stay in comfortable hotels, haciendas, and lodges selected for their character, location, food, and hospitality. After a day in the mountains, that might mean a fireplace and a good dinner; after descending into warmer country, it might mean a pool, tropical gardens, and a cold drink.

The Inca Royal Roads is for riders who want to experience South America from the seat of a motorcycle without rushing through it. The roads are excellent, but the people, food, landscapes, workshops, farms, and cultural encounters are what stay with you long after the ride is over.

Day 1

Quito – Inti'ñan – San José de Minas – Cotacachi – Laguna de Mojanda – Otavalo

Your journey begins in Quito, nearly two miles above sea level and surrounded by the volcanoes of the northern Andes. We recommend arriving a day or two before the tour so you can adjust to the elevation and explore the historic center, whose churches, plazas, monasteries, and colonial buildings helped make Quito one of the first cities declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Before departure, you'll meet with an experienced Ecuador Freedom guide at our La Carolina headquarters for a comprehensive briefing covering your motorcycle, Ecuadorian traffic customs, road conditions, riding techniques for the surfaces ahead, weather, altitude, and the practical details of the route. Your programmed Garmin GPS is loaded with the complete day's route and exact locations for the stops along the way, while your daily route sheet gives you the background and information that helps bring those places to life.

Your first stop is the Inti'ñan Museum at the Equator. Inti ñan means "Path of the Sun" in Kichwa, an appropriate beginning for a tour that will take you through landscapes and cultures shaped by thousands of years of Andean history.

The museum introduces you to Indigenous traditions from different parts of Ecuador and to the unusual geography of a country divided by the Equator. There are plenty of entertaining Equator demonstrations to try for yourself, but the more interesting story is how Indigenous people understood the movement of the sun and seasons long before modern surveying equipment arrived in the Andes.

From the Equator, your programmed route turns north and descends into the dry Guayllabamba River canyon. Within a surprisingly short distance, the cool air of Quito gives way to cactus, dusty hillsides, and warm valleys. Then the landscape changes again as you begin climbing through farms, orchards, and small agricultural communities.

This is where the riding begins to show what the Inca Royal Roads tour is about. The route avoids busy highways whenever possible and uses smaller roads that wind through the countryside. They're quieter, considerably more interesting, and they take you through the places where people actually live and work.

You pass through San José de Minas, a handsome old agricultural town centered around its church and plaza. Beyond town, the pavement gives way briefly to an easy, hard-packed dirt road. There is also a small river crossing along this section.

This is not technical off-road riding, but it is your first introduction to riding the motorcycle on something other than pavement. Take it at a comfortable pace, keep your inputs smooth, and use good judgment. If you are uncertain about the surface or the river crossing, there is no prize for forcing the issue. Ecuador Freedom's support team is available if you need help or advice.

If you have serious concerns about riding unpaved sections, let us know before departure. We can discuss the available alternatives during your briefing. We encourage riders who are comfortable with the conditions to take this route because the payoff is well worth the small amount of unpaved riding.

Before climbing toward Mojanda, your GPS brings you into Cotacachi, a town famous throughout Ecuador for its leatherwork. Leather shops line the streets, but the more interesting stop is behind the finished products, where you can see how the leather is actually made.

You'll visit our friend Luis, a traditional leatherworker who tans cow, goat, and sheep hides using methods handed down through generations. His place is a working tannery rather than a polished tourist demonstration. There are salted animal hides, big vats, hand tools, leather hanging in different stages of preparation, and all the sights and smells that come with turning an animal hide into something that can last for decades.

Luis can walk you through how the hides are cleaned, treated, softened, dyed, and prepared. He also produces traditional leather goods, including the furry chaps worn by local cowboys and during festivals in the Otavalo region.

Walking through his tannery is a little like stepping into a workshop from centuries ago. Then, when you see the finished jackets, belts, bags, wallets, and other leather goods being sold around Cotacachi, you understand how much work happened before any of those products reached a store.

This is an important part of the Inca Royal Roads experience. You're going beyond the shops and meeting one of the people who actually practices the craft.

Leaving Cotacachi, you begin climbing again. Eventually the route reaches a stretch of ancient hand-laid cobblestone road leading high into the Andes. The stones are rough and uneven in places, so this is a section where patience, concentration, and smooth motorcycle control matter more than speed.

At 12,232 feet, you reach a beautiful mountain pass with sweeping views across the northern Andes. Imbabura Volcano rises across one side of the valley while Cotacachi Volcano dominates the other. On a clear day, this is one of the finest views in northern Ecuador.

This is why we encourage riders to take the old road. The Pan-American Highway would get you to Otavalo faster, but it would bypass the ancient cobblestones, the high páramo, and the view from this pass. A little patience over the rough surface buys you a much more memorable ride.

From the pass, your GPS continues toward Laguna de Mojanda, a high volcanic lake beneath the peak of Fuya Fuya. The landscape up here is open, cool, and quiet, with páramo grasslands covering the mountains and wild horses often grazing nearby.

The cobblestones require your attention, but the riding rewards you with a landscape that feels a long way from Quito despite being only the first day of the trip.

By this point you've already crossed the Equator, ridden through a dry canyon and agricultural valleys, sampled some easy dirt, crossed a small river, visited a traditional leather tannery, climbed ancient cobblestones, and stood at 12,232 feet between two great Ecuadorian volcanoes.

From Mojanda you descend toward Otavalo, home to one of the most distinctive Indigenous cultures in Ecuador. The Otavaleños are famous throughout South America for their textiles, music, commerce, and their success carrying those traditions far beyond Ecuador.

There is no need to try to squeeze Otavalo into a quick afternoon visit. Tomorrow morning is dedicated to spending time with local families, artisans, weavers, and instrument makers and getting a much closer look at the traditions that have made this region famous.

Your first night is at the historic Hacienda Pinsaquí. The hacienda dates back centuries, with thick adobe walls, courtyards, gardens, fireplaces, and the atmosphere of an old Andean estate.

Pinsaquí also has an extraordinary place in Ecuadorian history. In 1863, representatives of Ecuador and Colombia met here to sign the Treaty of Pinsaquí, ending a war between the two countries.

Tonight you'll settle in, listen to a private concert of traditional Andean music, and enjoy dinner at the hacienda. It has been a full first day, and you've already begun doing what this tour is designed around: riding great roads, meeting interesting people, and getting much closer to Ecuador than you ever could by staying on the main highway.

Day 2

Otavalo – Cayambe – Papallacta – Baeza – Puerto Misahuallí

After breakfast at Hacienda Pinsaquí, you begin a day that will take you from the cool northern Andes all the way down into the heat and humidity of the Amazon Basin. The changes in elevation, vegetation, food, and culture happen quickly in Ecuador, and today gives you one of the best examples of how much can change in a few hours of riding.

Before leaving the Otavalo area, your programmed route brings you into the markets and traditions that have made this region famous. Depending on the day and what is happening locally, animals may be arriving from surrounding farms, produce is being unloaded, and vendors are setting up their stalls as Otavaleño families conduct the same kind of commerce that has taken place here for generations.

You will also have time around the Plaza de los Ponchos, where Otavaleño merchants sell textiles, clothing, jewelry, carvings, and handicrafts. This region has a remarkable tradition of entrepreneurship, and Otavaleño merchants have carried their textiles and music throughout Ecuador and around the world.

Then you step away from the market stalls to see how some of those textiles are actually made. Your GPS brings you to our friends, the Andrango family, at their traditional weaving workshop, where generations of the family have preserved the old methods of spinning, dyeing, and weaving wool.

The process begins with raw wool rather than a spool bought from a store. The wool is spun by hand, then colored with natural dyes made from local plants and other traditional materials. One of the most surprising is cochineal, a tiny insect that can produce brilliant reds, pinks, oranges, and purples depending on how the dye is prepared.

The family demonstrates the entire process, from spinning the fiber and preparing the colors to working the loom. Their textiles are among the finest you'll see in Otavalo, and watching the amount of time and skill required to make them gives you a very different appreciation for what appears in the markets a few streets away.

Nearby, your GPS takes you to another local family whose specialty is traditional Andean musical instruments. Their workshop is filled with bamboo, wood, strings, gourds, and instruments in various stages of construction.

They make pan flutes and other wind instruments by hand, along with guitars and traditional stringed instruments used in Andean music. Some older instruments even incorporated materials such as armadillo shells. The family shows you how the instruments are constructed, explains how the different sounds are created, and then hands a few over so you can try making some music yourself.

Results vary considerably.

These visits are a good introduction to what the Inca Royal Roads tour is about. You're going beyond finished souvenirs and meeting the families who make them, seeing the skills behind the work, and hearing the stories that connect those traditions to the communities you're riding through.

Back on the motorcycle, you leave Otavalo and head into the beautiful agricultural valley beneath Volcán Cayambe on a country road known locally as the Ruta de los Bordados — the Route of the Embroiderers.

The road weaves through intensely green pastures, dairy farms, small villages, and cultivated fields with snow-covered Cayambe rising behind them. On a clear day, this countryside can look remarkably like Switzerland — rolling green farmland beneath a snowy mountain — just considerably less developed.

Along the route, your programmed GPS brings you to the embroidery shop of our friend Fanny Albán. Embroidery has an important place in Otavaleña culture, particularly in the beautifully decorated white blouses traditionally worn by Indigenous women throughout the region.

The elaborate flowers and patterns embroidered around the neckline, chest, and sleeves are among the most recognizable elements of Otavaleña dress. These garments are still worn in everyday life as well as at markets, festivals, weddings, and other important occasions. This craft remains part of how Otavaleña women express their culture and identity.

Fanny gives you a closer look at the embroidery and the work required to create these intricate patterns. The same skills are used to make beautiful household pieces, including embroidered tablecloths and sets of cloth napkins.

If you're looking for something useful to take home, this is one of our favorite stops. Fanny's napkins and tablecloths pack easily into the motorcycle luggage, and arrangements can also be made to send purchases back to our Quito headquarters for you to collect before flying home. You'll know exactly who made them and where they came from.

By the time you reach the town of Cayambe, you've earned another Ecuador Freedom tradition: second breakfast.

Cayambe is famous throughout Ecuador for bizcochos, crisp, buttery biscuits that have been made here for generations. Your GPS brings you to our favorite place in town, where they still use a traditional recipe and bake the bizcochos in wood-fired ovens.

Fresh from the oven, they're warm, flaky, slightly salty, and dangerously easy to keep eating. They're often served with fresh cheese, dulce de leche, coffee, or hot chocolate. This is one of those regional foods that tastes better in the place where it belongs.

So yes, you have breakfast twice. You may start noticing that this becomes a recurring theme as you eat your way across Ecuador.

After Cayambe, your route brings you to the Equator again, but this visit is very different from the Inti'ñan experience on Day 1. Here the emphasis is on the sky, the movement of the sun, and how Andean civilizations used careful observation of light and shadow to understand time, seasons, and the agricultural year.

You will learn about the Chakana, or Andean Cross, one of the most important geometric symbols of the pre-Columbian Andes. Its stepped form is associated with the four cardinal directions and with the way Andean cultures organized space, the heavens, and the cycles of life.

At the Equator, the sun's path creates a particularly useful natural reference. By watching the direction and length of shadows through the day and over the course of the year, Andean astronomers could track seasonal changes and organize agricultural and ceremonial calendars.

The Chakana helps make those relationships easier to understand: east and west, north and south, the path of the sun, and the repeating cycles that helped determine when to plant, harvest, travel, and hold important ceremonies.

Standing here turns the Equator into much more than a line on a map. It helps explain why this latitude had such importance to people who spent generations studying the sky.

From the Equator, you continue beneath the enormous Volcán Cayambe. Its glacier-covered slopes rise almost directly over latitude zero, making it the only place on Earth where the Equator crosses permanent snow.

From here, your programmed route turns east toward the mountains and begins the long climb toward Papallacta Pass, leaving the agricultural valleys behind as the road rises into the high páramo.

The climb toward Papallacta Pass takes you above the tree line. Trees disappear, grasses take over, and the temperature drops as you climb above 13,000 feet. At approximately 13,350 feet, you cross the Continental Divide.

This is an important geographic moment in the journey. Behind you, rivers eventually drain toward the Pacific. On the eastern side of the pass, the water begins an entirely different journey toward the Amazon River and eventually the Atlantic Ocean. You will be following it downhill.

As you descend through the Páramo de Papallacta, you'll pass high mountain lakes and, when the clouds cooperate, get views toward the enormous volcanic massif of Antisana. Waterfalls begin appearing along the mountainsides as the vegetation grows thicker and the road drops toward the eastern slopes of the Andes.

By the time you reach Baeza, you're surrounded by green mountains, rushing rivers, and cloudforest. Baeza sits in one of Ecuador's great whitewater regions, with powerful rivers descending from the Andes all around it.

Your GPS brings you to the café of our friend Gina, a longtime friend of Ecuador Freedom and a former governor of the province. Gina seems to know everyone, and her café has become one of our regular stops whenever we're passing through Baeza.

The menu features fresh local trout and other dishes made with ingredients sourced from the surrounding Amazon and cloudforest region. It's exactly the kind of meal we like on this tour: regional food, prepared by people we know, in a place tied directly to the landscape you're riding through.

Gina's café is also a gathering place for serious whitewater kayakers who come from around the world to run the rivers in this part of Ecuador. Motorcyclists and kayakers usually have plenty to talk about. Both wear helmets, both spend their vacations chasing interesting terrain, and both are accustomed to friends and relatives questioning their judgment.

And then there's Gina's Amazonian chocolate cake. Dense, rich, and full of local chocolate, it has become something of an Ecuador Freedom tradition. Lunch may be finished, but somehow there is usually still room for cake.

Continuing downhill, the temperature rises and the cloudforest becomes increasingly tropical. Along this transition, your GPS brings you to a small mushroom farm, where oyster and shiitake mushrooms are cultivated in the warm, damp conditions of the eastern Andean slopes.

You can see how the mushrooms are grown and learn about some of the other products produced in this region. The farm also sells Amazonian teas, medicinal herbs, and other local foods, making it a good place for a snack and another chance to meet people who have figured out how to make a living from the remarkable environment around them.

These are the kinds of places you could easily ride straight past without local knowledge. There is no giant tourist attraction here, just an interesting small business we've come to enjoy visiting over the years.

The road keeps descending, the air gets warmer and heavier, and eventually there is no mistaking where you're headed. The high Andes are behind you and the Amazon Basin is opening ahead.

You pass through Tena, one of Ecuador's centers for rafting and kayaking, before continuing toward the Río Napo and Puerto Misahuallí. By now the vegetation is thoroughly tropical, and long motorized canoes have replaced mountain roads as the primary transportation into many communities farther downriver.

Puerto Misahuallí is one of the gateways into Ecuador's Amazon river system. From here, the Río Napo flows east across Ecuador and Peru before joining the Amazon River. In theory, a boat leaving this part of Ecuador could continue through that river network all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

The town is also famous for the troop of monkeys that has made the central plaza and riverfront its territory. They're entertaining, clever, and very comfortable around humans, so keep an eye on snacks, sunglasses, and anything else that looks easy to steal.

Tonight you'll settle into El Jardín Misahuallí Lodge, one of our favorite places to stay in the Amazon Basin. The private cabins are surrounded by tropical vegetation overlooking the Napo River, and some have their own plunge pools or jacuzzis.

After beginning the morning with Otavaleño weavers and instrument makers, riding the Ruta de los Bordados, visiting Fanny, eating fresh bizcochos in Cayambe, learning about the Chakana at the Equator, climbing above 13,000 feet, crossing the Continental Divide, stopping at Gina's, visiting a mushroom farm, and descending all the way into the Amazon Basin, settling into a comfortable cabin beside the river is a pretty good way to finish the day.

Dinner introduces you to some of the flavors of the Amazon, and after dark the soundtrack changes completely. Frogs, insects, birds, and the river take over as the jungle settles in around you.

Day 3

Puerto Misahuallí – Puyo – Pailón del Diablo – Baños

You wake to the sounds of the Amazon — birds calling through the canopy, insects buzzing in the forest, and the Río Napo moving below you. After breakfast, the motorcycle stays parked for the morning while you meet our friend Marco, a local Kichwa guide who has been introducing Ecuador Freedom riders to the Amazon for many years.

Depending on conditions and what is most interesting that day, Marco may take you deeper into the jungle or introduce you to an Amazonian community that still maintains many traditional ways of life.

If you head into the forest, Marco shows you plants traditionally used for medicine, food, construction, fibers, dyes, and other purposes. He points out insects, birds, animal tracks, and details most visitors would probably walk straight past. Marco grew up in this environment, so what initially looks like an endless wall of green becomes a landscape full of names, uses, stories, and practical knowledge.

On other days, the excursion may include a traditional Amazonian community instead. Families demonstrate how people have hunted with blowguns and poison darts, panned for gold, made ceramics, prepared food, and used resources from the surrounding jungle in everyday life. You may also see some of the animals they have encountered or cared for from the forest, which can include snakes, sloths, spiders, monkeys, and other Amazon wildlife.

Either version gives you exactly what we're looking for on this tour: time with people who know this environment intimately and can explain how life in the Amazon actually works beyond what you can see from the road.

After the excursion, you return to the lodge, change back into your riding gear, load the motorcycle, and begin the day's ride.

Hunting with a blow gun and poison darts in the Amazon Basin

The road from Puerto Misahuallí toward Puyo is a great stretch of paved riding. You start in the warm Amazon lowlands on long, flowing sweepers that let the motorcycle settle into an easy rhythm.

As you move toward the eastern foothills of the Andes, the terrain begins folding around you. The long sweepers tighten into a few sections of switchbacks as the road climbs and drops through green hills, river valleys, farms, and jungle.

This is exactly the kind of riding the Inca Royal Roads tour is built around: good pavement, interesting curves, little reason to hurry, and scenery that changes constantly around you.

Eventually you arrive in Puyo, the capital of Pastaza Province and one of Ecuador's principal gateways into the central Amazon. Puyo is a busy tropical town where people from Indigenous communities, farmers, merchants, travelers, and people heading farther into the jungle all cross paths.

Your route takes you near one of Puyo's large green parks, a pleasant place to get off the motorcycle, walk around, and find some shade beneath tropical vegetation. There are restaurants and places to eat around the park, so it is a good place to stop for something local while watching everyday Amazonian city life around you.

Then your programmed route turns west. From here on, you're riding back toward the Andes.

The road begins climbing alongside the powerful Río Pastaza as the broad tropical landscape narrows into a deep gorge. Mountains rise sharply on both sides, waterfalls pour from the cliffs, and the road twists between tunnels, bridges, rock walls, and dense vegetation.

This is the famous Ruta de las Cascadas — the Route of the Waterfalls — and it is one of Ecuador's great paved motorcycle roads.

Your programmed GPS brings you to Pailón del Diablo, one of the most powerful waterfalls in Ecuador. A trail and series of sculpted stairways lead down into the gorge, getting you close enough to feel the spray and appreciate just how much water is forcing its way through the narrow volcanic canyon.

It's loud, wet, and impressive. After following the Pastaza on the motorcycle, this is your chance to get down into the gorge and experience the force of the river up close.

Then you come to one of our favorite stops along the Pastaza Gorge: the zipline.

You may look across that gorge and decide there is absolutely no chance you're doing it.

Then somebody clips into a harness and disappears across the canyon.

A few minutes later, that decision can start looking considerably less permanent.

We've watched plenty of riders arrive with no intention of ziplining and leave very pleased that they changed their minds.

The line crosses a roughly 200-foot-deep chasm above the Pastaza Gorge and runs about half a mile toward the enormous Agoyán waterfall. The memorable way is stretched out head-first with the river far below and the waterfall ahead.

Back on the motorcycle, you continue along the canyon toward Baños. Waterfalls spill directly beside and sometimes over the old road while the Río Pastaza crashes through the gorge below. The temperature gradually cools as you regain elevation.

At about 6,000 feet / 1,850 meters, you arrive in Baños de Agua Santa, one of Ecuador's favorite mountain resort towns. Baños sits in a narrow green valley beneath Volcán Tungurahua, surrounded by waterfalls, steep mountains, and thermal springs.

Tungurahua means "Throat of Fire" in Kichwa, an appropriate name for a volcano that rises to approximately 5,023 meters / 16,480 feet directly above town. For years, its periods of activity produced some extraordinary sights, including glowing lava and enormous ash plumes visible from the surrounding mountains. Today the volcano is much quieter, but its presence defines the landscape around Baños.

Tonight you stay at the Posada del Arte Hotel, one of our favorite small hotels in Ecuador. It's filled with Ecuadorian art, colorful rooms, plants, books, and interesting little corners, and the staff have known Ecuador Freedom riders for years. It feels personal and comfortable, and it's within easy walking distance of the center of Baños, restaurants, cafés, shops, and the town's famous thermal baths.

Once the motorcycle is parked, you can leave it there for the evening. Walk into town, soak in the hot mineral pools, find dinner somewhere nearby, and enjoy the contrast between where the day began and where it ends: this morning you were with Marco in the Amazon, and tonight you're in an art-filled hotel beneath a volcano.

Day 4

Baños – Riobamba – Chimborazo – Salinas de Guaranda

This morning in Baños is intentionally unhurried. You have time for a good breakfast and coffee before getting back on the motorcycle and following the road around the base of Volcán Tungurahua, whose massive slopes rise directly above the valley.

Tungurahua has gone through dramatic periods of activity over the years, and many of the photographs hanging around Baños show the volcano throwing enormous ash plumes or glowing at night. Today it is much quieter, but the mountain still dominates the landscape as you begin riding south.

Beyond Baños, your programmed route follows the Chambo River valley through agricultural country toward Riobamba. The riding is smooth and relaxed, with long curves passing orchards, fields, eucalyptus, small villages, and farms scattered beneath the mountains.

By around lunchtime, you reach Riobamba. This old Andean city sits in a broad agricultural valley surrounded by volcanoes and has long been an important trading center for the central highlands.

Riobamba is a good place to continue eating your way through Ecuador. Traditional highland dishes include llapingachos — grilled potato patties usually served with sausage, egg, avocado, and salad — along with soups, roasted meats, churrasco, and other regional specialties. Part of traveling here is discovering foods you may never have heard of before arriving in Ecuador.

After lunch, your GPS turns you toward Chimborazo and the climbing begins again. Farms gradually disappear, trees become scarce, and the landscape opens into the high páramo.

By the time you reach roughly 14,500 feet, the environment looks almost extraterrestrial. Vegetation is sparse, the air is thin and cold, and the enormous glaciated dome of Chimborazo rises above a landscape of volcanic ash and high-altitude grasslands.

This protected area is also home to vicuñas, graceful wild relatives of llamas and alpacas that have adapted extraordinarily well to life at these elevations. We frequently see them grazing near the road.

Chimborazo has one of the great geographical distinctions on Earth. Because our planet bulges outward around the Equator, Chimborazo's summit is farther from the center of the Earth than the summit of Mount Everest. That's why we're fond of calling it, technically, the closest place to Heaven on Earth.

From Chimborazo, your programmed route carries you through small highland communities before descending into Salinas de Guaranda at roughly 11,800 feet. It is one of the most interesting villages we visit anywhere in Ecuador.

The first thing you'll notice is that Salinas is built on a hill. The streets are steep, old, and cobbled, and walking around town is its own form of exercise. Spend enough time here and you begin to understand why everyone in Salinas seems to have enormous calf muscles.

The village is surrounded by some of the most beautiful dairy country in Ecuador. Brilliant green pastures cover the rolling mountainsides, the air is clean and cool, and the climate is mild and pleasant through the year. Small family farms dot the hills, and the cattle spend their days outside grazing on lush grass.

The scale is still wonderfully traditional. Many of the cows are tended individually by farming families and milked by hand. There are no huge industrial dairies dominating this landscape. You see healthy cattle grazing on bright green mountainsides and families working small farms much as they have for generations.

When Swiss volunteers arrived in Salinas in the early 1970s, they found an extraordinary supply of fresh high-altitude milk all around them. The cows were grazing on excellent pasture, the climate was ideal for dairy farming, and the milk was being produced on small family farms. The Swiss recognized that this was excellent milk for cheese and began teaching local families how to make the cheeses they knew from home.

Cheese became one of the foundations of the modern Salinas cooperative economy. Swiss volunteers and cheesemakers taught local families how to transform the excellent milk from the surrounding farms into high-quality Swiss cheeses, including Emmental, Gruyère, Tilsiter, and other traditional varieties.

What began as a practical way to create more value from the milk produced on surrounding family farms grew into something much bigger. The cheese operation generated income, employment, and confidence that the community could build businesses of its own. From there, Salinas began investing in other cooperative enterprises.

You'll see the cheese-making operation the following morning, but understanding where all that milk comes from makes the story much more interesting. The green pastures and hand-tended dairy farms surrounding the village are where the modern Salinas economy begins.

The town's history, however, goes back much farther than cheese. Natural salt springs emerge from the mountains here, giving Salinas its name. Salt was enormously valuable for preserving food long before refrigeration existed, so people were living and trading in this area centuries before the Inca and Spanish arrived.

Your GPS and daily route sheet will help you locate and explore the springs and the community that grew around them.

The success of the cheese cooperative gave Salinas the confidence and capital to invest in other community businesses. During your time in the village, you'll be able to visit several of those later enterprises, including the chocolate makers, where Ecuadorian cacao is turned into bars and sweets, along with the town's ham-curing and fruit-drying operations.

One of the most fascinating later investments was the community's wool mill. Instead of buying brand-new machinery, Salinas acquired used industrial textile equipment from old mills in New England and brought it high into the Ecuadorian Andes.

When you walk into the mill, the process begins about as far from a finished sweater as you can imagine. There are piles of raw wool recently sheared from sheep and alpacas — dirty, tangled, and still carrying bits of the pasture with it.

You can follow the wool through the different stages of production. It is first washed and cleaned, then dried and carded, which separates and aligns the fibers. The machinery then draws those fibers together and spins them into long strands of yarn. Several individual strands can then be twisted together in a process called plying, creating stronger multi-ply yarn ready to be knitted or woven.

The old machines are impressive in their own right. They were built for another era of textile manufacturing thousands of miles away, yet they've been carefully maintained here in Salinas and continue turning local sheep and alpaca wool into high-quality yarn.

If you have a knitter in the family, this is a dangerous place for your luggage allowance.

You can also visit the women's knitting cooperative, where local women turn that yarn into sweaters, scarves, hats, rugs, and other wool products. Much of the work is still done by hand, and a heavy handmade wool sweater starts looking very sensible once the sun disappears and the temperature begins dropping outside.

Another unusual cooperative business makes soccer balls by hand. Natural latex and traditional production methods are used to create balls that are formed and cured here in the village.

We often buy some of these balls to distribute to schools farther along our travels as part of our Ride for a Purpose program. A soccer ball doesn't take up much room in Ecuador, but at a small rural school it can get used by dozens of kids.

By evening, you'll understand why Salinas is much more interesting than its size suggests. The same small mountain community that began by figuring out how to make better use of the excellent milk produced on its surrounding farms went on to create cheese, chocolate, textiles, cured meats, dried fruit, sports equipment, and other businesses while keeping much of the employment and value inside the village.

It also gets cold at night. Once the sun disappears behind the mountains, temperatures drop quickly at this elevation. The steep cobblestone streets become quiet, smoke rises from chimneys, and a warm restaurant starts looking very inviting.

Dinner usually includes ingredients produced right here in town — local cheeses, cured meats, mushrooms, and other highland products. Bring a warm layer when you head out. After yesterday's Amazon heat, tonight will remind you just how many different Ecuadors you've already ridden through.

Day 5

Salinas de Guaranda – Ingapirca – Cuenca

You'll want an early start this morning, but before leaving Salinas de Guaranda there is one more important stop to make: the village cheese-making facility.

Yesterday you saw the brilliant green pastures surrounding Salinas and learned how Swiss volunteers helped the community turn its excellent milk into Swiss cheeses such as Emmental, Gruyère, Tilsiter, and Comté. This morning you get to see how that system works from the very beginning.

Early each morning, milk begins arriving from the 345 small dairy farms surrounding Salinas. Every one of those farms is a member of the cooperative and shares in the profits from the cheese-making operation. There isn't a fleet of industrial milk tankers pulling up to the door. The milk arrives however each family can get it here — on donkeys, llamas, horses, motorcycles, and pickup trucks.

Some of our favorite deliveries come from the children. They bring in milk from cows their families have milked that morning, deliver it to the cooperative, and then continue on to school. It's a normal part of the morning in Salinas and a wonderful glimpse into how closely the farms, families, and cooperative are connected.

Inside, you'll see the fresh milk begin its transformation into cheese. After seeing the farms, meeting the people, tasting the products, and learning the story of Salinas, watching that morning's milk arrive ties the whole thing together.

Then it's time to get on the motorcycle. You have a long and beautiful ride ahead.

Leaving Salinas, your programmed route carries you through high Andean farmland on twisting mountain roads before eventually reaching the historic Balbanera Church. Built in 1534 near Laguna de Colta, Balbanera is widely regarded as the first Catholic church established in what is now Ecuador.

Its simple stone façade is a reminder of just how quickly this part of the Andes changed after the Spanish arrived. You're traveling through territory with layers of history beneath you — Cañari, Inca, Spanish, and modern Ecuadorian — and you'll see those layers again later today at Ingapirca.

You continue south on a quieter stretch of the Panamericana, and this is a day when you get to enjoy some miles. The road opens into long sweepers with big views across the central Andes, and the motorcycle settles into that effortless rhythm that makes a good paved road so satisfying.

The landscape changes as you travel south. The huge volcanic peaks of the northern and central Andes begin giving way to softer mountain contours, broad agricultural valleys, and enormous views across sparsely populated countryside.

This is part of the legendary Pan-American Highway system that links the Americas from Alaska toward the southern end of South America. Out here, away from the cities and heavy traffic, it's easy to understand why generations of motorcycle travelers have dreamed about riding it.

The small town of El Tambo brings you directly into the history behind the name Inca Royal Roads. The word tambo comes from the Inca system of roadside way stations built along the Qhapaq Ñan, the enormous network of roads that connected the empire.

These stations provided food, lodging, supplies, and places for officials and chasquis — the famous Inca relay runners — to rest or exchange messages. Long before motorcycles or highways crossed these mountains, information and goods were already moving rapidly along an extraordinarily sophisticated Andean road network.

Here you enter the traditional homeland of the Cañari, one of the most important Indigenous cultures in southern Ecuador. The Cañari fiercely resisted Inca expansion before eventually becoming part of the empire, and when the Spanish arrived they allied themselves with the newcomers against their Inca rivals.

As you ride through the surrounding countryside, you'll see small farms and communities where Cañari identity remains strong. Traditional clothing is still part of daily life, and agriculture here often operates on a family scale with animals, hand labor, and methods that have changed far less than you might expect.

Curving backroads eventually bring you to Ingapirca, the largest and best-preserved Inca archaeological complex in Ecuador.

What's especially interesting here is that Ingapirca doesn't tell only an Inca story. The site had already been important to the Cañari before the Inca arrived. Rather than completely erasing what was there, the Inca incorporated parts of the earlier sacred site into their own complex. Walking through Ingapirca gives you a chance to see evidence of two powerful Andean cultures occupying the same place.

The centerpiece is the elliptical Temple of the Sun, built with carefully cut stone fitted together with remarkable precision. A local guide at the site can point out the differences between Cañari and Inca construction, explain how the complex was used, and show how its architecture relates to the movement of the sun.

After several days riding through the Andes, visiting farms, villages, markets, and workshops, Ingapirca adds another dimension to what you've been seeing. The mountains you're riding through were once connected by one of the world's great road systems, and you're following parts of that same historical corridor south.

From Ingapirca, your programmed route continues through Cañar, Biblián, and Azogues. The high páramo gradually gives way to greener valleys and more densely settled countryside as you approach one of our favorite cities in Ecuador.

Cuenca may be Ecuador's most charming city. Its historic center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site filled with cobblestone streets, plazas, churches, old stone buildings, flower-filled courtyards, cafés, and restaurants. After several days in small towns and remote mountain country, arriving here is a dramatic change of pace.

Cuenca's history reaches far beyond its Spanish architecture. The Spanish founded their city here in 1557, but they built over Tomebamba, an important Inca city established during the empire's expansion into what is now Ecuador. Before the Inca, this was Cañari territory. Once again, you're arriving at a place where several layers of Ecuadorian history occupy the same ground.

Tonight you stay at the centrally located Hotel Victoria, where you can park the motorcycle and explore on foot. You're close to the historic center, the Río Tomebamba, plazas, cafés, and some excellent restaurants.

After a long riding day, Cuenca is a great place to settle in for the evening. Find a good dinner, walk the old streets, and enjoy being in a city where there is always something interesting around the next corner.

Day 6

Rest Day in Cuenca

After five very full days, today the motorcycle can stay parked while you enjoy Cuenca. This is exactly the kind of city where a rest day makes sense. The historic center is compact enough to explore on foot, but there is far too much here to appreciate in a hurried afternoon.

Cuenca is one of Ecuador's most beautiful cities, with cobblestone streets, plazas, churches, museums, cafés, old homes built around interior courtyards, and four rivers flowing through the city. The historic center is recognized by UNESCO, but Cuenca is very much a living city rather than a museum piece. University students, artists, families, craftspeople, expats, shopkeepers, and street vendors all share the same old streets.

This is a good morning to sleep a little later, find a good cup of coffee, and wander without a schedule. Parque Calderón sits at the center of the old city between the blue-domed New Cathedral and the much older Catedral Vieja. Nearby is Cuenca's famous flower market, where vendors sell enormous bundles of roses, lilies, carnations, and other flowers grown in Ecuador's highlands.

There are small museums, galleries, churches, markets, antique shops, cafés, and restaurants throughout the center. Your daily route sheet includes suggestions and practical information for exploring Cuenca, but today is deliberately flexible. Spend the morning looking at art, eat your way through the city, settle into a café, or simply see where the streets lead.

Cuenca is also one of the best places in Ecuador to learn about the country's famous toquilla-straw hats. The world knows them as "Panama hats," but the finest examples have always been made in Ecuador. Skilled weavers shape extremely fine strands of toquilla palm into hats that can take days, weeks, or even months to complete depending on the quality of the weave.

There are workshops and hat makers around Cuenca where you can see how the hats are blocked, shaped, trimmed, and finished. A good Ecuadorian hat is also considerably easier to fit into your luggage than a wool sweater from Salinas.

Cuenca has plenty of other artisans as well, including ceramicists, jewelers, leatherworkers, textile makers, and artists. This is a good day to shop for something made in Ecuador when you actually have time to look at it rather than checking your watch and wondering where the motorcycle is parked.

If five days of riding haven't satisfied you yet, the motorcycle remains with you and you can spend part of the day riding into nearby Cajas National Park. Your programmed Garmin GPS can take you west of Cuenca into a high-altitude landscape of páramo, rocky mountains, wetlands, and hundreds of cold glacial lakes.

Cajas is beautiful motorcycle country, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with leaving the riding gear in the hotel today. A long lunch, a massage, some shopping, a walk along the Tomebamba River, or an afternoon doing very little can be an equally good use of the day.

Cuenca also has thermal spas and wellness facilities nearby for anyone whose shoulders or knees are reminding them that you've already covered a good part of Ecuador.

Food is another good reason to stay put. Cuenca has one of Ecuador's strongest restaurant scenes, from traditional family kitchens to sophisticated contemporary restaurants using Andean ingredients in new ways. Lunch can take as long as you want today, and nobody is waiting for you to put your helmet back on afterward.

As evening arrives, the historic center becomes particularly beautiful. Churches and old buildings are illuminated, restaurants fill up, and the narrow streets around the plazas become a great place for an evening walk before dinner.

Day 7

Cuenca – San Bartolomé – Chordeleg – Sucúa – Macas

After your rest day in Cuenca, you're ready to ride again. You leave the city's cobblestone streets and church domes behind and head east into a string of small towns and valleys known for some of Ecuador's finest traditional crafts.

Today gives you another dramatic change of scenery. You begin among artisans and agricultural communities in the cool southern Andes, then cross the mountains and descend through cloudforest toward the warm southeastern Amazon.

The roads east of Cuenca are excellent motorcycle country. Smooth pavement curves through green valleys, fruit orchards, flower farms, small villages, and cultivated hillsides. This morning isn't about covering ground quickly. There are too many interesting places to stop.

This part of Azuay Province is one of Ecuador's great artisan corridors. Skills that disappeared from many parts of the industrialized world are still practiced here in small family workshops, often by people who learned from their parents and grandparents.

Near San Bartolomé, your programmed GPS brings you onto a stretch known as the Guitar Road, where families have been building musical instruments by hand for generations.

Your GPS takes you directly to one of the workshops where you can meet a local luthier. Walk inside and you'll smell fresh sawdust, wood, glue, and varnish. Guitar bodies, necks, braces, templates, and hand tools fill the room.

Watching a guitar come together makes you appreciate how much craftsmanship hides inside an instrument that looks so simple from the outside. Wood is selected for its grain and acoustic properties, the body is shaped and joined, the neck is fitted, and the instrument is repeatedly adjusted, sanded, and finished until it has its own voice.

These are working family workshops rather than factories, and that's what makes the stop interesting. You meet the people making the instruments and see the work happening a few feet in front of you.

Nearby Chordeleg is famous for filigree jewelry. Artisans work extremely fine threads of silver and gold into earrings, pendants, rings, brooches, and intricate traditional designs.

Up close, some of the finished pieces look almost like metal lace. The work requires steady hands and enormous patience as the fine strands are curled, shaped, joined, soldered, and polished. Chordeleg is an excellent place to see how a highly specialized craft can become part of a town's identity.

If jewelry is your thing, this is also a dangerous place to leave your wallet unattended.

In nearby Gualaceo, the craft traditions continue with leatherwork, shoes, boots, textiles, and the famous handwoven macanas. These shawls are made using an ikat technique in which threads are carefully tied and dyed before they ever reach the loom. The pattern is created in the yarn itself and gradually appears as the cloth is woven.

The morning gives you exactly the sort of cultural immersion we want from Inca Royal Roads: meeting craftspeople, looking into their workshops, and seeing the work behind things that would otherwise just appear as finished products in a store.

Your programmed route continues through the valley toward Paute, where the climate is already becoming warmer. Fruit trees, flowers, gardens, and cultivated hillsides surround the town, and the plaza makes a good place to stop for coffee, something fresh from a bakery, or whatever local product catches your attention.

Then the character of the day changes. You leave the artisan valleys behind and begin crossing the mountains toward Ecuador's southeastern Amazon.

This road is one of the great paved crossings of Ecuador's Andes. The mountains become steeper, settlements become smaller, and cloudforest begins closing in around you.

Water is everywhere. Streams rush beneath bridges, mist hangs against the mountains, and waterfalls appear on cliffs beside the road. There are tunnels, sweeping curves, switchbacks, and enormous views down green valleys as you work your way toward the eastern side of the range.

As you lose elevation, the temperature rises and the vegetation becomes increasingly tropical. Within a few hours you've gone from the cultivated valleys outside Cuenca into another completely different Ecuador.

Eventually you reach Sucúa, in the traditional territory of the Shuar people. The word Shuar means "people" in their language, and the Shuar are one of the major Indigenous peoples of Ecuador's southeastern Amazon.

Their history is closely tied to the forest and rivers around you. For generations, Shuar communities maintained a strong degree of independence and developed an extraordinary knowledge of rainforest plants, hunting, agriculture, medicine, and the waterways connecting communities through this part of the Amazon.

The culture continues to change, just as every living culture does. People may use motorcycles and smartphones, attend university, and work in modern businesses while still speaking Shuar, maintaining family traditions, practicing ceremonies, and passing knowledge of the forest from one generation to another.

The Shuar also have a formidable reputation in the history of the region. Spanish expeditions searching for gold and attempting to establish control in southeastern Ecuador repeatedly encountered fierce resistance.

One historical practice that became particularly famous outside the region was the preparation of tsantsas, commonly known as shrunken heads. They had specific ceremonial meaning within traditional warfare and spiritual beliefs and were never simply curiosities. The practice belongs to an earlier period of Shuar history, but its sensational treatment by outsiders has sometimes overshadowed a much larger and more interesting culture.

By afternoon, waterfalls seem to appear everywhere as your programmed route continues toward Macas. The pavement runs through an intensely green landscape of steep mountains, rivers, forest, farms, and tropical vegetation.

This stretch is a pleasure to ride. The air has become warm again, the roads curve continuously through the foothills, and the high Andes you left this morning seem a long way away.

Macas is the capital of Morona Santiago Province and one of the principal gateway towns to Ecuador's southeastern Amazon. It has a relaxed pace and a strong connection to the Shuar communities, rivers, farms, and forests surrounding it.

Tonight you stay in a luxurious private cabin at Hostería Arrayán y Piedra. The property gives you plenty of space and quiet after a full day, with comfortable cabins surrounded by the warm vegetation of the Amazon foothills.

After beginning the morning among guitar makers, jewelers, weavers, and shoemakers in the Andes, ending the day surrounded by tropical forest near Macas gives you another reminder of how much Ecuador can fit into a single day's ride.

Day 8

Macas – Sangay National Park – Chimborazo National Wildlife Refuge

Keep your warm layers where you can reach them today. You begin the morning in the warm, humid Amazon foothills around Macas and finish the day at roughly 4,000 meters / 13,000 feet on the slopes of Chimborazo. In between, you'll cross one of the most spectacular paved roads in Ecuador.

Leaving Macas, your programmed route turns west and almost immediately begins climbing back toward the Andes. The road carries you into the enormous wilderness surrounding Sangay National Park, and the riding is superb: excellent pavement, long sweeping curves, tighter mountain sections, very little traffic, and waterfalls pouring from the mountains around you.

At first you're still surrounded by tropical vegetation. The air is warm, leaves are enormous, and the mountainsides are covered in dense green forest. Then, almost mile by mile, the Amazon begins to disappear behind you. The temperature drops, clouds gather around the mountains, and the vegetation changes as you climb.

Along the way, your GPS brings you into Zuñac, a small community on this remote mountain crossing. By now you're riding through cloudforest, with mist moving through the trees and water running down seemingly every mountainside.

One of the highlights here is a lookout tower that you can climb for a remarkable view toward Volcán Sangay. Sangay has been in a long period of eruptive activity since 2000, and when the clouds cooperate you can see the volcano rising beyond the forest, sometimes with an ash or steam plume trailing from the summit.

It's a striking reminder that this landscape is still being actively shaped by geology. You're riding through one of Ecuador's wildest volcanic regions, where rainforest, cloudforest, high páramo, rivers, and active volcanoes are all packed into the same enormous mountain system.

While you're in Zuñac, your route also brings you to the local school as part of our Ride for a Purpose program. This is one of the places where you may have the opportunity to personally deliver school supplies, soccer balls, and other useful items to the students, including some of the balls produced by the cooperative makers you visited in Salinas de Guaranda.

These visits are simple, but they're some of the most memorable stops on the tour. You get a chance to meet children and teachers, see what school life is like in a remote Andean community, and leave behind something useful rather than simply passing through.

From Zuñac, the climb continues. Tropical forest gives way to cloudforest, trees become smaller and more scattered, and eventually the forest disappears altogether.

Then you emerge onto the high páramo.

The transformation is dramatic. After hours surrounded by dense vegetation, the horizon suddenly opens and you're riding through a vast landscape of grasses, rock, wetlands, cold wind, and enormous Andean sky.

One of the highlights of the crossing is the Lagunas de Atillo, a beautiful group of high-altitude lakes surrounded by mountains and páramo. Your programmed GPS brings you directly to this remarkable landscape, where you'll want to get off the motorcycle and spend some time looking around.

Depending on the weather, Atillo can be brilliant and clear, wrapped in fast-moving clouds, or somewhere in between. Conditions change quickly at this elevation, which is part of what makes the place so beautiful.

It is also a good moment to think about where you started this morning. Only a few hours ago you were in the warm Amazon foothills. Now you're standing beside cold Andean lakes high above the treeline.

From Atillo, your programmed route descends through small agricultural communities and returns toward the central Andean valley. Fields, sheep pastures, little villages, and cold mountain streams gradually replace the open páramo.

You'll pass Laguna de Colta and Balbanera Church, which you visited on your way south earlier in the tour. This time the route keeps moving. Chimborazo is waiting ahead, and tonight you're going much closer to the mountain.

Your GPS turns west and begins climbing once again into the Chimborazo National Wildlife Refuge. You rode through this landscape several days ago on your way to Salinas de Guaranda, but Chimborazo deserves a second look — and this time you're staying.

The farms and villages fall away as you climb into a stark landscape of volcanic soil and páramo beneath the enormous glaciated mountain. Herds of wild vicuñas graze beside the road, sometimes close enough that you can pull over and simply watch them.

Chimborazo is Ecuador's highest mountain, rising to 6,263 meters / 20,548 feet. Because the Earth bulges around the Equator, its summit is also the point on the Earth's surface farthest from the center of the planet. You learned that earlier in the tour; tonight you get to sleep on the mountain itself.

Your destination is Estrella de Chimborazo Lodge, sitting at roughly 4,000 meters / 13,000 feet on the slopes of the volcano. There aren't many motorcycle touring days where you begin in the Amazon and end the evening at this elevation.

The lodge sits by itself in the high páramo, surrounded by an immense landscape with Chimborazo rising above it. Once the motorcycle is parked, the quiet is striking. There is little out here beyond the mountain, the wind, vicuñas, páramo vegetation, and an enormous sky.

This is also habitat for the remarkable Ecuadorian hillstar, sometimes called the Chimborazo hillstar, a hummingbird adapted to life at elevations where freezing nights, thin air, and cold winds would seem completely incompatible with something so small.

Tonight calls for a warm dinner, a warm layer, and an early evening. Step outside after dark if the sky is clear. With very little artificial light and the bulk of Chimborazo overhead, this is one of the most extraordinary places you'll sleep on the entire tour.

Day 9

Chimborazo – Kunuyacu – Píllaro – Salcedo – Pujilí – Tigua – Laguna de Quilotoa – Chugchilán

You wake in the thin, cold air beneath Chimborazo, with the mountain filling much of the horizon. After breakfast, you gear up and begin descending from the high páramo — but your first stop gives you a very good reason to get out of the riding gear for a while.

Kunuyacu is a natural hot spring tucked into the mountains beneath Chimborazo, and it remains very much a local place. This isn't a polished resort built around thermal pools. Families from the surrounding communities come here to bathe and wash their clothes. Cowboys stop to wash up after working in the fields. People talk, soak, do their laundry, and go about their day while hot mineral water flows naturally from the volcanic landscape.

At the entrance, Indigenous women roast fresh trout and potatoes over the fire. The smell of trout cooking in the cold mountain air, families soaking in the pools, laundry being washed nearby, and Chimborazo rising above you give Kunuyacu a relaxed, local atmosphere that is hard to manufacture.

You have time for a soak and a look around before getting dressed and climbing back onto the motorcycle. After waking up at roughly 13,000 feet, sitting in naturally heated water among the people who actually use these springs as part of everyday life is a pretty good way to begin the day.

Back on the motorcycle, you begin one of the great descents of the tour. The road drops into a deep canyon and follows the river through steep mountains on curve after curve.

This is excellent paved riding: long sweepers mixed with tighter bends, rock walls rising beside you, the river below, and very little reason to rush. The high páramo gradually gives way to farms, trees, and warmer air as you descend toward the broad valley around Ambato.

Your programmed route skirts Ambato and heads toward Píllaro, where your GPS brings you to the large statue of Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor to rule before the Spanish conquest.

Atahualpa has a particularly strong connection to what is now Ecuador. He was based in the northern part of the Inca Empire during the civil war against his brother Huáscar and emerged victorious just before Francisco Pizarro and the Spanish arrived.

His story is one of the great turning points in South American history. Atahualpa was captured by the Spanish at Cajamarca in 1532 despite commanding an enormous army. He famously offered to fill a room with gold and twice with silver as ransom for his freedom. The ransom was collected, but the Spanish executed him in 1533.

The statue in Píllaro gives you a chance to connect a person and a story with the Inca history you've been encountering throughout the tour.

From Píllaro, your route continues toward Salcedo, where the daily route sheet points you toward an old hacienda serving excellent traditional Ecuadorian food.

This is the kind of lunch stop we love: good local cooking in a historic setting and excellent coffee before you head back to the motorcycle.

But you're in Salcedo, so lunch isn't quite finished yet.

The town is famous throughout Ecuador for its distinctive Salcedo ice cream, traditionally made with several fruit flavors frozen together in colorful layers on a stick. Flavors can include blackberry, naranjilla, passion fruit, coconut, taxo, and other Ecuadorian fruits.

So after a traditional Ecuadorian lunch and a good cup of coffee, have ice cream for dessert. By this point in the tour, you may be starting to recognize a pattern: we take the riding seriously, but we also know when it's time to stop and eat something good.

Leaving Salcedo, your programmed route gets away from the main highway and begins climbing again on an ancient cobblestone road through beautiful Andean farmland.

The old stones slow the pace and make this section a little more interesting than ordinary pavement, but the reward is the countryside it takes you through. Small family farms climb the hillsides, animals graze beside the road, and the views open farther with each turn as you gain elevation.

Eventually the landscape opens into broad fields of broccoli, one of the important crops grown in this part of Ecuador's central Andes. The combination of cool temperatures, intense equatorial sunlight, high elevation, and rich volcanic soils makes this region exceptionally productive agricultural country.

The bright green rows stretch across the hillsides, often tended and harvested by hand. Riding directly through this agricultural landscape gives you a much better look at rural life than you'd ever get by staying on the Panamericana.

Your next stop is Pujilí, one of the important market towns of Cotopaxi Province. For generations, it has served the Indigenous farming communities scattered throughout the surrounding mountains. On market days, people come down from villages and farms to sell produce and livestock, buy supplies, eat, socialize, and take care of the week's business.

Your GPS brings you into the central plaza and church area, where you can spend a little time looking around. Pujilí is another example of why we prefer these smaller roads: instead of simply riding past the central Andes, you get into the towns that serve the people who live and farm here.

From Pujilí, the road climbs steadily back into the high Andes. The valley drops away behind you, temperatures cool again, and cultivated fields gradually give way to higher farmland and páramo.

Traditional homes appear along the hillsides, and views stretch back across the central valley. Your route continues toward Tigua, a community known throughout Ecuador for a distinctive style of Indigenous painting.

Tigua artists are known for vivid scenes of everyday Andean life — farming, festivals, markets, animals, mountains, Indigenous legends, and the surrounding countryside — traditionally painted on stretched sheepskin rather than conventional canvas.

The paintings are immediately recognizable for their strong colors, busy scenes, and dramatic Andean landscapes. Your GPS brings you to a local gallery where you can meet some of the artists, giving you another chance to meet the people behind a craft that has become closely associated with one small part of Ecuador.

From Tigua, your programmed route continues through Zumbahua toward one of the most dramatic landscapes on the tour: Laguna de Quilotoa.

Quilotoa fills the enormous caldera left by a volcanic eruption centuries ago. Minerals dissolved in the water give the lake its remarkable blue-green color, which changes constantly with the clouds, sunlight, and viewing angle.

Your GPS brings you directly to the crater rim, where you can park the motorcycle and take in the view. The crater walls fall steeply toward the lake far below, while the surrounding highlands stretch away in every direction.

Then you continue along narrow mountain roads through patchwork fields and deep valleys toward Chugchilán.

Chugchilán is a small Andean village perched high above a maze of steep canyons and agricultural valleys. It is quiet and remote, surrounded by some of the most dramatic terrain on the Quilotoa Loop.

Tonight you'll stay at Mama Hilda's, a longtime gathering place for backpackers, hikers, riders, and other travelers making their way through this remote part of the Andes.

That's a big part of why we enjoy staying here. At dinner, everyone gathers around the tables and big pots and bowls of food start appearing. Meals are served family-style, and travelers from different parts of the world swap stories about where they've been and where they're headed next. It has the kind of easy, adventurous atmosphere that fits Chugchilán perfectly.

The rooms are comfortable and simple, with wood-burning stoves to take the chill out of the cold mountain nights. After Kunuyacu, canyon roads, Atahualpa, a hacienda lunch, Salcedo ice cream, ancient cobblestones, Tigua artists, and Quilotoa, a hot meal and a warm room in the mountains are exactly where you want to end the day.

Day 10

Chugchilán – Sigchos – Quito

You begin your final riding day with breakfast at Mama Hilda's, where hot coffee, fresh fruit, warm bread, eggs, and mountain air get you ready for the road. Then you load the motorcycle and leave Chugchilán behind for the last stretch of the Quilotoa Loop.

This is beautiful paved riding through steep agricultural country, with small family farms scattered across the mountainsides and deep valleys opening below you. The road twists constantly as you work your way toward Sigchos, and there is no reason to hurry.

You pass through Sigchos, an old highland town that has long served the farming communities spread across this remote part of Cotopaxi Province.

Beyond town, the road drops into a spectacular sequence of switchbacks. You descend from the high ridge through tight bends with broad views over cultivated mountainsides, deep valleys, and patchwork fields below.

It is a fitting final morning of riding after ten days of seeing just how much variety Ecuador can pack into a relatively small country.

Down in the valley, your programmed GPS brings you to a very different kind of stop: a working rose plantation.

Ecuador is famous for its extraordinary long-stem roses, and here you get a behind-the-scenes look at how they are grown, cut, selected, graded, packed, and prepared for export around the world.

One of the principal reasons Ecuador can produce such exceptionally long, straight rose stems is its location on the Equator. Farther north and south, the angle of the sun changes dramatically with the seasons. Here, the sun remains high in the sky throughout the year. Instead of continually growing toward sunlight arriving from increasingly oblique seasonal angles, the plants grow upward toward consistently high, direct sunlight. The result is the remarkably long, straight stems for which Ecuadorian roses are famous.

High elevation adds another advantage. Intense equatorial sunlight during the day combined with cool Andean nights helps the plants develop large flower heads and the deep, vivid colors prized by florists around the world.

Inside the greenhouses, you'll see just how carefully each plant is managed and how quickly the flowers move from these high Andean valleys to markets thousands of miles away.

Lunch today is at the historic Hacienda La Ciénaga, one of Ecuador's great old haciendas. Construction began here in 1695, and its thick walls, stone courtyards, gardens, old wooden doors, and rooms filled with centuries of history make it a fitting place for your final lunch on the road.

La Ciénaga has a remarkable connection to the scientific history you've been encountering throughout the tour. Members of the French Geodesic Mission, including Charles Marie de La Condamine, stayed at the hacienda in the 18th century while working in Ecuador to determine the true shape and dimensions of the Earth.

Then, in 1802, the great German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt stayed at La Ciénaga with Aimé Bonpland and Carlos Montúfar while studying Cotopaxi and exploring this part of the Andes.

Enjoy a relaxed lunch of traditional Ecuadorian dishes before returning to the motorcycle for the final ride toward Quito.

From La Ciénaga, your route joins the Pan-American Highway and begins the final run north toward Quito through the great central valley that Alexander von Humboldt famously described as the Avenue of Volcanoes.

On a clear day, Cotopaxi rises above the valley on one side while the twin peaks of the Illinizas stand on the other. Farm fields, greenhouses, villages, and broad mountain views roll past as you make your way toward the capital.

The road is familiar by now: smooth pavement, long curves, huge views, and volcanoes filling the horizon. It is a good final stretch to simply ride and enjoy the last miles of the journey.

Before returning to the city, your programmed route brings you into the Machachi area at Casa de la Luz for one final stop and a chance to celebrate the ride.

Then it's the last run back to Ecuador Freedom headquarters in Quito.

Over the past ten days you've crossed the Equator, climbed above 14,000 feet, dropped into the Amazon Basin, ridden ancient cobblestones and some of Ecuador's best paved mountain roads, and spent time with the people who make these places memorable.

Back at Ecuador Freedom, you hand over the motorcycle, settle into the Freedom Riders’ Lounge™, swap photographs, and start thinking about where you're going to ride next.

Your self-guided adventure begins at Ecuador Freedom’s La Carolina headquarters in Quito. Before departure, you’ll receive a thorough orientation from an experienced Ecuador Freedom guide who knows and has ridden the route. We cover Ecuadorian road rules, local riding customs, road conditions, weather, altitude, the surfaces you’ll encounter, and the practical details you need for the journey ahead.

On departure morning, you’ll be matched with the adventure-ready motorcycle you selected, equipped with a waterproof luggage system and an optional tank bag. You’ll also receive a programmed Garmin GPS containing the complete route and the exact locations of hotels, restaurants, workshops, attractions, cultural visits, viewpoints, and other scheduled stops.

Each day you’ll also have a detailed Ecuador Freedom daily route sheet with historical and cultural background, information about the places you’ll visit, practical details, restaurant recommendations, useful contacts, and other information that helps you understand what you’re riding through rather than simply following a line on a screen.

The route has been developed through years of riding, scouting, and refining these roads. We favor smaller roads with little traffic, great scenery, interesting riding, and access to communities, artisans, farms, workshops, and places most visitors simply pass by.

The Route & Riding

The Inca Royal Roads route is approximately 98% paved. There are a few short sections of easy hard-packed dirt along with some rough ancient cobblestone roads. These sections are not highly technical, but the cobblestones can be uneven and require concentration, smooth motorcycle control, and a sensible pace.

If you have serious concerns about riding away from pavement, let us know before departure. In many cases we can discuss paved alternatives during your pre-ride briefing. We encourage riders who are comfortable with the conditions to follow the programmed route because some of the most memorable landscapes and communities on this tour are reached by those older roads.

The Inca Royal Roads tour is designed for riders who enjoy the motorcycle as much as the destination. You’ll cross high Andean passes, ride long sweepers through agricultural valleys, follow mountain rivers into the Amazon, climb ancient cobblestone roads, descend through cloudforest, and spend plenty of time on quiet paved roads far from Ecuador’s busiest highways.

There is no guide riding in front of you and no group schedule controlling your pace. Your Garmin GPS handles the navigation, your daily route sheets give you the background and practical information, and Ecuador Freedom’s support team remains available throughout the journey.

The Day-by-Day Itinerary

The itinerary on this page represents the route and experiences planned for your tour. Weather, road construction, landslides, local events, or other changing conditions can occasionally require adjustments. When we know about a change before departure, we update your GPS and briefing accordingly. If something changes while you are already traveling, our team can help you work through the best alternative.

This is a route that asks you to participate. You’ll get off the motorcycle frequently to meet artisans, try regional foods, visit family businesses, explore archaeological sites, walk through markets, soak in hot springs, visit rural communities, and see how people actually live and work in the places you’re riding through.

The scenery gets your attention, then you get off the motorcycle and find out what is actually going on there.

Self-Guided Support

Although you are riding independently, you are not simply handed a motorcycle and pointed south. In addition to your programmed Garmin GPS and daily route sheets, you’ll carry a local cell phone, our back office monitors your progress during riding days, and 24-hour Ecuador Freedom support is available throughout the journey.

Your pre-ride briefing is conducted by an experienced guide who knows the route and can answer questions about the roads, surfaces, weather, altitude, cultural stops, and riding conditions before you leave Quito.

Ride for a Purpose

The tour also participates in Ecuador Freedom’s Ride for a Purpose program. Along the route, you may visit rural schools and communities where you can personally deliver school supplies, soccer balls, and other useful items.

These stops give you an opportunity to spend time with people in the communities you are traveling through while leaving something useful behind. For many riders, those encounters become some of the strongest memories of the tour.

Meals

Breakfast is included each morning, along with the meals specifically identified as included in the tour package. Other lunches and dinners give you the freedom to choose where and what you want to eat, with recommendations provided in your daily route sheets.

Your rest day in Cuenca is completely yours. Lunch, dinner, and any optional activities you choose that day are at your own expense.

Returning to Quito

At the end of Day 10, your programmed Garmin GPS brings you back to Ecuador Freedom’s La Carolina headquarters in Quito. After returning the motorcycle, you’ll have access to our Freedom Riders’ Lounge™ with hot showers, jacuzzi, gym, library, honor bar, luggage storage, and a comfortable place to clean up and relax after the ride.

You can learn more about our headquarters and rider facilities on our Our Shop page.

Weather & Temperatures

Ecuador’s weather is remarkably consistent throughout the year, but temperature changes dramatically with elevation. In the highlands, expect the possibility of passing showers, although a full day of rain is uncommon. Longer periods of rain are more likely on the western slopes of the Andes during March, April, and early May.

This tour ranges from the warm Amazon Basin to elevations of approximately 14,500 feet / 4,420 meters in the high Andes. Temperatures can be around 80°F / 27°C in the lowlands and fall into the 30s°F / around 0°C at the highest elevations. Dressing in layers makes it easy to add or remove insulation as conditions change throughout the day.

You can find more detailed information in our Weather in Ecuador Guide.

Accommodations

You’ll stay in a carefully selected mix of historic haciendas, character-filled inns, comfortable hotels, mountain lodges, and unique locally owned properties. Some are luxurious, some are simple, and each has been chosen because it adds something to the experience of the tour.

Single occupancy is included as standard at no additional charge, giving you your own private room or cabin each night.

Ecuador Freedom may substitute an accommodation when necessary because of availability or changing local conditions. When that happens, we select an appropriate alternative of comparable quality and notify you of the change.

Packing & Preparation

Before you travel, Ecuador Freedom will provide detailed preparation information and a packing list designed specifically for motorcycle travel through Ecuador’s changing climates and elevations.

You can also review our Motorcycle Tour Packing Guide before your trip.

No knowledge of Spanish is required. Your GPS handles the navigation, your daily route sheets provide practical information and useful contacts, and Ecuador Freedom’s support team is available if you need help with communication or logistics while you are on the road.

Come prepared for changing temperatures, bring your curiosity, and leave some extra room in the luggage — this tour has a habit of introducing riders to things they decide they want to take home.

• Unlimited-mileage motorcycle rental — fully prepared for the tour with our adventure-ready setup
• Programmed Garmin GPS — loaded with the complete tour route and exact locations for hotels, restaurants, workshops, cultural visits, viewpoints, and other scheduled stops
• Detailed Ecuador Freedom daily route sheets — with historical and cultural background, practical information, details about the day's stops, restaurant recommendations, useful contacts, and other information for the journey
• Comprehensive pre-ride briefing — with an experienced Ecuador Freedom guide who knows and has ridden the route
• Waterproof luggage system — saddlebags or panniers for your motorcycle
• Secure luggage storage and locker use at Ecuador Freedom headquarters in Quito for anything you don't need on the tour
• Single occupancy included — your own private room or cabin every night at no additional charge
• Breakfast every day
• Dinner at Hacienda Pinsaquí
• Dinner at El Jardín Misahuallí Lodge
• Dinner at Hostería Arrayán y Piedra near Macas
• Dinner at Estrella de Chimborazo Lodge
• Dinner at Mama Hilda's in Chugchilán
• Admissions, cultural visits and scheduled activities described in the itinerary — including the Amazon excursion with our local guide Marco, and the rose plantation tour.
• Ride for a Purpose participation — opportunities along the route to visit local communities and deliver school supplies, soccer balls, and other useful items
• Local cell phone for use during the tour
• Back-office monitoring during your riding days
• 24-hour Ecuador Freedom support throughout the journey
• Pre-tour gear savings — 20% off high-quality riding gear from Klim
• Pre-tour preparation package — with packing information, videos, practical travel advice, and other information to help you arrive ready for the trip
• Freedom souvenirs — Ecuador Freedom T-shirt and decal
• VIP access to the Freedom Riders’ Lounge™ — hot showers, jacuzzi, gym, library, honor bar, luggage storage, and a comfortable place to relax at the end of the journey

• Refundable motorcycle security deposit — a credit-card hold to cover any damage to the rental motorcycle
• Hotel accommodations in Quito before or after the tour
• Travel insurance — including trip cancellation, medical, and emergency evacuation coverage; strongly recommended
• Lunches and dinners not specifically listed as included
• Optional activities you choose on the rest day in Cuenca
• Entrance fees, tours, and cultural visits not specifically listed as included — including visits such as the Intiñan Equator Museum, the leather tannery in Cotacachi, Ingapirca, and other museums, artisan workshops, cultural attractions, or local sites along the route unless specifically stated otherwise
• Alcoholic beverages
• Personal purchases — including snacks, souvenirs, laundry, items from the honor bar, and other incidental expenses
• Gratuities — including tips for Ecuador Freedom’s motorcycle preparation staff, hotel staff, excursion guides, local hosts, restaurant staff, drivers, and other service providers along the route

Good to know: Ecuadorian tour packages for qualifying non-resident international travelers are not subject to Ecuadorian VAT, so there is no additional Ecuadorian tour tax added to the advertised package price.

Want to spend more time exploring Ecuador? You can extend the Andes Twist with any of the options below. Each extension has a fixed add-on price that includes the additional motorcycle rental days along with the accommodations, meals, activities, and other items indicated in the individual extension description.

The extension price is the same regardless of which motorcycle you choose, which can make these additions especially attractive if you are riding one of our higher-priced motorcycles.

You do not need to decide on an extension before you begin the booking process. During online booking, you can review the available extensions, select the ones you want to add, and see your updated total price before completing your reservation.

Book your self-guided Andes Twist online in just a few steps.

You can book this tour solo or with a group of friends, and self-guided departures are available throughout the year except on dates when we already have a Guided Andes Twist departure scheduled.

Our reservation system provides up-to-date availability and pricing. Simply enter your preferred dates, select your motorcycle, and choose any tour extensions you would like to add. The system will calculate the exact price of your tour based on your selections.

You can also extend your trip with any of the tour extensions listed below. Add them during the booking process and the reservation system will automatically include them in your itinerary and calculate the updated tour price.

If more than one passenger will be traveling in a 4x4 support vehicle, please contact us so we can arrange the appropriate room-sharing configuration and provide accurate pricing.

We can also customize the Andes Twist if you would like to modify the itinerary, add extra days, combine it with other destinations, or create a more personalized version of the tour. Contact us and we can discuss the possibilities with you.

Our booking system asks for an identification number as part of the reservation process. You may use your passport number, driver’s license number, national ID number, or another government-issued identification number.

If you prefer not to enter that information online, or if you have any difficulty completing the payment, just contact us. We can take your credit card information over the phone and process the payment for you.

You may also select the “Request PayPal Invoice” option at checkout. We will send you a PayPal invoice that can be paid with any major credit card. No PayPal account is required.

If you prefer to pay by bank transfer, we can provide our banking instructions upon request.

If you have any questions, need help configuring a booking for several riders or passengers, or would like to discuss a customized version of the tour, please email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or click the chat button below.