OFFROAD ECUADOR EXCURSION GUIDED MOTORCYCLE TOUR

The 4-Day Guided OFFROAD Ecuador Excursion is built for riders who want to get out of Quito fast and into the kind of terrain most travelers never see. This is not a gentle sampler or a polished sightseeing loop. You’ll leave the capital and almost immediately find yourself on dirt roads, climbing into cold highland pampa, dropping through cloudforest, cutting across remote farming country, and working your way through steep climbs, rough tracks, sharp unpaved switchbacks, mud, rocks, ruts, and water crossings. In just four days, the route covers roughly 801 kilometers, with most of it off pavement, moving through tropical rainforest, grasslands, highland pampa, and cloudforest.

 The ride connects places that still feel far from the tourist map: Quito, Chiriboga, Sigchos, Chugchilán, Salinas, Quevedo, and the deep rural country between them. You’ll ride past waterfalls, crater lakes, small farms, hand-built cobblestone roads, and villages where people still work the land with animals and traditional tools. Along the way, you’ll visit artisans and rural producers who help give this route its soul — cheese makers, woodworkers, moonshine distillers, chocolate farmers, wool workers, soccer ball makers, banana growers, and families proud to show how they farm, cook, build, and live.

This tour is short, but it hits hard. It is designed for adventurous riders with the stamina and confidence to handle long days, changing weather, and rough conditions while still enjoying the cultural richness that makes Ecuador such an extraordinary place to ride. The reward is a concentrated blast of real off-road Ecuador: dirt under the tires, thin mountain air, warm lowland humidity, river crossings, cloudforest mist, highland villages, and the kind of backroad experiences that come only from years of scouting routes and building relationships far beyond the usual travel corridors.

Day 1

Quito – Chiriboga – Alluriquín – Sigchos – Chugchilán

You’ll begin your four-day Guided OFFROAD Ecuador Excursion from the Ecuador Freedom Bike Rental shop in Quito, Ecuador. The city sits high in the Andes at 2,850 meters, or about 9,350 feet, almost two miles above sea level. In 1978, Quito was among the first cities named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognized for its remarkably well-preserved historic center.

Quito is a serious place to begin a motorcycle trip: thin mountain air, volcanic ridgelines, old stone churches, crowded markets, sharp morning light, and the strange feeling of standing on the Equator while surrounded by the Andes. Arriving a day or two early is recommended so you can acclimate to the altitude and get a feel for the capital before the dirt starts.

On the morning of departure, you’ll be outfitted with the offroad-capable motorcycle of your choice and given a detailed pre-ride briefing. You’ll go over Ecuadorian rules of the road, local riding customs, driver courtesies, riding signals, group riding procedures, and the kind of terrain you can expect over the next four days. This first morning is about getting comfortable with the bike, the guide, the road rhythm, and the reality that Ecuador does not ride like home.

There is some paved riding as we work our way out of Quito, but the transition happens fast. One minute you are negotiating city streets and traffic lights; the next you are sharing the road with cows. The city drops away almost immediately, and the route begins climbing into the highland páramo before turning toward the western slopes of the Andes.

From the high country, the road begins a long, curving descent. The air turns colder, then wetter, and the route threads through farms, cloudforest, and mountain settlements such as Chiriboga.

This first section gives you a quick lesson in Ecuador’s compressed geography. In a short stretch of riding, you move from high Andean air into green cloudforest, passing waterfalls, steep valleys, wet vegetation, and small villages tucked along the slopes. The dirt can be smooth in places, rough in others, and always alive with changing weather, local traffic, animals, and the kind of mountain-road surprises that keep a rider paying attention.

By the time you drop to around 3,000 feet in elevation, the climate has changed completely. The air is warm and humid, a heavy contrast to the cool morning you left behind in Quito. If conditions allow, you’ll stop for a swim in natural pools formed by waterfalls, rinsing off the dust and heat in cold mountain water before getting back on the bikes refreshed and ready for the climb ahead.

From here, the route begins climbing again and will keep climbing for much of the day. Steep switchbacks take you higher above the valleys, opening up wide views over green hills, dense forest, pastureland, and farms carved into impossible slopes. This is where the ride starts to feel properly earned: low gears, dirt under the tires, tight turns, changing grip, and the satisfaction of working your way up through country that most visitors never reach.

You’ll ride through dense jungle, green pastures, and small rural communities before arriving in San Francisco de las Pampas for a simple but excellent lunch of local food. This is the kind of stop that gives the route its character. You are not just pulling over for fuel and calories. You are sitting down in a working mountain town, eating what people here actually cook, and getting a small glimpse of daily life away from Ecuador’s main highways.

After lunch, the dirt roads continue, sometimes easy, sometimes more demanding depending on weather and recent use. You’ll climb through cloudforest, farmland, and high moorland, eventually reaching elevations over 11,400 feet.

The riding changes as you climb: the air thins, the temperature drops, the clouds move faster, and the terrain opens into high Andean country where the road feels exposed and remote.

The route brings you into Sigchos, a town with roots going back to the early colonial period. From here, you are officially on the famous Quilotoa Loop, one of Ecuador’s great highland routes. The scenery becomes increasingly dramatic, with deep valleys, patchwork farms, wind-cut ridgelines, and small communities scattered across the mountainsides.

By late afternoon, you’ll arrive at Mama Hilda’s in Chugchilán, a warm and welcoming mountain lodge that feels exactly right after a full day of dirt riding. You’ll have a private, cozy room with a wood stove and a family-style dinner served in generous pots of Ecuadorian food. After high passes, cloudforest, waterfalls, switchbacks, dirt climbs, and the first full taste of offroad Ecuador, sleep usually comes fast.

Day 2

Chugchilán – Quilotoa Crater Lake – Angamarca – El Corazón – Simiatug – Salinas

After a hearty breakfast at Mama Hilda’s, you’ll ride out of the mountain village of Chugchilán and back onto the dirt. The morning begins with another beautiful stretch of highland riding, following remote roads along deep canyons, steep farms, and quiet Andean settlements before arriving at the extraordinary Quilotoa Crater Lake.

Quilotoa was formed after a catastrophic volcanic eruption roughly 800 years ago, leaving behind a vast crater filled with mineral-rich water. The lake’s color shifts with the light, from deep green to electric blue, and the view from the rim is one of the great sights of the Ecuadorian Andes. Cold wind, thin air, volcanic rock, and the silence of the crater make this a powerful place to stop before the day gets rougher and more remote.

From Quilotoa, you’ll ride toward Zumbahua on a paved road with wide views over a fertile highland valley. Zumbahua is a farming town with a central market square, and it is a good place for a second breakfast of fresh handmade empanadas and local fried potatoes. That snack is not just for fun. You’ll want the energy before climbing back into the cold, high country.

After Zumbahua, the pavement gives way again to dirt roads through some of Ecuador’s most striking highland terrain. You’ll ride into high páramo where alpacas and llamas graze across the open country, holding an altitude of around 13,400 feet for part of the route.

The people who live at these elevations have kept many of their traditional ways. Some still live in mud homes called chozas, with thatched roofs and indoor fireplaces used without chimneys to help seal the homes from cold and rain. Sheep, potatoes, wind, smoke, and hard mountain weather define life here.

The route then brings you through the small town of Angamarca, whose name means “Condor’s Nest” in Quechua. Angamarca gives you a rare look into rural Ecuadorian life in a place where many things have changed very little over the centuries. Few travelers pass through here, and the arrival of motorcycles often brings curious looks, friendly greetings, and a sense that you have ridden into a part of Ecuador still moving at its own older pace.

Angamarca is also known for its wood carvings, and when possible, you’ll visit local craftspeople to see the work behind this tradition. Continuing toward the hamlet of Shuyo, you’ll visit a working watermill where grains are processed using techniques that have been used here for generations.

You may also have a chance to visit a guinea pig and rabbit farm and a local school as part of Ecuador Freedom’s Ride for a Purpose program.

From Angamarca, the ride becomes even more dramatic. You’ll follow dirt roads along sheer cliffs with views plunging several hundred feet into the valley below. There is very little traffic out here, and the route includes small river crossings, rough surfaces, and the kind of remote Andean riding that makes the day feel much bigger than the distance on the map.

The road makes another deep descent down the western slopes into the town of El Corazón. The air warms, the vegetation thickens, and the ride drops into a friendlier, more subtropical mood.

El Corazón is known for its local aguardiente, a strong sugarcane liquor flavored in varieties such as bubblegum, coconut, pineapple, and chocolate. It is powerful, inexpensive, and very much part of the town’s character. El Corazón is also a welcoming place to stop for lunch and meet some of the people who live in this rarely visited corner of the Andes.

From El Corazón, you’ll face another stretch of challenging dirt roads winding through thick green country. The route passes through jungle, pastureland, crystalline brooks, and small farms where neighbors still help each other with the day’s work. That tradition of shared labor is still visible here, and it gives the countryside a human warmth that balances the toughness of the terrain.

The ride then brings you toward the picturesque and isolated village of Simiatug, surrounded by mountains and dirt roads stretching out in every direction. Simiatug has the remains of a 17th-century church, much of it destroyed in an earthquake, and the village has the strange, beautiful feeling of a place that sits outside normal time.

After the warmth and humidity of the lower slopes, the climb toward Simiatug starts to bring back the cold bite of the high Andes.

Taking the dirt road out of Simiatug, you’ll continue gaining altitude on a series of steep switchbacks and rough dirt tracks. The air through this section of cloudforest is scented with wild orchids and tropical plants at first, then turns cooler and sharper as you climb. The smells change with the elevation: damp jungle, wet leaves, flowers, pine, eucalyptus, cold earth, and smoke from small homes tucked along the hillsides.

You’ll cross a mountain pass at around 13,400 feet before descending toward Salinas de Guaranda. The night air will be cold, and by now you will have ridden through an astonishing range of Ecuadorian backcountry: crater lake, high páramo, Indigenous villages, cliffside dirt roads, warm valleys, jungle tracks, cloudforest, rough climbs, and high Andean passes.

Salinas de Guaranda is one of the most unusual towns in Ecuador. It has a strong cooperative tradition and is known for cheese, chocolate, cured meats, mushrooms, wool, and other locally produced goods.

After a long day in the dirt, you’ll sit down to a well-earned dinner featuring foods produced in and around the village, including local cheeses, sausages, hams, and mushrooms.

You’ll spend the night at the Cachi Yacu Hotel, with rooms overlooking the village. At roughly 11,500 feet, the evening will be chilly, and that cold mountain air will feel sharp after the subtropical sections earlier in the day. After this much climbing, descending, dust, water, rock, mud, and mountain air, sleep comes easily.

Day 3

Salinas – Arrayanes – Moraspungo – Quevedo

After yesterday’s long ride, the morning begins at a slightly easier pace in the cold mountain air of Salinas de Guaranda. This village is one of Ecuador’s great examples of rural cooperation, where local families have built a remarkable economy around cheese, chocolate, wool, mushrooms, cured meats, and other products made right in the community.

Every morning, farmers bring fresh milk to the cheese factory by donkey, horse, alpaca, motorcycle, and pickup. You’ll see how that milk is transformed into high-quality cheeses such as Gruyere, Emmental, Tilsit, and Gouda, using techniques brought here through the town’s Swiss influence and adapted to the realities of life in the Ecuadorian Andes. The smell of warm milk, salt, aging cheese, and clean mountain air makes this stop feel a long way from anything industrial.

You’ll also visit the chocolate factory, where locally grown cacao is turned into truffles and chocolate bars that have earned attention far beyond this small mountain town. Salinas does not need to talk about sustainability as a slogan. You can see it in the workshops, the cooperative system, the people working together, and the pride they take in turning raw local products into something with real value.

The morning may also include visits with local craftspeople who make soccer balls by hand, along with workshops where sheep and alpaca wool is cleaned, spun, and transformed into yarn using old machinery from former Massachusetts textile mills in the United States. It is a strange and beautiful connection: Andean wool, Swiss-style cheese, Ecuadorian cacao, American mill machinery, and a village that figured out how to build a future without giving up its identity.

Then it is time to get back on the bikes. The route leaves Salinas on dirt and climbs into breathtaking high-altitude páramo, where the air is thin, the hills are open, and crystal waterfalls cut down through the cold landscape. The road rides along steep ravines with expansive views over the western slopes and the coastal plains far below. This is big-sky riding: exposed, remote, and full of the kind of silence you only find at altitude.

You’ll stop in the tiny hamlet of Arrayanes, population 87. The people here work together to make a local cheese called Andino, a savory, buttery, slightly sharp cheese that tastes like the mountain country it comes from. You’ll pick up a round of it and carry it in the saddlebags for a snack later in the day. It is a small detail, but this is the kind of detail that makes the route personal: food made by the people whose roads you are riding.

From Arrayanes, the road begins dropping through several sets of switchbacks, each turn opening another wide view over valleys, farms, and the western slopes of the Andes. You’ll pass towering waterfalls, small villages, roaring whitewater rivers, and green hillsides where mandarin orange trees, sugar cane, and other tropical crops begin to appear as the air warms.

The descent is one of the great pleasures of the day. The landscape changes quickly from cold highland páramo to warmer farming country, and the riding becomes faster and more playful as the road rolls through hills, bends, and rural tracks. You can feel the altitude falling away with every kilometer.

You’ll ride through the town of San Luis and continue descending toward the lowlands. Here, the road turns into a long series of rolling hills that can feel almost like a natural motocross track cut through a garden. The smells change again: damp earth, sugar cane, warm vegetation, and cacao drying in the sun. Palm groves begin to appear, and the whole ride takes on the heavy green atmosphere of Ecuador’s coastal interior.

As you continue through the lower country toward Moraspungo, the high Andes begin to feel surprisingly far away. The roads roll through farms, tropical vegetation, and working agricultural country where heat and humidity have replaced the cold wind of Salinas.

By late afternoon, you’ll arrive in Quevedo, a busy lowland city with an unusual place in Ecuadorian history. Quevedo became home to one of Ecuador’s earliest Chinese immigrant communities beginning in the 1920s, and that influence is still easy to find in the city’s food culture.

Tonight you’ll stay at the Hotel Olímpico. You walk through the doors and somehow it is the summer of 1979 all over again. Earth-tone tile, dark wood, geometric patterns, and an Olympic-sized pool from an era when Olympic decathlon champions graced cereal boxes, running shorts were alarmingly short, and hotels still believed personality mattered more than corporate branding. The staff still treats guests the old-fashioned way—polite, attentive, quick with a smile, and genuinely happy you’re there.

The rooms are spacious, the air conditioning is excellent after a warm day in the lowlands, and the towering high dive gives the place the kind of personality modern hotels worked hard to eliminate. There is time to check in, cool off in the pool, relax, and clean up before heading out for dinner.

Tonight’s destination is our favorite chifa—the best Chinese restaurant in Ecuador, at least in our opinion. At first that might seem like an odd choice, until you learn that Quevedo became home to one of Ecuador’s earliest Chinese immigrant communities beginning in the 1920s. Many families settled here to work in agriculture, food processing, and commerce, creating a style of cooking that is unmistakably Chinese yet deeply influenced by Ecuador’s tropical ingredients.

Dinner arrives as a table-filling feast built for sharing. A rotating Lazy Susan carries lacquered roast duck with crisp skin, shrimp straight from Ecuador’s coast, fried rice, hand-pulled noodles, and perfectly cooked vegetables. The sauces are where Ecuador quietly enters the conversation—pineapple, tamarind, ginger, citrus, fresh herbs, and just enough ají to wake everything up without overwhelming it. It isn’t the sweet, predictable take-out Chinese food most North Americans grew up with. It’s brighter, fresher, more balanced, and unmistakably Ecuadorian. Plates keep circling, everyone steals one more piece of duck after insisting they’re full, and by the end of the evening you’ll understand why we look forward to this dinner every time we pass through Quevedo.

In the morning you were in the cold Andes surrounded by cheese makers and high páramo. By night, you are in the tropical lowlands, cooling off beside an Olympic-sized pool and finishing the day with roast duck and shrimp in one of Ecuador’s most distinctive chifas. That is Ecuador in a single day.

Day 4

Quevedo – Pucuyacu – Sigchos – Isinliví – Quito

The final day starts down in the hot agricultural lowlands of Quevedo, and by the time you are finished, you’ll have hauled yourself and the motorcycle all the way back into the high Andes. There is no ceremonial victory lap waiting for you. Day 4 still has plenty of work left to do.

You’ll start by riding through plantations of palm, banana, and cacao before the road begins nosing its way back toward coffee country. The air is thick and humid, with the smell of wet soil, fermenting fruit, sun-warmed leaves, and cacao drying in the open air. Enjoy the warmth while you have it. You are about to spend most of the day climbing out of it.

The route passes through huge groves of gmelina, also known as white teak. These fast-growing trees thrive under Ecuador’s strong equatorial sun and can mature into harvestable lumber in roughly eight years. They are used for pallets, furniture, construction materials, and plenty of other things that have never appeared in an adventure-motorcycle advertisement.

Riding through the plantations is another matter. The tall trunks stand in long, orderly rows, the road disappears beneath a canopy of green, and for a while it feels as though somebody planted an entire forest just to give you a dirt road through the middle of it.

You’ll stop in Pucuyacu, a small working town with a local animal and farmers’ market. This is about the point where anyone who thought the final day might be an easy ride back to Quito gets corrected.

From Pucuyacu, the route crosses a river and then points uphill. And we mean uphill. You’ll gain more than 6,000 feet in only a few miles on one of the steepest, roughest climbs of the entire tour. The road is narrow, rocky, and badly interested in whether you have learned anything during the previous three days.

Momentum matters. Line choice matters. Looking where you want the motorcycle to go matters. Sitting there staring at the rock you do not want to hit remains a poor strategy.

This is the toughest section of the tour, and that is exactly why we save it for Day 4. By now you know the motorcycle, you understand the terrain, and you have had three days to stop treating every loose rock like a personal insult. The switchbacks keep coming, the air gets colder, the oxygen gets thinner, and every time you look back the lowlands have dropped another thousand feet below you.

Eventually, you grind your way back into Sigchos, the town you passed on Day 1, and reconnect with the Quilotoa Loop. Four days ago, this was simply another town on the map. Now you arrive from the opposite direction after crossing a good chunk of western Ecuador the difficult way.

From here, the route continues through highland country on a mixture of dirt and cobblestone roads, with broad views across farms, deep valleys, and mountain ridges. The riding is still demanding, but there is a satisfying feeling of closing the loop. You know the rhythm now. Stand up when you need to, let the motorcycle move underneath you, quit fighting every bump, and keep going.

In Isinliví, we stop to visit our friends at the Don Bosco school, where Italian craftsmen and designers teach local children the skills of traditional woodworking and furniture making. These are not souvenir-shop projects. The school has permission to work with rare South American hardwoods, and the students learn how to select, shape, join, and finish wood properly so they can build furniture designed to last for generations.

There is something especially satisfying about watching young people learn a trade from craftsmen who care deeply about doing the job right. Good wood, sharp tools, patience, solid joinery, and no shortcuts. The idea is simple: teach a useful skill, preserve a tradition, and give students something they can carry with them long after they leave school.

We usually bring school supplies with us and leave them here as part of Ecuador Freedom’s Ride for a Purpose program. It is one of those stops that has become personal for us over the years, and it gives riders a chance to meet people doing practical, hands-on work in a small Andean community.

From Isinliví, the route climbs again toward Guingopana Pass, a high place tied to Indigenous mythology and surrounded by broad Andean views. When the weather is clear, snow-capped volcanoes rise in the distance. When it is not, you get wind, fog, cold fingers, and another reminder that the Andes are in charge.

Then comes a twisting cobblestone descent through highland farms toward Toacaso. Cobblestones have a special talent for making a perfectly good motorcycle feel as though somebody loosened every bolt while you were eating lunch. Relax your grip, let the bike work underneath you, and keep moving.

The country up here is wide open and exposed, with farms clinging to steep hillsides and enormous views across the surrounding mountains. After the humid lowlands of Quevedo, it is hard to believe you are still riding through the same country you woke up in that morning.

Four days into the trip, the cold wind and thin air are familiar by now. You know that whatever is around the next bend could be cobblestone, loose rock, mud, a herd of cattle, somebody’s dog, or another view that makes everybody stop the motorcycles and stare for a minute.

After four days of dirt, mud, river crossings, switchbacks, rocks, dust, and enough elevation change to scramble your internal thermostat, we make a very Ecuadorian stop at a working rose plantation. Ecuador’s high-altitude flower farms produce some of the world’s most impressive long-stemmed roses, helped along by strong equatorial sunlight, cool nights, rich volcanic soil, and the thin mountain air.

You’ll see how the roses are cultivated, cut, graded, packed, and prepared for shipment around the world. After what you just rode through, stopping to smell the roses suddenly seems like a pretty sensible idea.

The next stop is Hacienda La Ciénega, one of Ecuador’s oldest surviving haciendas. Construction began in the late 1600s, and the place still has massive stone walls, heavy timber, old courtyards, hand-carved doors, fireplaces, and rooms filled with antiques. It is the kind of building that makes modern construction look a little flimsy.

La Ciénega also has a remarkable place in the history of exploration and science in Ecuador. Members of the French Geodesic Mission, including Charles-Marie de La Condamine, stayed here while working in the region during the 18th century. Their expedition came to Ecuador to help measure the shape of the Earth near the Equator, work that became one of the great scientific undertakings of its time.

Later, in 1802, Alexander von Humboldt stayed at La Ciénega while exploring and studying the Ecuadorian Andes. Humboldt traveled through the region with Aimé Bonpland and Carlos Montúfar, observing volcanoes, plants, geography, climate, and the relationship between elevation and the natural world. The surrounding views of Cotopaxi and the western Andes made this an ideal base for the kind of work that later helped shape modern ideas about ecology and geography.

So when you walk through the stone corridors, sit beside the fireplace, and eat lunch in the old dining room, you are sitting in a building that has watched scientists, explorers, landowners, farmers, politicians, and travelers come and go for more than three centuries. The walls are thick, the rooms are full of history, and after spending the morning wrestling motorcycles up the climb from Pucuyacu, a proper Andean meal inside a 17th-century hacienda feels almost suspiciously civilized.

The final stretch brings you back toward Quito through highland farmland and volcanic country. Dirt gradually gives way to pavement, traffic begins to reappear, and before long the city starts closing in around you again.

By the time you roll into Ecuador Freedom’s headquarters, you will have crossed cloudforest, tropical lowlands, high páramo, remote villages, plantations, rivers, cobblestones, loose rock, steep climbs, ugly switchbacks, beautiful switchbacks, workshops, schools, farms, and a good chunk of Ecuador that most visitors never get close to.

Four days earlier, you left Quito clean.

You will probably not return that way.

This guided off-road motorcycle adventure begins at Ecuador Freedom Bike Rental’s headquarters in Quito’s upscale and secure La Carolina neighborhood. We recommend arriving a day or two before the tour so you can explore Quito, adjust to the altitude, complete the necessary paperwork, and start your adventure feeling rested and ready.

Before departure, we'll provide a comprehensive rider briefing covering Ecuadorian traffic laws, local riding customs, group riding procedures, safety protocols, and what to expect during the next four days. Riding in Ecuador has its own rhythm, and this orientation is designed to help you feel comfortable and confident before the adventure begins.

You'll receive the adventure motorcycle of your choice, fully prepared with a waterproof luggage system, tool kit, first aid kit, and an optional tank bag. On tours with more than five riders, a support truck accompanies the group to transport luggage, water, tools, and emergency equipment. Smaller departures may not include a support vehicle, in which case you'll carry your gear in the luggage system provided.

The OFFROAD Ecuador Excursion is the product of many years spent exploring, testing, and refining Ecuador's finest off-road routes. Your guide knows these roads intimately and understands where conditions change, where weather can become a factor, and where the most rewarding cultural and scenic stops await. Throughout the journey you'll stop frequently to meet local people, learn about regional traditions, and visit places that most visitors never discover.

This route is approximately 85% natural dirt roads and is designed for riders with previous off-road experience. You'll encounter rugged mountain tracks, rocky climbs, rutted sections, mud, water crossings, cobblestones, and remote backroads that wind through the Andes. While the terrain is challenging, the objective is never to ride beyond your abilities. Instead, we maintain a pace that allows you to enjoy the scenery, improve your skills, and experience some of Ecuador's most spectacular landscapes with confidence.

All meals during riding days, fuel, tolls, entrance fees, and other tour-related expenses are included. You should only budget for alcoholic beverages, souvenirs, snacks, gratuities, and other personal purchases.

Guests are also invited to participate in our Ride for a Purpose program. Along the route we'll visit a small rural school where riders can personally deliver school supplies and sports equipment directly to local children, creating one of the most memorable experiences of the tour.

After returning to Quito, you'll have access to the Ecuador Freedom Riders' Lounge™, including our honor bar, jacuzzi, hot shower, luggage storage, and staff who can assist with airport transportation, hotel arrangements, or planning the next stage of your travels.

Weather and Temperatures

Ecuador's seasons remain relatively consistent throughout the year, but the dramatic elevation changes on this route create an extraordinary variety of climates. During the tour you'll ride from warm subtropical valleys where temperatures can approach 90°F (32°C) to high Andean passes above 13,500 feet where temperatures may fall into the 30s°F (0–4°C). Passing showers are always possible in the mountains, while longer periods of rain are more common on the western slopes of the Andes during March, April, and early May.

Layering your riding gear is strongly recommended. Waterproof outerwear, warm gloves, breathable riding apparel, and quick-drying clothing will keep you comfortable as the weather changes throughout the day. For additional information, please review our Weather in Ecuador Guide.

Accommodations

Each evening you'll stay in carefully selected hotels, lodges, and mountain inns chosen not only for their comfort, but also for their character, hospitality, and proximity to the route. These accommodations are an important part of the Dirt Deluxe philosophy—challenging riding during the day followed by excellent food, comfortable lodging, and a chance to relax before the next adventure. Ecuador Freedom reserves the right to substitute accommodations of comparable quality when necessary and will notify you of any changes.

Packing List and Preparation

Prior to your arrival, we'll provide a detailed packing guide, travel information, and preparation materials to help you get ready for the trip. No knowledge of Spanish is required; your guide speaks both English and Spanish and will assist with communication, logistics, and local interactions throughout the tour.

We also recommend reviewing our Packing Guide before departure. A little preparation goes a long way, allowing you to focus on the ride, the scenery, and the unforgettable experiences that make Ecuador one of the world's premier adventure motorcycling destinations.

• Unlimited Mileage Motorcycle Rental 
• Knowledgeable, Experienced, Local Resident, Multilingual Guide
• Saddlebags or hard luggage system
• Luggage storage and locker use while riding
• Guaranteed departure policy (we go even if only one participant signs up - we never cancel tours!)
• Support Vehicle (5+ motorcycles)
• Single occupancy hotel rooms- your own private room each night at no extra charge!
• All meals
• Tolls
• Fuel
• Activities, visits, and tours listed in the itinerary and more
• Pre-tour 20% discount on any high-quality riding gear from the Klim website
• Souvenir T-Shirt
• Souvenir Decal
• VIP access to the Freedom After-Ride Lounge™ with a hot shower, library, gym, jacuzzi, and honor bar.

You do not have to pull your wallet out on our guided tours!

• 100% Refundable security deposit to cover any damage to the rental motorcycle
• Hotel accommodations before and after the tour in Quito
• Trip cancellation, medical, and emergency evacuation insurance
• Any activity not described in What's Included
• Meals not listed
• Alcoholic Beverages
• Gratuities for your guide and service providers

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