I found a welding shop first thing in the morning, and it took about fifteen minutes to get it all to pieces; About another half hour to make a new bracket for the one that had fractured right through the bolt hole, and to weld the frame back to the support arm. And finaly another fifteen minutes to put it back together. The guy only wanted $5 for the job but I insisted on giving him $10 because he had done a great job, and done it quickly etc... Well, it made me feel better anyway :)))
Then I rode on to Cuenca, found a place to stay, and wandered around town to see what there was...
And there was quite a nice church, and a museum. In the museum there were some "shrunken heads" from rituals of some of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon. They were honestly about the size of your fist. The hair was thick and healthy looking, and the faces looked a bit distorted but very human... eyes closed and mouths stiched shut with long trailing threads! They were very interesting (and a bit disturbing too) to see.... But they said there were no photographs and I respected their request, so you will have to do without pictures of the heads... But the church was nice too :)
Next morning, I headed out of town through the morning traffic. I was a bit amused by one young policeman I saw riding on the back of a police bike (they often ride two-up) here. He clearly cared about his appearance and had as very crisp uniform on as well as the knee high black boots, peaked cap and reflective sunglasses... But the disturbing thing was the way he rode around with his hand on his gun all the time... definitely on his own little ego trip!
I took a quick picture and rode on by...
At my last fuel-up stop in Ecuador I met a very large and strange bug!... It was huge and colourful, and had a massive set of nippers... But it didnt seem to want to bite me when I picked it up... Again, I took a picture, let it go, and rode on.
I rode for longer than expected to get to the boarder. Its cos the roads are far windier in the mountains than they appear on the maps and that makes them both longer and slower to ride. Anyway, I got to the boarder at about 3pm and decided to cross anyway. Normally Id try not to do this after about 1pm because it can take a few hours and after that I need to ride into the next country and find a place to stay etc...
Id chosen a secondary crossing rather than the main one right on the coast. The main one has a bad reputation as far as I can tell for "being difficult", so I wanted to avoid that... but I didnt know what to expect from this smaller crossing point I was at.
But, this boarder was easy... It was the most pleasant crossing I have done (well, other than the US-Canada one). It all happened in a very friendly way but took about an hour.
Then I rode on for another hour to find a town with a place to stay. That wasnt too hard either...
So, now Im in Peru it seems :)))
