Our next day started at 7am for our 77km bike ride from Papallacha, where we met Simon who had also had an encounter with the pick pockets only on a more severe scale, he had had his backpack slashed at the bottom when he had it in front of him on the bus, he didn’t have anything taken luckily (Incident count 3). We met with our guide, Fernando in a well used Toyota Land Cruiser.

We picked up our bikes on route to Papallacha and started our crazy journey up the mountain. On the way up there were some risky overtaking manouvres including overtaking 2 lorries and another car on a blind bend and driving very close to the cliff edge, for the rest journey some of us avoiding looking out the front window again.

We reached the start of our decent, slightly higher than normal, 4100m because our guide said we were very lucky with the weather given the season. We could see the snow capped tops of the Andean mountain range including Cotopaxi, Chimborazo which would be climbing in the next few days in the distance.

He was so suprised by the weather he began taking pictures himself. Because it was such a beautiful day our guide suggested going further up the mountain for more off-road mountain biking however this distracted him which led him to forget the bag of helmets and knee/elbow pads which he didn’t realise until the end of the day when were giving our equipment back.

The start was on an off-road section containing lots of uneven ground and loose gravel surfaces, it gave us the opportunity to put the well used bikes (with no suspension) through their paces, there were a few close calls mostly involving going around the uneven corners to fast.

After we had travelled the first 42km of the off-road section we stopped at some very relaxing hot springs (and some very cold), we were only given 1 hour in the springs which I can see why, any longer and I’m not sure we would want to get back on our bikes for the next 35km downhill ride back to Quito.

Unfortunately our fantastic day couldn’t be left that way due to a minor problem in the room next door. Kev was fast a sleep, I was listening to music and Mike was using the laptop - John came into the room and asked why there was water on the floor around John’s bag. News to us, so we began to investigate initially we thought it was from my hydration pocket in my rucksack, John’s had leaked when we were hiking in the Canyons. Nope it wasn’t that - John moved his bag and within 10-15 minutes the whole floor was covered in water.

Went down to reception to report it, they might mop it up though it looked like it was coming from the room next door. The toilet had overflowed there was poo all over the floor and was what had leaked into our room, at 11.30 we commence moving to another room not too far away luckily.