During my 18 month bike tour from Alaska to Argentina, I took frequent rest days from cycling to rest my legs. The town of Loja in Ecuador was where I took one of them.
By The lifted lorax at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Pauk using CommonsHelper., Public Domain, Link
Rest day in Loja, Ecuador
Blog post written July 2010
Today was a well earned day off from cycling, although far from a day of doing nothing. Time to get some laundry done, get new brake blocks for the bike, send a parcel back to England, look at the road ahead, and of course update the website.
I seem all set to move on tomorrow to the village of Vilcabamba, and then from there, will continue heading south on an unpaved and very little used route into Peru.
It should take four days or so, of which I expect three to be extremely difficult.
The few cyclists blogs that I managed to track down for this section were all done by people cycling in twos and threes, and most of these seem to have taken a ride in a truck somewhere along the way, which is something I hope to avoid.
Still, there will be some tough days ahead, and the next update will probably come from the Peruvian town of San Ignacio if all goes to plan.
PS – A “hope everything is ok” and “get well soon” to all family members who seem to be rotating turns visiting the hospital right now.