Lasso to Wild Camp outside Cotopaxi: We venture onto the TEMBR

Friday August 16, 2019, 23 km (14 miles) - Total so far: 711 km (442 miles)

The route we began today may well be the most challenging section of our entire trip. We plan to complete the Trans Ecuador Mountain Bike Route, dirt version around the Cotopaxi volcano. We knew this would be tough and we hope to enjoy it, so we are budgeting a lot more time than most folks. It seems like most do it in less than 3 full days, but I’m going to assume it’ll take us five. Mike and I spent the morning visiting grocery stores as we want to be prepared to go 3.5-4 days without a restaurant or store - this is probably overdoing it, but having hungry kids will certainly make for a bad experience. We find ourselves eating things here that we would never eat at home. Sure there are lots of new fruits that we carry regularly and meals are filled with vegetables and simple ingredients, but also snickers bars and oreos to keep spirits up. We regularly cook with Bonela - Ecuadorian margarine, because it’s shelf stable, comes in small packets, and adds fat and flavor to simple meals. The kids have also been buying doritos occasionally as a treat along the way, which we would never allow at home (all those artificial flavors and colors!!!)