Day 12 Loja to Catacocha

Today we were to experience our first serious unpaved sections of the trip.  We left Loja and the weather was good as we started to climb up to just over 2600 metres which had a few small unpaved sections.  However, once we started to descend the other side we soon came across our first stretch of downhill unpaved for about 5K, made more scary by a very strong wind behind us!  Soon after this we re-joined the Pan American Highway and descended for another 10K or so which dropped us down to around 1300 metres.
It was not long before we started another serious climb which was interrupted by the lunch truck at around the 50K mark.  After lunch we continued to climb for another 10K with an average gradient of 10% and taking us back up to 2350 metres.  Once the summit was reached it was a series of ups and downs until the last climb of about 8K of pot-holed road up to Catacocha, an interesting village perched high up on a hill.  The weather was a vast contrast from the cold at the top of the climb a few days ago, today had reached 40C with 2100 metres of climbing spread over the 94K.

Relief after the scary unpaved downhill section!