Welcome to Ecuador, Finca Sommerwind

It was cold last night and Christine turned on the furnace in the morning. It was border crossing day and the border was only 17 minutes away. Ioverlander reports this to be one of the easiest border crossings. No photocopies or money. Everything is electronically done on both sides. 

I first filled up gas and used up almost all of the remaining Colombian pesos and went to the border and sure enough it was a quick painless process exiting Colombia. I changed the remaining $4 in pesos to dollars (Ecuador uses the US dollar) and drove to the Ecuadorian side and parked and got stamped in and got the temporary import permit. It all took just over an hour. Not bad. The roads were good and the gas was cheap, less than $3 a gallon and diesel was less than $2. It was a dollar more for each in Colombia. 

We climbed some high roads and I had to slow down once but never stopped and was able to keep going and controlled the temperature. 

We stopped at a campground on a lake near Ibarra called Finca Sommerwind owned by a German man and his Ecuadorian wife. It is an overlander campground and has a nice restaurant with German food. We were happy to see four massive overlander rigs already parked with their owners milling about and a couple in a Mercedes G wagon. There were four kids playing around and three dogs. It was paradise and we spent the rest of the day there getting to know everyone. We first had lunch of a ham and cheese sandwich, German brat, and a charcuterie board. The leftovers went to the three dogs standing by. The kids quickly made friends and ran around. The other overlanders were Germans, Swiss, and Dutch. Four of them were heading north and three of them had been traveling off and on together for five weeks since Peru and one of them was headed south like us. The Swiss were full time on the road and had been in South America for seven years but flew back home for the Swiss summers. One of the Germans was working, selling some meat packaging equipment and was married to a Colombian woman. The Dutch family was traveling south and has been in North America long enough to attend the last two Burning Mans with their two kids and had spent a year on the Sill Road route in an even larger overlanding vehicle. They were in a Scania chassis with the largest V8 engine 16L with over 700hp. They had an even larger rig for their silk road drive. 

Unfortunately three rigs were heading north tomorrow and we would be headed south. 

We had dinner in the RV and the German kids ate at the restaurant with their family and came back to the RV to play and our kids who take up to three hours to eat ask, "How did you finished dinner so quickly?" Hm...

A German man pulled up in a BMW convertible and had taken out his passenger seat and had built a narrow sleeping platform. He said he recommended a vehicle with higher ground clearance and possibly all wheel drive. He has been in South America since January.