Decker Trip - Panamerican Highway 1966

Nov 4. The trucks driving by during the night scared me half to death a couple of times. Sounded like loud thunder claps. We had a good rest though, and the sun came out soon after getting up. We had nothing to eat. Gordie and Jean went to the nearest house and, fortunately, bought a dozen eggs which we fried with canned meat for breakfast.
We had a wonderful view from our vantage point on top of a mountain, but it afforded no privacy. Fortunately there was a road canal just beyond us which gave us the privacy we needed.
The drive from Pasto to [Iprales] is perfectly beautiful--different and exciting with the kaleidoscopic mountainsides changing constantly--the patterns of the crazy quilt differing at every turn of the road. The road is gravel but good with wide curves and gradual grades.
Got into Iprales at noon. No aduana open till 2:00, so we ate at the Munich Restaurant--a very ordinary--if that--meal. That cook would never do for the Ritz, and Ken said, not even for him.
Got through the aduana soon and over into Ecuador. The road is horrible cobblestone, though fortunately there are dirt covered parts which make traveling smoother, though not faster. It was so late already that Ken decided to drive through to Ibarra. It was a nightmarish trip for me--narrow, winding mountain roads in the dark. Every once in a while we passed through little valley villages and then up into the mountains again. The trip down into the valley was awful, creeping, shaky, and noisy. But from the bottom up, the road was wider with better grades and wider curves. We were like zombies getting into Ibarra about 9:30. There was nowhere to park in the streets or in a parking lot, so we took a room at a crummy "hotel" and paid 10 sucres a bed. It was a dirty room, so we put down the ground cloth and spread 2 sleeping bags on it. We had a potty and a basin of water, but there was a sign saying hot bath at any hour. We were all worn out and fell in after helping to make up the beds.