De Dia Una

Where to begin?

Ecuador so far has been fun, busy and tiring! Hannah and I are still getting used to the altitude but we are no longer out of breath when we walk!

August 8th/Day 1

I had 14 hours of travel time that day, with flights and layovers. I took dramamine for motion sickness and had only slept an hour the night before, so I slept right through all of my flights and a bit in the airport, so it actually went quite quickly.

On my flight to Houston I met a couple (they were actually divorced but got along quite well), probably in their late 50's. They were visiting their daughter who was teaching English in Quito. We started talking when the guy saw my NOLS sticker on my water bottle and turns out he lives really close to Lander, Wyoming - which is where NOLS is based. They were a funny "couple". The woman was very apprehensive about flying but didn't want to take any medicine so her solution was to drink during the flights. So I landed in the Panama airport with them and they both had been drinking (but were harmless and quite funny) they bought me a beer and entertained me while we waited for our plane to Quito. On my flight to Quito I met an Ecuadorian who lives in little canada! He has lived there for 2 years. He works as a taxi driver for Minneapolis. He was coming to visit. Small world!

Waiting to go through immigration took a good 30 minutes, there were multiple flights coming. Me and my friends from Wyoming were looking through the baggage claim for at least 20 minutes and couldn't find our bags. Finally I went up to the baggage claim office and they told my bag had missed a connection and that it would arrive in the afternoon the next day. I was fine with that, I had all the important things with me and a day isn't very long. So we got to Ivan's house around 1am.

Poor Ivan had been called on short notice to receive an award (from the president??) or something to do with his education or something - I don't remember - but it was in Guayaquil the very next day. So was rushing trying to get a ticket the night before and had to be at the airport at 5am the next morning. So he was a bit frenzied when he picked us up from the airport. We all went home, Hannah and I crashed in bed, and slept till noon the next day!