De Dia Dos

August 9th/Day 2

After sleeping till noon, Hannah and I were left to fend for ourselves in the house. Ivan told us he would b back in the late afternoon.

I called the airport company that had my bag and started to explain what I needed and the lady said she didn't speak English so I put Hannah on the phone. They sorted everything out (its quite handy in these circumstances to have someone who can speak spanish so well!!). We had to be to the airport by 4:30 to get the bag. We were near the airport so we google mapped a way to get there. We started walking and decided we would stop somewhere to eat on the the way. We realized the altitude issue once we started walking. We felt out of breath just walking! We thought walking around would help us get acclimated faster, which may or may not be true. We ate at a pizza place which was very good, the meal for us combined was 6 dollars! That is the great thing about latin american travel. We tried to get to the airport but we couldn't find the entrance. So we hailed a cab and got to the airport. Picked up my bag and walked back (again thinking this would help us with acclimating).

We got back to Ivan's, well it was a bit of a mess because we didn't remember the address, we knew generally where his house was but we had mistaken a place a block away for his house. We found a phone to call him on and he said he had been waiting for us, we told him we would be there in a minute. So we waited outside of the gated entry and no one was opening the door for us, we were thoroughly confused. Eventually I told Hannah I would walk a block up to check and see if it looked familiar. As I walked up a woman approached me and asked in spanish if I was lost and if I was from the United States, I was a bit confused at what she was saying but she said "Ivan" and pointed up the street. It was Ivan's mother. Ivan had been waiting for us for an hour (we had called him from the airport) so I imagine he thought we would take a cab back. Anyways it was funny. Ivan had to go to meet someone so his mother brought us to the house and made us coffee and gave us cake. She talked to us for a good 20 minutes, well she talked to Hannah, I understood about half of what she was saying and tried to speak when I could. Ivan called and said that he would be back at 8 and he would take us to a nice restaurant. So we showered, dressed nice and he came home and took us out to a place to eat dinner. It was a local place where tourist don't know about. It is a very contemporary, artisy place with a bar a restaurant and a small clothing short as well as an art gallery. It was very cool to see, we didn't take pictures but we will likely go back before we leave Quito. Some of Ivan's friends were there that we got to meet them.

Hannah and I were feeling very tired but Ivan wanted to take us to a place to get a coffee that had an amazing view of the city. Here are some pictures of the view from the cafe.

I was very tired and thought I would konk out when I got home to lay in bed and sleep, but when I laid down I was wide awake. I finally asleep for a couple of hours then woke up at about 2:30 and was awake until about 4:30, then slept till 10:30. Oh well, my sleep got better in the days to follow.

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!