we left for the airport at 3 ... we got stuck in odd highway traffic for a saturday afternoon .... got to the airport eventually .... parked in b24 (b for beck, easy to remember, plus i wrote it down in my journal) .... and we toted and rolled our ten bags through check in, security, the train, and all the way to our gate ....
above, a pic of our ten bags ... five rollers and five go bags .... we were pretty self sufficient .... our evening flight was five and a half hours ..... i thought sophie would sleep, but the lure of the tv was too much .... gnomeo and juliet was a hit .....
we arrived in quito LATE ... and the immigration and custom lines were s.l.o.w. s.l.o.w.e.r. s.l.o.w.e.s.t. .... crazy slow ....i wasn't sure sophie was going to make it .... she didn't walk the corral lines with us, she sat at each turning point and waited for us to get to her ..... but she did make it.... and then, once our bags were scanned, there were nine hundred and ninety nine ecuadorians standing outside the door waiting and waving with balloons and banners and flags .... it was like a carnival ... or the finish line for a marathon ..... seriously, they sell balloons at the airport so you won't be oudone in looking celebratory for whomever you happen to be greeting ... no one greeted us ... and it was actually so crowded that you couldn't even tell where to go .... we took a taxi .... it took three tries, first taxi was too small for five folks and ten bags, duh ... and then the second cab was a mini van but they couldn't get the alarm to stop honking .... but the third one was big enough ... and ... um ... fast and memorable... quito cabbies could take defensive driving classesfrom new york cabbies .... our cabbie was fernando cillacres .... he wanted to drive us around quito all week .... but he never quite got that we were leaving in ten hours for the galapagos islands ....
we got to the raddison by midnight .... we had rooms next to each other but not attached, so i took the double bed room with julia .... andy, drew and julia took the other .... they had a double and a freakishly large single bed ....
6am wake up call ...
brush your teeth with bottled water ....
breakfast at the hotel ....
a 7 o'clock shuttle that never arrived ....
and a less eventful 7.20 taxi ride to the airport ....
the quito airport code is UIO .... why the u and not the q? that's the kind of thing i think about when i'm falling asleep at night ...
the quito aeroport was definitely the most confusing bit of the whole trip .... only confounding bit, actually .... no one really knew where anyone was supposed to be .... we stood in numerous lines for a variety of things ... and i know we did it all in the wrong order, cause there was lots of no, no, no and pointing .... there was a pay your tax spot, and an xray your bag spot, that was entirely useless cause you could have easily handed someone a gun or a knife or contraband fresh fruit after the xray process ....
we checked our rollers cause they were more than 8 kilos .... and we made it to our plane ....
our plane went to guayaquill ... which i pronounced gw-eye-a-quill ... but is actually pronouced gee-a-key by folks on p.a. systems ...
if connecting to galapagos, you weren't allowed to disembark in guayaquill....but they did come around and make you unbuckle your seat belt ... just in case?
the flight to galapagos was about two hours .... we all slept .... i woke up long enough to eat the plantain chips and chips ahoy cookes that were passed out ....
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