Sunday
August 31st, 2014.
Cusco,
Peru / Lima, Peru / Quito, Ecuador
Its
5:30am and time to get up for our flight to Ecuador. Time of day no longer
matters though. Our standards have changed and now all wake up calls
past 3am are acceptable.
We
take an overpriced cab to the small airport in Cusco and prepare for our flight
to Ecuador (via Lima). The entire flight is long (a little over 5 hours), but
we are not hiking, so we are both happy.
After
a quick layover in Lima, we land in Quito, Ecuador for Vacation: Round 2. Prior
to departing the US I had booked a driver through our hotel to meet us at the
airport. We anxiously search the arrivals area, but we have been
stood up (its okay, we are getting used to it). We find a taxi driver and explain
where our hotel is located and he happily obliges us. Cab rides from the
airport in Quito are a flat fee of $20USD. We are very surprised when the cab
ride takes almost an hour to get to our destination (Wait a minute - did we just
scam the cabbie?!?).
We
are staying in a hip part of town and are ready to check in and explore. Our
hotel is really more of a hostel and the desk attendant is asleep on a couch in
the lobby when we arrive (its 1pm, also known as, a good time to take a nap).
We begin to explain that we are checking in when it becomes clear that there is
a major communication barrier. I am speaking what I thought was Spanish, but I
am making no sense, whatsoever. Laura, is faring slightly better than me, but it’s
a struggle. Many hand signals and overzealous facial expressions eventually earn us a key to our room and two shower towels. After dumping our gear in
our very large room, we head across the street to a super cute pub/restaurant.
I
am officially ready for my first post-trail alcoholic beverage. I order a Heineken
and Laura gets a pina colda. I feel the effects of my beverage quiet quickly
(we are still 9200 feet above sea level) and unexpectedly begin to laugh-cry
into my beer. They are tears of joy – I am so happy to be out of Peru!
After
our celebratory drinks, we take a short walk to the historical center of town.
Central Quito is actually one of the UNESCO world heritage sites. It is
beautiful, but, honestly, it looks a lot like San Francisco (but with more prostitutes).
After a nice walk, and some silly, drunken photography, we head back to our part
of town, where all of the bars and restaurants are located.
So
far Quito is awesome. It’s beautiful, the streets all have sidewalks, it doesn’t
stink… clearly society here is much more advanced than Peru. For this reason we
are looking forward to a really good meal as we are both (almost) ready to
start eating again.
Unfortunately,
the food here disappoints, severely. After reviewing an endless row of menus we
go into a small diner that is playing 80s music videos on at least 5 different
big screen TVs. It is way cute and we are looking forward to eating when the
server informs us that they do not have any veggie burgers and their vegetarian
options are extremely limited. Bummer. The search for dinner continues.
Eventually
we end up at an Ecuadorian version of TGI Fridays. It’s not ideal but both of
our stomachs are still hurting pretty badly and they have potato skins on the
menu, so we take a seat. We split a big sampler platter, which is pretty bad.
It has potato skins (with un-melted cheese on top), chips, cheese sticks, and
few other snacks. We are both offended by the potato skins, but it doesn’t stop
us from eating them all. After dinner we go out for a drink. Neither of us
wants to, but its habit.
Eventually
we end up back at our hotel room. I take a long, super-hot shower and, finally,
start to recover from Vacation: Round 1. We fall asleep relatively early and
will have to wake up early to get a cab back to the airport for our flight to
the Galapagos Islands.
Tomorrow
we will finally get back to sea level!
