This Place is Full of Friggin Mountians!

A sign of what´s to come? My friend took me to National airport yesterday two hours early. But the airport was dead. So we got some lunch to kill time. When I thought I better get to the gate, I pulled up my bag and went through the ropes to security. The woman checking tickets and IDs at the end of the line looked over my ticket and suggested I walk down to the terminal with the gate I would be leaving from. Right. Stopped short. Once on the other side of the airport, I went through security again, this time with no problems.

After a two hour layover in Atlanta, I boarded my plane to Quito. I was the only gringo on the flight. No kidding. And I was in the last row so I did inventory a few times just to make sure. This is why it struck me as odd when the pilots continued to update the passengers of the Florida/Georgia game. I was seated next to a man who was on his way home to see his wife and kids for four months. He has been working in the States for the past 15 years and goes home when he can to see his family (and apparently make additions to his family while he´s home).

We ended up chatting for most of the flight down. Nice guy. He told me Quito was a great city, but to never go out after dark. Awesome. Oh, and the movies they showed were Lisenced to Wed and Evan Almighty. See neither.

As we decended, the same man told me to look out the window. I saw thousands, millions of lights. Right below us. He said "this is Quito". The airport is right in the middle of the city. And the runway is as short as you would imagine one to be at an airport in the middle of a city. The plane braked hard. I prayed. We survived. Welcome to Ecuador.

My coworker´s girlfriend was there waiting for me after customs. Her father was parked right out front and they drove me through the night to my hostel. Turns out my hostel was right in the middle of the Saturday night bar scene. The girlfriend took me into the hostel and made sure I was settled before leading me back out onto the steets for a quick tour of the surrounding streets. Then a tour of the bars with her friends. I spent the next couple of hours grasping at whatever Spanish I could understand as everyone chatted away. But my host did a brilliant job of translating when I looked confused. Which was most of the time. Fighting back suggestions to go dancing from her friends, my host finally walked me back to my hostel and said she would contact me in the morning for a drive out to the countryside with her family. I turned out the lights, laid down and managed to pass out immediately despite the club noises just outside my window.

It was the truck parked in front of my window that woke me at 6am. Well, not the truck. The truck´s alarm which was set to "don´t breathe on me". It went off no fewer than a dozen times over the next three hours. I finally got up and took a look out my window for my first glimpse of the city in day light. There were mountains every where! Who knew? Today I would be driving up, over, through, and down the mountains surrounding Quito.

Next installment: the country.