An eventful 36 hours!

We are finally in Quito, Ecuador. The good news is that we made it in one piece and our bags WERE successfully reunited with us when we arrived at Quito airport (my experience in China has made me very nervous about parting with my bags especially with a fairly tight connection to make). The other side of the story is that we made it to Quito a day later than we were supposed to. Most of you know that I am a nervous flyer to say the least (ask Simon about a now infamous flight on a smallish plane back from Scotland if you need verification of the level of my nerves and what I put him, and the other poor passengers close enough to hear me, through!) and I am happy to report that the first leg of our journey (Gatwick to Houston, Texas) was pleasantly uneventful. We took off and landed on time and the flight was blissfully smooth if punctuated by some interestingly laid back Continental Airlines staff! Arriving in Houston ten and a half hours later afforded us welcome relief as we had an hour and a half to get off the plane, stretch our legs and eat some relatively edible food.

It was all going too smoothly and we were obviously being far too smug about the whole affair. We again boarded our connecting flight to Quito on time if a little anxious that we would be sitting next the (relentlessly) screaming child. The flight gods blessed us again and we were in fact at the opposite end of the plane, again a self satisfied smile must have crossed my face as we were repaid in abundance by the events that followed! The five hour flight is notoriously (I have subsequently discovered) bumpy and a little unreliable (in fact I was told today that 80% of flights in the last two months have suffered a similar fate to ours...shame we didn't know that before we booked it!). As I sighed a (barely audible) sigh of relief that the pilot had again (in my humble opinion) accomplished the impossible and made it to cruising altitude without any drama and the flight attendant was telling us that food would shortly be served, the flight gods decided that our run of luck was coming to an end. As the plane appeared to plummet by about a kilometre (I know, I know...Simon also tells me it's much less but I'm going on 'feel' here!) my barely audible sigh turned itself into a very sharp (and very audible) intake of breath as my nails plunged into poor Simon's hand. The flight attendant, also obviously a bit shaken, tried to turn of the microphone pretty pronto as machines started beeping all over the show. When the plane recovered its position (tenths of a second later I'm sure) the other passengers again struck up their conversations but there was a distinctly nervous edge to their chatter.

We then went through considerable turbulence until we were about half an hour away from Quito, at which point we were informed that bad weather conditions and in particular very low visibility due to fog was putting our landing at Quito airport into question. If you are unfamiliar with Quito, it is situated in bowl surrounded on all sides by mountains. Luckily for us we had a very informed fellow sat behind us who proceeded to explain to the entire cabin (you know the type...talks very loud and knows it, laughs hysterically at his own jokes and clearly enjoys being the one who's been there and done that) that due to a recent accident on landing at Quito airport which apparently damaged the instrument landing system, the pilots are understandably a little anxious about landing there. He also helpfully educated us on the difficulties of landing at the airport in general and explained that pilots have to specially trained for the privilege...GREAT! As you can imagine this all added to the pleasure of my flying experience...

Anyway to cut what is becoming a long story just a little bit shorter, we were informed after half an hour in a VERY bumpy holding pattern outside Quito, that the airport had been closed and that we would be diverted to Guayaquil. And that is exactly what happened. We arrived, and by that time the original screaming baby had very understandably been joined by several other screaming babies (I did really feel for their poor parents but it was not fun nonetheless) which made for quite a noisy cabin full of tired and grumpy passengers. The cabin crew by this time were skulking in first class where they cleverly avoided the need to answer questions from the aforementioned customers. You would think that if this has in fact happened to 80% of flights in the last two months that someone would have implemented a system for such an event. Well you might think that...we thought that as did the many new friends we had made by this point. Guess who had all the answers? Oh yeah he certainly did! 'We'll be sleeping in the terminal' he informed us ('we have four hotels organised', one of the flight attendants finally offered); 'they won't let us have our baggage', he continued (PLEASE SHUT UP, I thought!). Rather unfortunately for all concerned, he was in fact fairly well versed in (almost inevitable) outcome of this diverstion. We did indeed sleep in airport terminal although sleep is probably not the best word to use for the way I spent those hours. And, we did not get our baggage! The airport was light, bright and noisy all night as you can probably imagine. As it is indeed the festive season the staff were kind enough to play 3 or 4 Christmas carols on a continuous loop for approximately 12 hours (only occasionally broken by the announcement of a flight (never ours) that was about to depart 'on time'!).

Back to the beginning then I guess. We did eventually make it to Quito late this morning. We have checked into our hostel which is called The Magic Bean and seems to be great. I"ll add a link to my links site when I get a minute. As you can imagine, no photos to show you of any interest today but I thought I'd include the one at the top so you can see how I spent my first night in South America.

I'm stopping now.

Sarah