Made it to Quito

I do recommend the Holiday Inn for their pillows, if you are like me and don’t want to suffocate in the oversized, really fluffy ones. We spent an uneventful night at the Miami Holiday Inn, and made it back to the Miami Airport about 4 hours early for our flight. Going thru security at the airport made us realize that international fliers can be just as stupid as domestic fliers when it comes to packing their carry-on and following directions. Also, we learned that the shortest line is not necessarily the fastest. It may be short because everyone had bailed out. Ah well, we had plenty of time so we didn’t get frustrated, but found it amusing.

Since we plan to eat Ecuadorian food for the next 5 weeks, we used our food vouchers at a sushi restaurant, Sushi Maki in Concourse D. It was quite good. I had the sushi tuna salad and Phillip had fried rice. As you can tell, plenty of food. We took the leftover fried rice with us and I ate it as a mid-afternoon snack before we boarded the plane. I should have saved it for dinner as the dinner food, something like beef tips over mashed potatoes was pretty bad.

Our flight to Quito left on time and arrived about 10 minutes early. We had a bit of panic as our luggage never came off the plane onto the conveyor belt. Guessing that it may have taken an earlier flight than us, we went to the nearby counter. Sure enough, it had and the staff member retrieved the bags from storage for us. Something we liked as we left the Quito Airport was that they had an attendant who actually verified the name on the airline’s luggage tag with you passport picture and name!

We took a $10 taxi ride to our hotel. It was a small car and a fast driver. He cut in and out of traffic, and on this 4 lane road that I think was cut out of the side of the mountain, he got his downhill speed up to 120 kmp. I’m think that may be around72 mph… whatever it translate, it was pretty fast. Our hotel, Hotel San Franscisco de Quito, is an old building that is a hotel. We do have a private bath. No windows to the outside and it smells kinda funky, like an Asian supermarket. We like it though, as it has charm. The pictures were taken from diagonal corners in the room. The ceilings are about 12 feet high or more.

Well, I hope I can upload this tonight. Tomorrow, we fly to Manta on the coast.