And we made it

Two layovers and three ham and cheese hot pockets later we were in Quito. The half sleeping pill rocked our worlds and the 11 hours flying felt like nothing. I forgot my jacket on the plane so I had to wait for everyone to deplane; therefore we were last in line at customs. Heading over to pick up our luggage, I saw Andy’s bag but not mine. I though oh great, the 5lb box of nails for my friend Tom’s sister freaked customs out and I no longer have a bag. I got it and all was right in the world. We took a bus to the Secret Garden Hostel I booked; along the way we saw some very nice houses which had electric fences around them, way better than crappy rebar in the windows. We dropped our stuff off and we went out for food. The Old Town is very quaint, pretty, and Christian. We tried to walk into a church but it say the service was not for tourist, and there was a service of course at 3pm on a Thursday.

Walking along the streets we saw a protest, either for or again the government, it was hard to say. We thought it was a good idea to take shelter from the rain with the other protesters, then we realized what was going on. I thought back to a comment by Kevin (Andy’s friend) when he goes to Tijuana for work “I just stay away from any place that has police and I’m fine”. About that time we thought it was a good time for food. We found a cute little restaurant on the third floor. We had empanditas and a pork/plantain dish, along with cervesas and roasted corn kernels. It was a delicious way to start off our Ecuadorian food feast. The rain stopped and we headed back to the hostel and had some cervesas on the roof. The view was amazing and we took some good pictures. We were very tired so we headed back to our nice little room with a painting of a tiger on drugs. Andy ended up passing out at 830 and I shortly after called it a night.