Day XIV- January 15th, 2oo7
We were up bright and early the next morning - our bags at our door ready to be picked up and ready to check out of the room. The bills at the front desk were in horrible order and completely inaccurate. We ate breakfast in shifts as we took turns at the desk settling our debts. The resort had given us a great deal of grief and were happy to get out of there.
The bus finally shoved off- just as overpacked as it had been on the way there. I was in the back, packed in with luggage on my feet and a person on either side of me. Fortunately I fell asleep within five minutes of our journey.
The next time I woke up we were in Quito, back at the airport again. We got our tickets, payed our taxes, went through customs and sat down to wait for our flight to board. We waited, and waited, and waited. At the time we were supposed to depart came, 12:15, they announced that the flight would not be taking off, and that we were to wait until they made announcement at 2:15 (they didn't say what they would announce, just that they were going to announce SOMETHING). We were given meal tickets for the time being and our selection was narrowed to "Chicken," "Chicken," or "Some mystery meat-like product that we'll just call Chicken" because we were the last of about 200 people to eat. We played trivia, cards, and did various other things to pass the time. At 2:15 they said the plane was broken and that they weren't sure what was going to happen. At 3:15 they announced that we were going to depart at 6:15 to Guayaquil. Officially, at 5:15 we left for Guayaquil where we were to be considered "En Transito" and they were going to bring us to a hotel for the night, where we would be brought back to the airport the next day in hopes to fit us on the same flight.

Matt relaxing in the airport

Sounds good to me- 5-star hotel, for free. 5-star dinner, for free. A night in a city that we had landed in four times and never got to see, for free! What was there to complain about?!
The 5-star dinner was quite possibly the best meal of my life. We each got separate rooms- no more roommates! We quick ate our dinner and hailed a cab to go to the Malecon (basically the boardwalk of Guayaquil). Six of us piled into a very small cab.

Three of six of us...in one very, very tiny cab

We arrived at the Malecon and wandered around for awhile. There were fun bars and restraunts- tons of culture all over the place. The entire walk was strewn with statues- one which commemorated a figure Matt had done a great deal of research on. He had done so much research that he knew that this statue had existed in this city before we even arrived. We searched it out and finally found this statue of Simon Bolivar and San Martin.

He was in awe- in his absolute glory


They needed a closer look...


Justin, Mateo, San Martin y Simon Bolivar


Matt and Darian in front of a Techno-colored Pirate Ship

We walked around for over an hour. When we decided we were about set with everything we had seen, we hailed a cab back to the hotel. We searched for a good bar or club, but everything our hotel seemed very...closed. We found an alimentacion and headed back to the room to play some cards. We recapped our trip, had many visitors and reflected on the good and bad. We all collapsed around 3Am.
Except for Chinito of course...he passed out way sooner than the rest of us:


We decided that we were only in this city by chance and that we doubted we would ever be back, so we set a wake up call for 7am the next morning to see the rest of what we wanted to.