24 hours in Ecuador

10/12/07
I have now been in Ecuador for 24 hours. Let me give you the recap.

First, when connected to the internet here at the Sheraton Quito, everything is in Spanish, interesting.

My flight arrived without any problems, I got through immigration and customs easily, my luggage made it with me. And not surprisingly, no one was there to pick me up, (much like my last trip to Ecuador, except this time it was not midnight). After staring at the pay phone for about 5 minutes and trying to make a call, I finally asked someone and found out I needed to buy a special card to use that phone. Now I had the card, but phone numbers are weird here. The prefix is different depending on what you are calling (cell vs land line) and where you are calling from. After about 5 more minutes, I figured it out all by myself, and the call was made. About 10 minutes later my ride arrived and all was good.

I am staying at the Sheraton Hotel and we ate dinner at TGI Fridays (doesn’t really sound like I am in a foreign country, does it?)

Day 2 was a bit different. I joined the staff of Samaritan’s Purse for a picnic with the team for Operation Christmas Child. We drove about 1 hour up and down mountains with 15 people in the van. I saw many of the things that I love about Ecuador. The mountains are beautiful. There are cows randomly on the side of major highways. At one point today we were driving up a “hill”, about 5 people had to get out and walk up the hill because we could not get the van up the hill (when’s the last time you had to do that in the states).
The picnic was fun, the house it was at was beautiful, set on a hill, surrounded by lots of land. The food was good and the fellowship was great.

Tomorrow I am off to Cuenca.