Life's a Stitch

Ecuador will be divided into three: Quito, the Amazon rain forest, and the Galapagos. Every new destination gets better and better. Participating in an organized tour can have its challenges. Thankfully this trip has gone very smoothly. Today, however, our included breakfast wasn't provided due to an early flight. The hotels will usually open the dining room early or provide a boxed brekkie, but not today. Instead we hit McDonalds at the airport. You can laugh, but I find MacD's brekkie a form of comfort food, so it wasn't all that bad.

The other glitch today involved the scheduling of flights. Instead of a direct flight from Buenos Aires to Quito, Ecuador, we overshot it and flew first to Panama City, with a long layover. One member of our group is a travel agent and she agreed, the airport in Panama City was one of the most expensive she's experienced. Note to self for future travel.

The schedule usually includes a guided city tour, either walking or by bus, on the first morning at each location. The Quito tour took us to the old town and continued on foot. The first stop was the basilica, where I put on my brave face and climbed the two story ladder from the roof to the top of the tower.

It felt quite safe with metal guard rails, however, the glass landings were intimidating. What a view! My brave tourmate, Sue:

At the basilica gift shop I bought a little bronze alpaca, part of our tradition while travelling: seeking additions for our Christmas nativity. Actually, it’s a year round nativity on its own shelf in a glass cabinet.

Background story: when we moved to White Rock, a box fell off our overloaded pickup truck, C said it seemed to explode into a million pieces when it hit the highway. It was late at night and there was no way to recover it. We wracked our brains for a long time trying to figure out what we lost. One Christmas we realized we couldn't find our ceramic Christmas tree and beloved nativity. It made sense that the little lights from the tree were what C saw explode into so many pieces.

I went on a mission to try to replace our olive wood figures, the antique lead geese that were my dad's from Poland, and a variety of additions we accumulated over the years. Thanks to ebay I was able to find the most important pieces. Still missing are a painted wooden angel (a gift from one of our German students), a clear 1/2" plastic Scottie dog, and some Hallmark miniature bunnies my mother had given our children. Just one of those disappointing things that happen, relatively minor in the scheme of things, and it's fun adding new items. 

Following the tour, which included a chocolate tasting, we stayed on the bus for a four hour ride to the Amazon rain forest lodge. At the top of a mountain pass we were encouraged to walk a bit in the high altitude 4.071m (13356ft), a preview of what was to come at Cuzco and Machu Picchu.