Ecuador!

(our hostel)

We (Lau-ooh-ra and Esteban) arrived in Quito safe and sound yesterday evening a bit before 23:00 after a brief (briefer than expected!) layover in Atlanta, where our biggest entertainment was a row of payphones (yes, they still have those) dominated by Mormon missonaires phoning home before they embarked on their missions to who knows where... For the first time in my entire life, listening to the announcements on the airport speakers paid off as I faintly overheard that last call was being announced for our Quito flight 40 minutes early!, we said good bye to the missionairies, raced to the plane, only to find out we were 20th in line for takeoff, glad they rushed it...

Our biggest adventure of the evening involved the innagraul test of the nifty water purifying gadget that the Gelbergs procured in Santa Barbara and skeptical Harris confirmed the efficacy of via an online study by what we hope were respectable md´s... passing Harris´s google test, we went in for the real thing... (SO FAR SO GOOD!)

Today (Martes) we headed over to the potentially very useful South American Explorers club that has free internet for us in all the major cities we will be visiting (which will help us keep in touch) and a bunch of other nice amenities which should make our travels easier, more productive and more enjoyable. This also put us conveniently near Quito Nuevo and a section of town dubbed ¨Gringolandia¨ (think Rosarito in Ecuador), its like backpackers disneyland. There were some useful shops nearby and not far from Quito´s ¨Fisherman´s Wharf¨or ¨Union Square¨was una calle full of local Quitenos walking around in suits and work clothes, local students, some tourists, etc. This area holds more promise. More or less, today was about getting a feel for Quito. Though Gringolandia wasn´t all bad...

Oh, and we booked our flight to Cuenca... we will be headed there tomorrow for a homestay and a week of Spanish instruction with a bit of fun and sightseeing mixed in. There is a nearby town of Inca ruins which is supposed to be relatively easy to reach and cool, we´ll test both of those hypothses in the coming weeks...

p.s. for the footie fan followers of this blog, Phil, dempsey is on the main us soccer page ahead of the match v spain tomorrow, good luck americanos, make it respectable...

http://www.ussoccer.com/