Travel Adventure Epistle

Buenos dias!

Today is my fifth day in Ecuador, and so much has happened in those five days that I could probably write a small book about it. So here is my “travel epistle” with all the details. Right now I am sitting at a table in the Gomezcuello’s house in Cuenca Ecuador, looking out the window at the white wall with a red tiled top that surrounds the house. Here in Ecuador, all of the houses are surrounded by eight or ten foot walls, often made of stone or brick and metal. Each wall leads into the next, and all of the houses are connected. The Gomezcuello’s house is three stories high, and I am staying in a room on the second floor that overlooks the surrounding houses. The Gomezcoello’s house is only a couple of blocks from the Paz de Dios (peace of God) church, and the bilingue school.

I best start from the beginning of my trip so that I don’t miss anything. I left from Calgary on May 7th at 7:15 in the evening with Air Canada. That flight took me to the Los Angeles airport at 9:30 or so in the evening. Before landing, I got to see a forest fire burning near LA from the air, which was interesting. At LA, I had been expecting to arrive at terminal 6, and have my next flight leaving from terminal six. However, because of backlogged air traffic, my flight docked at terminal 3, which is on the opposite side of the huge airport. I had a bit of an adventure taking a shuttle bus and searching for the right place to get my boarding passes for the next two flights. I began to experience Spanish culture right from the LA. When I found the check in place for Copa airlines, there were some people behind the counter, but they were just sitting there, chattering in Spanish. And I was standing there. And they were sitting there. And I was standing there. For a whole hour. Everyone was speaking in Spanish, and even when more people arrived and they started to help people, it took at least another 15 minutes for them to help the one person in front of me. So that was a little bit new and different. When I found the loading place for my next flight, I had a very long three hour wait trying to doze in a chair. On the next plane, all of the flight attendants spoke Spanish. They would make their announcements in Spanish for about 5 minutes, then say an English translation for about 10 seconds with a thick accent. I sat half awake in my seat until the flight landed at 10 or so in the morning at Panama City in Central America.

Getting off of the plane was like walking into a wall of heat. I saw palm trees for the first time. In Panama, about 20% of the people in the airport were wearing masks because of the swine flu risk. I had a 1 hour and 40 minute flight changeover time in Panama, so I hurried to the next gate. After awhile, I realized that there weren’t many people around considering that a flight was leaving in 20 minutes. I showed my boarding pass to one of the ladies behind the counter, and she informed me that the gait had been changed to gait 33, on the other side of the airport! Praise the Lord that I made it to the next gait just as they were loading the economy class passengers.

On my third and final flight, I had an emergency exit seat, which was interesting because this time, the flight attendant didn’t speak any English at all, and he was trying to explain to me the instructions for the emergency exit. I did a lot of nodding and smiling, but didn’t understand a word. I knew how to work the exit from the last flight, thankfully.  I finally arrived in Guayaquil Ecuador at 2:17 PM on May 8th. I was a little worried about coming through Ecuador customs because of my lack of Spanish skills. I think my obviously light skin and hair, and the stricken look on my face informed the custom’s officer of my naivety, and he didn’t speak a word. He just looked at my papers, and gave me thumbs up. At the luggage carousal, my bag never showed up, so I waited for a long time before going to a lost and found place and filling out a form. When I finally came out, I waited about 2 minutes and was met by Justo and three of the Gomezcuellos: Pastor Santiago, Senora Blanca, and Jose (14 year old son.) What a relief to see them! I thought I had walked into a wall of heat in Panama, but at Guayaquil, the heat wall was even more shocking. I’m not sure what the temperature was, but it was piping hot whatever it was. (And this is winter in Ecuador!)

After arriving in Ecuador, we drove for about an hour or so to the town of Playas on the Pacific coast of Ecuador. We stayed the night in a little motel that cost $10 a night. I got to swim in the hot ocean of South America for the first time. That evening, we shopped around on the open streets for a place to eat. We stopped at a little place with plastic chairs on the sidewalk, and had grilled chicken, rice and beans, squashed fried bananas and roasted bananas. It was very good. After that we watched some skateboarders and BMX bikers doing tricks on some concrete ramps near the motel.

The next day was very exciting. After swimming in the morning and having an interesting shower at the motel, we drove back to Guayaquil. Then came the big excitement. If you know what downtown traffic in Canada or the US is like, downtown traffic in Guayaquil is something else. Lane markings are just suggestions, and turn signals are optional. If you are big, you have the right of way, and no one follows the speed limits. If you are a pedestrian, you look for a gap and run for it. Horns are the desired means of communication between drivers. People honk all the time, just to say, “speed up a little!” There is tons of traffic and busses and pedestrians crossing anywhere, and the street lights are unpredictable. Pastor Santiago said that sometimes the lights are not coordinated correctly, so if you have green, sometimes the other light will be green to!!! So when we were in the middle lane of heavy traffic in the inner lane of a highway in downtown Guayaquil, the clutch broke on the truck, and it wouldn’t go into gear. Pastor Santiago, who was driving, did an amazing job jamming it into gear and cutting across about 3 lanes of honking traffic to get onto a side road. Justo and Pastor Santiago tried to fix the problem, bit they couldn’t, so we had to find a mechanic shop. Starting the truck again was interesting because it was stuck in gear, so it had to be started in gear. When the truck started, it lurched forward fast, but Justo was not in the truck! So he sprinted up and leapt in. Phew!

Thank the Lord, there was a mechanics shop close by. Pastor Santiago backed across the road in a gap in traffic, and the truck stalled on the ramp into the “shop.” It was pushed into the mechanic area by Justo and Jose while Pastor Santiago steered. The mechanic shop was more like an oily gravel area with the odd funnel and bolt lying around. Very interesting.

While Santiago and Jose stayed to fix the truck, Justo and Senora Blanca and I went to find a bus to get back to the airport to see if my luggage was there. The busses cost 25 cents, and you can get on a bus anywhere. People will jump out in the middle of the street and wave a bus over. If you want to get off, you jump out the door when the bus is stopped in traffic or at a red light. People would get off the bus in the middle of a four lane highway!! Wow. The bus felt like it was falling apart, and clattered and banged over the blaring music. Sellers would jump on the bus and try to sell us coconut, or drinks or cell phone cards, or cell phone chargers and all kinds of things. Thank the Lord that we eventually arrived at the airport after a lengthy route through downtown. We hopped off the bus when it stopped momentarily, and looked for a gap to run across a six lane highway. Oofta! Thank the Lord that we made it there safely, and my luggage was there, and nothing was missing. Santiago had to go out to find parts, leaving Jose with the truck, but eventually it was fixed, they picked us up at the airport, and we were finally on our way across the mountains to Cuenca.

The drive to Cuenca was fun as well. The roads were windy, without guard rails, and people would pass anywhere and everywhere. Huge pot holes, and lengthy construction zones made things exciting. There was dense fog in the high altitude. We stopped at a fruit stand and bought several types of bananas, and sapota fruits (tastes like a sweet pumpkin that’s the size of a big apple with six huge seeds). We bought mandarin oranges and sugar cane as well. After about a four hour drive, we arrived at the Gomezcuello’s house in the city of Cuenca. Praise the Lord for a safe journey!

In His Name,
Kimberly