Travelling to Ecuador

Quito, Ecuador, 19-01-2012

What a flight!
It was already time to say goodbye to my friends and parents and fly to Quito, Ecuador. So I had to get up at 3 ‘o clock in the morning to be able to get to the airport in time. So after checking in, overweight off course, I hopped on to the plane and it was off to my first stop of the day, London! Arriving at London Heathrow the standard set of totally over-rated security checks for transfer-passengers were performed and caused a nice delay to my next flight. The very “nice” people who are asking you are you are going and “want to help” you find your flight were more confusing than my old math-teacher. So after finding my flight to Miami it was another 10 hours plane time… “tally ho”. So I watched 2 movies one was “Puss in Boots” and the other was about the genius managers of Liverpool. Furthermore, the flight attended kept asking if I’d like a beer or a gin tonic. But decided not the get too hammered during flight as I still had a 5 hour waiting period in Miami and then a night flight to Quito from there. So when we finally landed I was quite amazed that (after the numerous passport and security checks) I was able to just walk out of the airport and head in to Miami if I wanted to, even though I still had to catch my connecting flight to Quito which after I went through border control yet again seemed to be delayed for one hour so I went to walk from gate 37 to gate 1 as I still had some time to kill. Finally arrived at the gate my name was being called to have an extra passport check, yet again. I guess my passport is very interesting….
So when after another four hour flight I arrived at Quito I had through the process of immigration and customs and my bags were X-rayed to make sure I didn’t bring drugs explosives, live animals or other illegal things to Ecuador. When I finally got out there was a guy waiting for me to bring me to the student house, finally! I had a comfortable 20 minute drive from the airport and still had to carry my bags up a quite steep flight of stairs to finally arrive at the student house! The my housemates were just about to go to sleep but when I got in we still drank a beer and talked a little. I had survived all the flights and since it was already about 2 ‘o clock it was a good idea to go to sleep. When I woke up this morning, to my surprise I found I didn’t really feel any effects of altitude sickness.