We woke up to a lovely sunny day. Our flight from DC National to Miami was
uneventful, then our marathon walk from Terminal D to J was our major exercise
for the day. What a trek! It was getting us ready for this
adventure. Now our next flight was quite
different. After boarding the plane an
hour late, we finally left the gate and proceeded to sit on the tarmac for two
hours. The pilot told us interesting
stories, one being something about flying in Jamaican air space. Never quite got that. There had been a heavy downpour while we
waited for our flight, so we thought that the storm has backed up our departure
time. Anyway, we were 1.5 hours late arriving
into Quito. (FYI, Quito is in the
Central Time Zone, so just one hour behind us.
Luckily no jet lag involved.) After
our speedy way through immigration and customs, we walked through the arrival
doors and immediately saw the sign that read WILLIAMS/PUNTE and we knew our car
was available. Being so late, 10:15pm,
we were leery that our ride would not be there.
The trusty Stephen and Avi working with Silversea were quite amiable and
seemed happy to finally see us.
A normal hour to an hour and a half drive into the city was
only 40 minutes at this time of night.
Stephen told us all about the hotel and our next leg of the trip, on to
the Galapagos. Avi gave each of us a
much needed bottle of water and we rode through the five parishes to the
capital city of Quito. The airport was
opened February 2013 but the road isn’t expected to be completed until sometime
next year. One of the town’s names we
went through was Cumbia.
On our midnight arrival at the JW Marriot, the registration desk
employees were chipper and waiting to help us.
Our room is a nice 2 double bed room with a lovely view of the mountain
which we saw this morning. After our 1
am lights out we were sluggish to get up this morning. We’ve had breakfast of bacon, tiny quiche Lorraines,
tiny hard boiled eggs (not sure what kind of birds laid these), sweet corn
cakes (with raisins baked in corn husks), a tangerine and coffee. After we were finished, I noticed the bread
table with dulce de leche in a large bowl……
for a trying-to-be low carb eater, that was just sinful looking…. Maybe tomorrow!!
Well, we are off to see the city. Major
stops today are the Old Town and Funicular.
More later.
Looking forward to the rest of your adventure. We did the CelebrityXpedition trip in July 2012 and really enjoyed our time in the Galapagos. Our flight from DC to Quito via Atlanta, experienced long delays as well ... first it was rain, then a passenger who became ill before we took off. Glad we landed at the old airport in Quito as it was the wee hours of the morning before we got through customs, and a lot faster to get to the JWM from there.
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