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Friday, March 23rd - Flying To Ecuador |
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Galapagos Islands March 23rd To April 1, 2007 |
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Kathie picked me up after work last night and we spent Thursday night at a hotel in New York by JFK. With our 10:00 am departure on Friday morning, we decided that this would be a lot easier than trying to deal with New York’s rush hour traffic, especially getting across Staten Island and around the southern part of Long Island – NOT one of my favorite drives! |
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Our LAN Airbus 320-200 |
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Victoria enjoying the in-flight video games |
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The Hilton in Guyaquil |
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When we reached Guyaquil (Ecuador’s commercial center on the southwestern coast of the country), we were a little concerned when we couldn’t find the cruise representative who was supposed to be taking us to the hotel for the evening. Apparently it was one of those scenes from out of a bad comedy, where she was looking for me in one area while I was looking for her in another, then we switched places. Just as we were inquiring about a cab to the hotel, she spotted us in the thinning crowd. As I said, there weren’t too many Americans and we stuck out – even Kathie was taller than most men at the airport!
We made our way across town to the Hilton. It seemed weird for us at first to be traveling abroad and yet be staying at an American hotel, but we decided that since this wasn’t one of our normal trips where we do lots of research ahead of time, it wasn’t an issue for us as it was quite relaxing just being able to crash. I have to admit it was also nice not having to worry about the whole language issue.
After dinner, we decided to turn in early as we felt quite sure that tomorrow would be a big day!
Tomorrow: Welcome to the Galapagos Islands |
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We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare and our LAN flight left pretty close to on-time. Other than British Airways, this was our first trip on a foreign-flagged airline and we were a definite minority on the plane (I think we counted two other American couples). It was a wonderful start to our trip, though, as the service on the airline was excellent. In fact, my only complaint about LAN is that it seemed as though all of the seats were arranged with the average height of someone from Ecuador or Peru in mind. This is a problem when you consider that the average Peruvian is about fourteen inches shorter than I am! |