Hello everyone! It’s been a while…and so many things have happened! The past weekend was the most exciting, crazy, dangerous, exhilarating weekend of my life! I cried a couple of time too…which I will tell you about. The poles of emotion were defiantly in play. AND God was very faithful to me. You will see how as I begin. 

THURSDAY 

• Heather and I had been thinking for two weeks that we were going to go to Manta-we even set up a reservation for a hotel. But one of our friends from class, Diego, let me know that there had been multiple landslides due to the excessive rain…and the roads were completely gone! They built some kind of one-way bridge, but it was very dangerous and slow-moving. So, instantly, we had to make new plans…we bought midnight bus tickets to Cuenca which is South of Quito. We were HYPED at the thought of leaving. 

• Now, Heather and I had resolved that as soon as we arrived at the station, we wouldn’t speak a lick of English. Myrian had warned Heather to make sure to seem very Hispanic…so that we wouldn’t be targets. WELL… We arrived at the station at 9:30 after desperately trying to find a taxi (which by the way is a bad idea, and I don’t think I will do it again) And the first person we met was my friend Antonio who I have written about before. He was very buzzed…and bought a bunch of the national pride, Pilsner, (the worst beer in the world) and he offered everyone who passed a beer. We were surrounded by Americans, in front of everyone who was staring, and then Antonio gets a bright idea. 

• “Won’t you read a poem for me, Kiki?” So, I did in the most animated, theatrical, precise, elocutionary way that one could possible read TWO PAGES of small printed Frank O’Hara. After that, I definitely deserved one of those nasty Pilsners. 

• We left on the bus…that housed only two Gringos. And we were rather uncomfortable because the altitude was changing so rapidly, but our problems were about to get worse little by little. First of all, there were three men who were infatuated with Heather and tried to take pictures of her. Secondly, there was a landslide that made us stop dead in our tracks at 4am!! Needless to say, the trip lasted 14 hours. We didn’t get started again until about 9 the next day. AND OF COURSE, I forgot all of the provisions….so we had to eat unripe bananas. 

FRIDAY 

• When we got to Cuenca at about 1pm, we instantly went to this hotel that Patricio recommended. It was very nice. (keep in mind this is room #1) For some reason, we decided that we would switch hotels the next night and see how many rooms we could lodge in during one vacation. This was not the best idea, and to this moment, I don’t know why we did it! But anyway, we walked about the city…words couldn’t describe the beauty, nor the festivities of Carnaval. 

• A Spanish and Latin American tradition is throwing water on people….A LOT OF WATER. So, we got bombed from the 5th floor, out of store windows, people walking on the streets, and cars and buses passing. I actually fell trying to escape getting doused. I was getting more and more possessed with having revenge, so when this one little boy was all gleeful trying to hold this enormous bowl to get my wet, I dumped it on him instead!!! He actually got really mad, and told me that was mean! Hahahaha!

• After walking around the city on Friday, we went back to the room to take a nap. It was about 4pm. Then, we determined that we would “go out” and paint the town red after, getting out beauty rest. WELL. Didn’t set an alarm, and we didn’t wake up until Saturday at 6am!!!! 
• On Saturday, we basically tooled around, got lost multiple times, and found another hotel. We actually saw quite a few of our classmates, and our druggie teacher who never shows up to class! It was sooo funny and odd. He was like, “I don’t see you in class, but I see you in Cuenca!” HAHA. 

• We were walking around this river and this broken bridge and taking pictures. You have prolly seen them if you looked on fb. Well, there was this guy and this younger boy who were skulking around the river bank. They asked us if we would take a picture of them, so I asked them if they had a camera. They were obviously locals and didn’t look like the type to take pics. They guy told me yes and we walked a little farther along the river. I aksed them again, Where is your camera, and he said he didn’t have one. I immediately suspected that Heather was going to take the pic and then they were going to try to steal it. So, I decided that I wanted to be in the pic with the robbers too! Well, as soon as Heather took the pic, they ran up the bank faster than I expected, but I over took them before they made it to Heather. They kept asking, How is it? Can we see it? I wedged myself in between them and Heather and positioned myself uphill from the guy. Suddenly the guy grabbed it, and in that instant I put both my hands around his neck and pressed in harder and harder. That surprised him, but he tried to stuff the camera up his sleeve. I repeated in the deepest, sternest, but quiet voice I could muster, “NO!” Heather quickly grabbed the camera out of his hands, and said, “!No es justo!” “That’s not right!” And we ran!!!! They didn’t try to follow us. They seemed ashamed. 

• The hotel we stayed at was nice enough…cheaper…and HUGE! In its day, it prolly housed over a hundred people. I realized pretty quickly as it got dark that we had an excellent view of the street from the 8th floor….so what do you think I did??? That’s right! I got my little glass and started pouring water on people! It was amazing!!!!! 

• Well, after pouring water on people to my heart’s delight, we got ready to go out. We had bought one shirt a piece at a Chinese store, and so we decked ourselves with our new attire and headed out to dinner. We ended up eating at this Colombian restaurant by that broken bridge…which was very sketch. We got a taxi after dinner, and went to a famous Salsa club, called Café Eucalyptus. It was amazing! They started live music that was sooo cool and beautiful. There was also this older gentleman who danced every dance for 3 hours! It was cool to watch everyone dancing. We left about 1am, got a taxi, and went to our hotel…which was almost completely dark. 

• As soon as we got in there, Heather said, “No tengo la llave!” She didn’t have the key to our room. It had gotten lost in the taxi while we were rooting around for change! The guy told us that he didn’t have any replacement keys…so we went out into the street and tried to stop another taxi so that he could call all taxis on the intercom, but he wouldn’t do it! Even for money! Anyway, we stayed outside for almost an hour by the Cathedral that was right in front of our hotel, so that the guy would feel sorry for us and not charge us for another room! Well, he didn’t even walk to charge us for the room, cuz as we found out…THEY WERE NO ANOTHER PATRONS!!! This was the sketchiest place I had ever been in….It had narrow hallways with lights that were burned about and a creepy elevator whose capacity was four people. We tried for about an hour to jimmy the lock of our old bedroom with the curtain hook that Heather pried off. We finally had to go to our new room. The hallway was pitch black, and I was really spooked! By this point it was about 2am. Our room had four oddly positioned beds, and a huge window that looked at this alley way and a concrete wall. The only thing I could think of was the movie, Psycho! Heather got pretty scared too, when the guy cam upstairs to TURN OF THE LIGHTS that we had LEFT ON….ugh!!!  

SUNDAY 

• Well, we made it through the night although we didn’t get to bed until 3am and we had to get up at 6am to catch our bus. Supposedly, there was a lady coming at 7am with the keys…and our bus left at 7.10! We got up and rooted around the city for some breakfast..but everything was closed but the churches and cathedrals. We ended up buying a package of vanilla wafers from a street vendor. When we got back to the hotel, this lady arrived…but she was not the one with the keys!!! However, she suggested that the keys might be in the bathroom, WHICH THEY WERE. We quickly went up the creepy elevator and pack all of our stuff. When we went downstairs, suddenly, I realized that I had lost my camera and I had to go back up to our #2 room to search for it….thankfully, I found it right away, but I did shed a few tears at first! 

• Meanwhile, Heather was realizing that it was 7:10 and we didn’t have the right bills to pay the hotel! They didn’t have one single cent in their machine. We had to run to the nearest bank and take out 10 bucks….but when we finally got back to the hotel, they didn’t have change for $10 either!!!! So they called a taxi to get us change, and we bought like 4 bottles of water to make up the difference. We went to the bus station, late, but before even going inside I realized I didn’t have my ATM card. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! We got another taxi and went back to the bank…but it was gone! The machine had eaten it…it had never even given it back to me. 

• Very sad, we made it to the bus station again…and had to pay for two more tickets to Guayaquil. Our bus left at 8:30…and the trip lasted 4 hours. We had the best seats in the bus…We had two huge windows! We got to Guayaquil and went to a hotel that the guide book recommended, called DreamKapture. When we got their we had to haggle with the guy for a room, and he was very rude to us. The weather is Guayaquil was like Miami, but the city looked like the worst parts of Philadephia. We did not feel safe walking around at all! 

• Once again…we were walking along this river that was kind of like a commercialized board walk with lots of shops and a mall. We were taking pictures and this man started noticing us and talking to us. He kept his distance at first, but soon I realized he was following us. He would go up ahead, sit down and when we passed he would keep going behind us. At one point he was behind us to the right, and I suddenly saw him start to run. He planned to run diagonally- and pass me, and grab my purse that had my camera! Instantly, I turned to the left and walked straight into Heather and we turned around and watched as he passed us at that moment running. To be safe, we turned and went the other way, but it was kind of scary. 

• The highlight of our trip to Guayaquil was taking a double decker bus for two hours around the city…and we had this delicious yogurt that was Crema de Cacao. Pretty early we went back to our humid room though, and slept…soooo tired.

• The next day, we flew out on a little plane to Quito We couldn’t bear the thought of sitting for another 14 hours in a bus. We felt so happy to get back to Quito. Lol, on the way back from the airport we actually got lost! The bus we were on emptied of all the people except us, and stopped. I asked the lady, where the bus was headed next and she said to lunch! We had to catch another bus and it took us a good 1.5 hours to make a 10 minute trip!! Later that day, the Child’s invited us out to dinner and then we went back to their place. We had an amazing time…we told them about the adventures we had had…and had coffee etc. WOW! That was a long update, and you know, it doesn’t even mention it all! I am very glad to be back in Quito, although it isn’t quite home! 

Thank you all for reading my posts! 

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