Touchdown in Quito

On Friday at Midnight above the sparkling city lights, we manouvered tightly between the mountains that surround the city of Quito as my Continental Airlines airbus touched down on the runway. I stepped off to a cool welcome of fresh mountainous air and then waited in line at passport control, shuffling along with numerous Christian groups from Texas and various scientists and biologists making their way to Galapagos.

I was glad to get my papers stamped and meet Xavier, my driver, who would take me into the city. Twenty-five hours and three flights after leaving Edinburgh, I was happy to touch down and didn´t care that my luggage was still in Texas.

I had thought that because I was on their soil for little more than 90 minutes, US Homeland Security would be glad to see me on my way to Ecuador. Instead after a thorough search I was met with a double act of Good-Cop and Bad-Cop at Houston who were intent on examining every single detail of my hand luggage. The half-hour interrogation began with the commonly asked "is this your first time flying?" and the less commonly asked "this socket adapter looks awfully like like a tazer, doesn´t it?"

We then discussed their suspicions about my trips to Brasil and Argentina last year.... and why I had on my possession a shiny mobile phone... "where does a young guy like you get all this cash..?" was the recurrent theme. Thankfully my papers were meticulous and I had avoided any controversial items in the luggage.

I had to hold back the laughter when one of them pulled a $3 cuban peso note out of my wallet.

"Tell me you haven´t been to Cuba, sir.....?"
"Me..? Cuba..? No..."

So two days on it´s Sunday afternoon and I´ve been getting to know my family in Quito. My Spanish is coming on a treat, but I´m looking forward to the lessons in a school here for two weeks before heading up to Ibarra and beginning the development work.

Yesterday morning we saw the volcano Cotapaxi completely clear from cloud. It towers above Quito from a distance to the South, at a height somewhere around 5900m. I quite fancy climbing that at some point. I´m also told that further south the volcano Tungurahua is rumbling away and lighting up the sky at night.

It´s beoming clear to me that these amazing surroundings are no longer pictures and wonders in guidebooks, they are the environment that I am going to be working in for the rest of the year. It´s a magical feeling, and my impressions so far are of a magical country with fantastic, warm and genuinely welcoming people. There is a respect and appreciation from from everyone I have spoken to so far when I talk about the projects that Mariam and I will be working on.

The country, the people, the projects. It´s all coming together for me.

I reckon I´m going to like it here.