What were we thinking?!?! - The Start of South America

Is what I thought to myself when we were sitting in the Reno airport about to leave to South America. It suddenly all became real that we were exploring uncharted seas, going extremely out of our comfort zone, and seemed vastly under prepared in the moment of my panic. I fought down waves of nausea wondering if anyone would notice if we just spent three weeks in Miami instead of going on to Ecuador.

And it didn’t help that the last 18 hours have seemed to have been one thing after another. It starts with all the bars closing once we get to the airport. Really? It’s 6:30 pm, and you don’t have one bar open? How am I supposed to be oblivious to my fear of flying if I can’t suppress it with alcohol??? Also at that moment, we realized we had no means to tell the time. As a last minute decision (helped along by ATT telling me the ridiculous rule that if someone calls my phone, I have to pay $2.50 a call overseas EVEN IF I DON’T PICK UP!!!) I decided to leave my cell phone at home. We realized our grandparents were right about having a watch handy and not relying on our cell phones to tell the time. So already we were down one essential item, and we were only 20 minutes into the trip.

Because of the low availability of alcoholic beverages, we passed the time by putting five bucks into the poker machine before we had to board (well, Alex did, I can’t gamble at the Reno airport). We got the call to board when I noticed that Alex won a little bit of money. Woo hoo, things were lookin’ up! He prints out the ticket and it gets…stuck. Everyone has boarded the plane by now, and that’s when we realized our flight was about to leave.   In a panic we called someone over to fix it and get our money (we didn’t need to spend the trip down ten bucks), who thankfully quickly helped us and got us boarded on our plane just in time. Not the best start to the trip.

We walked down the platform to THE SMALLEST PLANE I HAVE EVER SEEN. Not really, but it was dinky as shit. My exact words were, “This plane is dinky as shit”. I fricken hate flying, even more so in small planes. I figured a route from Reno to Los Angeles would be large enough to warrant an actual aircraft, but apparently we were the last flight of the night, and only 20 of us were taking it. This plane was straight outta the 70s, faded lettering on the inside and outside, tight seats, and no air flow. We bumped and jostled our way to LAX, where there was currently a fire brewing in the valley. Flying into an airport with intense fog mixed with LA smog and smoke, was an experience I’ll never forget. We seemed to come pretty close to some other planes landing, and were met by the ground before anyone had a chance to brace themselves.

When we landed we were so far out we had to take a shuttle to the main terminal. We made our plane with just enough time to buy snacks, and settled into a much larger aircraft, worthy of taking me to Miami. By then it was 9:45 pm and we were landing in Miami at 6:45 am, which is really 3:45 am our time. Needless to say we were tired and going to be more tired come morning. We tried our best to sleep on the plane (well I did, Alex slept like a Nyquilled infant), and tried to forget about the 0 visibility for our take off in LA. It was as expected: terrifying, but not as bad as what I woke up to halfway through the flight. We could guess that we were over the Midwest, when we saw the most terrifying lightning storm in the world. What we see on the ground is nothing compared to what’s happening in the atmosphere above us. The lightning never stopped striking; the entire sky lit up with three or four strikes every second, and not just little waves of lightning, but spanning thousands of feet across the sky. Our plane suddenly seemed very small. Here we were flying in this HIGHLY CONDUCTIVE metal death trap, that by logic alone shouldn't be flying through the air at 30,000 feet, and we were in the middle of an apocalypse. Not to mention that it was the week Oklahoma had been having devastating tornadoes. I stayed clutched to my seat with dreams of falling out of the sky with a sudden strike of lightning, or being sucked into a vacuum and spiraling to our death. And instead of telling myself, regardless if we die or not, you being awake will do nothing to stop it, I stayed awake and watched the captains every jerk from my seat. We survived (barely) and landed in Miami around 4 am our time, with 100% humidity and 3% visibility.

We had a 9 hour layover in Miami, and we rented our first car ever to go to South Beach and see what all the fuss was about:

Because I can't not take an awkward picture:

My new watch. Its adorable and waterproof:

As we sat in the airport, waiting to board our flight to Quito, and we realized the hard part was just beginning. We were entering a foreign country, with our language skills dicey at best (what happened to the 8 months we had to practice???) running on 4 hours of sleep and a shit ton of expensive airport caffeine, no mode of handy communication, and thoroughly exhausted, on day 2 of a 23 day adventure.

Our first glance at Quito, Ecuador. The elevation made the landing....interesting. 

AND NOW???

Here we are in Quito, watching Futurama in Spanish, eating Hershey’s bars and inspecting the bed for bugs. And so far, no bugs! The people have been nice (except the guy who picked us up from the airport, stone face as I like to call him, he made us pretty nervous in the beginning there), and everything has worked out perfectly so far.

Tomorrow we fly to the Galapagos, and soon start our cruise!

Check out our pad:

Hasta Luego!

Wish us luck, we need it.