Flights upon Flights

And so the adventure has begun a mere 4 flights adding up to 22 hours of flying and we have arrived in Quito.

The flights were incredibly long and tiring and I am writing this post at 12am Ecuador time as the jet lag has got me and I am struggling to get to sleep. From Auckland, it was a 12 hour flight to San Francisco where we had a 10 hour stop over. Despite the length of the stop over it still took us over an hour to check in for our flight to Panama and getting through American Security was a nightmare to say the least but we made it to the gate on time and I managed to get a fair amount of sleep on the plane. Once we landed in Panama we had just one more 2 hour flight to get to Quito which despite being at the wrong gate and cutting it fine we made that flight on time as well.

We arrived in Quito at around 11am in the morning where we were met by Rosa from Vida Verda (the spanish language school) and Pablo the local representative for Lattitude. We were given 'Ecuador' bags as a welcome gift upon arrival. From the airport it was about a 30 minute drive to Quito. The roads and driving here are interesting to say the least, driving along some very tight, bumpy and windy roads but we made it safely to our host families. My host family during my two weeks in Quito is just my host mother Mariana and I am staying with her and another of the volunteer girls Ruby. Initially, I felt a little light headed from the dramatic increase in altitude but after some lunch, a shower, a rest and some ibuprofen I was feeling a little better.

The rest of the afternoon we just chilled and Mariana made us a sandwich and hot chocolate for dinner. I must say the hot chocolate was probably one of the yummiest I have had in my life as it was made with real Ecuadorian chocolate!

Ruby and I watched a little bit of spanish tv which was hilarious although not dissimilar to New Zealand. Then we headed to bed at around 8-9pm however as you can see I am struggling to get to sleep.

Anyway, tomorrow we are off to explore Otavalo City which is super exciting! So I better try and get some sleep.

Fun Fact: The toilet water does in fact swirl the opposite way here!

Love and miss everyone back home.
Georgia xx