Well, not one person has sent me a concerned email... I received one message on Facebookfrom my sister asking me if I was OK. This either means that no one kinows about the trouble that happened in Ecuador on 30th September while i was trying to fly there, or no one cares. I'll try to assume it's the former.
So, here´s the story in detail: On 30 September, I was in Cancun, Mexico, and was about to fly to Quito, Ecuador. I needed to change planes in Panama City (in Panama!) but didn´t foresee any problems.
I got up in the morning at 4.30am, and was sharing a taxi to the airport with an Irish couple, who were also flying to Quito, but they were changing in Miami (yes that is completely in the worng dircection, but hey!). So, the taxi was due to come at 5am, but at quarter past, we were still waiting, and phoned the taxi company. they said they were on their way - funny that, taxis are always on their way when you call them, aren´t they!?) by 20 past it still hadn´t come, so we decided to get a taxi from the taxi booth, then our pre-booked taxi turned up so we got in it and told him to hurry up. At some point during the journey, the Irish guy asked me what airline i was flying with, and i told him Copa, and I thought nothing more of it. When we arrived at the airport, we said goodbye to each otehr, and i looked around for the Copa airlines stand... it wasn´t there. i asked a member of staff and they said that Copa is in Terminal 2, but this was Terminal 3.Then i realised what had happened. the taxi driver had asked the couple what airline they were with, and they´d said american, and they probably thought he was just asking out of interest, so just asked me out of interest, and then never told the taxi driver i was with Copa. Bugger. so i was now running late too and had to get a shuttle bus to terminal 3. but it was ok, i booked in, and waited for the flight.
In Panama City, as i got off the plane, when i got to the gate where we were boarding for Quito, they said there was a slight delay. Within half an hour later, they said Quito was in chaos, the police and military were trying to kill the President because he´d cut their pay, so 100,000 police and military had barricaded the airport and no flights were going in to or out of Quito, and we'd probably be best just to go back to our own country, because we probably can't get into Quito for days and days. Lots of people were concerned, obviously, but the airport staff suggested flying to Lima instead. A couple i´d been talking to who were travelling around South America decided to do that, as did many others.
I was ringing GVI and asking them what was goign on, if i should wait in Panama, go somewhere else, or what. they didn´t have any more information than i did, and events were unfolding as we waited, so i kept phoning them back in an hour... then another hour. They suggested flying home to England as well, but as far as I was concerned, taht was not an option: in England I have no job till January, and would be cutting short a trip i´ve been plannign for a year, so I didn´t really see goign to England as a viable option. I phoned Stephan, who was in charge of the project I´d juswt been on in Costa Rica, but they were full up and hadn´t heard about waht was happening in Ecuador anyway.
At length, after a few phone calls, they said there was some space on a project in Guatemala, and the thing in Ecuador was unlikely to just blow over, as the President had said no way would he back down. Military and Police versus the Government is not a recipe for happy holidays, so i needed to have a good think about what my options were. It was a nightmare trying to find out any information in the airport, i was just surrounded by fifty angry people yelling in Spanish at the airport staff, who were yelling back in spanish, gesturing "it´s not my fault" kind of gestures, and everyone was asking questions and they were answering them, but it was all in spanish and i had not a clue what was going on. That was really stressful, as i was even more in the dark than everyone else was, and everyone just mobbed the staff and yelled at them. it was crazy.
i asked someone in the airport where i could fly to instead of Quito, and she said i could fly anywhere really... as long as i paid for it. i asked if the people who´d flown to Lima had done so for free, and she said no, and i asked if they were crossing the border over land in a bus or something (not knowing where Lima was) and she said no, they were just staying in Lima.
the couple who had decided to go to Lima instead said they´d heard that our bags weren´t in a secure location, so the three of us went down to get them. we walked throug himmigration, bold as you like and unchallenged. no one looked at documents or anthiyng. then in baggage reclaim, there were bags in a big pile which anyone could have picked up at any time, and we picked up our bags, and then went BACK through immigration THE WRONG WAY, and a guy said to me "hey! you can´t come back through here!" and i didn´t want him to force me to get out of the airport through customs, so i replied something vague like "Oh it´s ok, that guy upstairs said we should" and kept walking. no one came after us or bothered to challenge us after that!
i tried to find out some more information from airport staff, but that just invovled a lot of shouting between customers and staff, in spanish, everyone getting angry and having a go (needlessly) at the airport staff, who were probably as much in the dark as we were. Well, not as much as me, becasue everyone was yelling in spanish and asking questions in spanish and getting ansswers in spanish and i couldn´t understand any of it. it was not fun.
At length, when i finally managed to get someone to talk to me, i said to them that i would fly to Guatemala now, instead of Quito, and the guy from the airport said it proabably wasn´t such a good idea for me to fly to Guatemala, as i had no ticket out of there, so they might not let me in. he also said that it was his personal opinion that the thing in Quito would blow over quickly (even though the news was saying people were going crazy, looting, robbing, murdering, and the police were rioting and it could take days or weeks to sort out) but the airport guy said he thoguht it might be a quick thing, and the airport were going to put up stranded travellers in a hotel, and give them free food. so i thought i may as well wait and see what heppened.
A Slovakian girl who spoke good english was then sat nearby and she said if they opened the airport, was i actually going to fly into quito as she was looking at the news online and it said there were robberies, murders, muggings, looting etc. becasue there were no police, and Ecuador would be in turmoil, so did i really want to go there... based on that info, probabaly not... but then she spoke to her boyfriend in Quito who said that actually nothing seemed that bad, and people try to kill the president all the time and it´s pretty normal stuff. he said the streets were nowhere near as crazy as the news made out. so we decided we´d stay in the hotel together and reassess in the morning.
unless i haven´t stressed this enough, there was a lot of waiting around in between all these dribs and drabs of information. i was waiting at the airport for 14 hours in total. they split us up into groups and said we would go to the hotel. in my group were 2 guys from Netherlands, and 2 from Ecuador who were trying to get home. the Ecuadorian guys said stuff like this always happens and don´t be alarmed, it would be fine.
in the five star hotel, I had "dinner" of boiled vegetables (the only veggie food they had!) and strawberry smoothie, before sharing a hotel room with the Slovakian girl i´d known for an hour, with all my luggage (hers was stuck in Amsterdam) and she said i could stay with her boyfriend in Quito if GVI couln´dt pick me up - if indeed we managed to get there. Of course thoughy, i don´t know if she´s genuinely nice or a drugs mule. But i thought i may as well trust her as she was the only person I knew and she had let me use her laptop and things.
I woke up the next morning and got the taxi to the airport with the Dutch and Ecuadorians, and one of the guys from Ecuador checked the news and Quito was now open, and it seemed to be business as usual. In the queue i used his phone to phone GVI to ask what i should do now, and they said they didn´t know. again i threw caution to the wind and went on the advice of the Ecudorians, and just go to Quito.
This i did, and told GVI i was coming to Quito, and everythign went swimmingly after that. I landed in Quito, and they was met at the airport by two staff members called Jen and Karina... i can´t tell you how happy i was to see taht GVI logo as i was coming out into the lounge - it was such a relief to know i´d made it and i was safe. we went to the hostel then, wehere everyone else was staying, and that kind of brings me up to now.
There are now 19 of us at the hostel: i think about 12 made it before the trouble started, i was stuck in Panama, 3 were diverted to Lima, one is still in Lima, and anotheri is stuck in America and America says itñ´s not safe to leave the co9untry still. but seriously, everything here seems totally normal and safe. we are going out in groups, but that makes good sense anyway. it´s as if nothing ever happened!
* * *
So we are now waiting here for the one person who is stuck in Lima - they arrive tonighht - and then tomorrow we are off to the jungle - yeah baby!!
the volunteers... my new pals... there are 4 guys and 15 girls; one from Australia, two from Ireland, two from America, one Swedish, and the rest are English. we are in Quito which although it is on the equator, it´s 3000 metres above sea level and it´s freezing (about 20´C!) so i slept last night in trousers and two long sleeve tops - brrr!
we have been told that the drive to camp will take 2 days, and i think we will get one or two more chances in the next day or so to go online, then we will be completely out of communication range, so consider yourself duly warned: I WILL NOT BE IN TOUCH!!!
It looks and seems like the project should be as good fun as the one in CR, with lots of bird calls to learn (yay!), and to identify loads of birds, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates by sight... I can´t wait for it all to begin. we will be 2 days behind schedule but considering what happened in Quito airport, that seems like nothing.
when we arrive at camp, we have to carry all our belongings up 268 steps... my bags are ridiculously heavy ,and i spent $18 thismorning on snacks which should keep me goign for the next 5 weeks. i couldn´t find ANY chocolate, never mind cadbury´s so i am goign to have to properly go cold turkey!!
Hopefully there will be no more hiccups and the fun and learning can begin in earnest! :D
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