The Adventure Begins

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In the words of my good friend Morven

oh my god!

What a crazy journey we had to get here. We should have known it would be tricky because of the date but Friday the 13th has always been a luck day for me .... Andrea tells me now that something always goes wrong when she flies ... so I blame her!

We were up at 6am & driven to Gatwick by Andrea's parents (Thanks again for putting us up / putting up with us for the last two weeks John & Jenny. Hope you're enjoying those chocolates). Our flight was delayed for half an hour which was worrying as we only had an hour & a half to make our connection in Houston. We bought a McD's for breakfast & just as we were about to take a bite of our burgers an announcement came over the tannoy that our flight was about to leave. Even though we knew there was still half an hour before the original departure time panic got the better of logic so we threw on our rucksacks grabbed our burger boxes & ran at full pelt to our departure gate ... laughing like idiots at the ridiculousness & the shame of a) running b) running with burger in hand & c) arriving at the gate puffing & sweating with exhaustion, burger still in hand only to be told that we still had 45 minutes to go until boarding ... we must have looked quite a sight!

We watched a couple of movies on the flight but the best entertainment we found was in the Sky Mall magazine which had us crying with laughter at things like this little beauty [url=http://www.skymall.com/shopping/detail.htm?pid=102198457&c=10710 (Corrina I know you will love this)!

By the time we finally arrived at Houston we only had just over half an hour to collect our bags, go through customs, check our bags back in & get to the gate. 20 minutes later we were still waiting for our bags to appear. When they finally did there we were running full pelt for the gate again (no burgers this time) & we made it with seconds to spare.

We slept for most of the flight & woke as we began our descent into Quito. A colleage had told me that it was quite a hairy landing. As we dropped through the clouds & the city lights appeared (just) below us we saw what he meant & just as it seemed we were about to land in someone's back garden we flew into fog so thick you could only just make out the tips of the plane wings. Next thing we knew we were flying up again. Then the pilot announced that we were diverting to the city of Guayaquil where we were to be put up for the night in a Hotel then would be flown back to Quito in the morning .... we hadn't seen that one coming! The ride into the Guayaquil was yet another thrilling ride with our rickety old bus zooming over flyovers with only a five inch barrier between us & thin air. Eeeeek! The hotel was a bit shabby but the staff were very nice & even the cockroaches were friendly. Finally made it to bed sometime after 2am after trying but failing to call our hostel in Quito .... guess they'd given up on us & all gone to bed ... lucky buggers!

At least we made it South America ... we're really not sure our bags did though. All the bags have been kept on the plane so we wont know if they've made it until we get to Quito in the Mañana.

Hope everything is good with you all

Lots of love,

Kate x

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Comments

[Daddy John & Mummy Jenny]

Is that really us!!!!!
Oh my God what an awful photo, how could you put that on your blog? Have fun and safe journey