14th April: The Key To Quito

 There really is no better feeling than activating your Out of Office, locking up your workplace and heading off on an adventure, hey? After bidding Dave and Honey a fond farewell, I jump in Dad’s car and we’re off…until approximately 5 minutes later when I glance at my Trailfinders app to find an update ordering me to bring hat, gloves and a scarf…so a swift handbrake turn and it’s back to the house I go to grab the various warm items - which I’d not so much forgotten as been in denial at actually needing in the first place. I am definitely a bikini and beach kinda gal. I mean, who wants to go on holiday and freeze their knackers off?! 

Dad drops De Mama and I at Heathrow at 3am to catch the red-eye to Madrid, and after a nail-biting wait to find out if we’ll be delayed and miss our connecting flight in Spain, we’re relieved to be departing on time, and make our connection without any dramas (well, apart from the heart-stopping moment going through security when we both get swabbed for explosives and Mum gets whisked off after her rucksack swab throws up a false positive for TNT, bringing a whole new meaning to the term Blonde Bombshell 😳). 

Finally, after a long-ass 11-hour flight (10 of which involve Wiki-Mama topping up her already extensive mental bank of useless facts playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire on the in-flight entertainment until she knows every answer off by heart), we touch down on South American turf. Bienvenido a Ecuador! say the staff. Hola! says De Mama…the only word in the Spanish language she knows, despite having owned a villa in Alicante for the past 16 years. Shoulda tried playing the Spanish version of the quiz, Mum 🙄. 

We finally identify our cases (unsurprisingly, Mum’s luggage strap has now vanished since Rodders, their bulldog, half-chewed it off the night before, and the entire flight appears to have purchased the same silver Primark suitcases as us), and step out of the air-conned airport into the warm Quito air. Getting to our hotel involves navigating a sprawling city (the second-highest in the world) snarled up with Friday night rush-hour traffic, and first impressions are that this bustling graffiti-covered metropolis perched precariously atop the mountains is intriguing, if more than a tad dangerous…

Once checked into our hotel, The Mercure, we scope out the rooftop pool and spa before heading down to dinner, selecting a table in the window so we could get a decent view of the goings-on outside our hotel…which appears to consist mostly of hookers, homeless and addicts. Eek! We’ve been warned never to set foot outside our hotel alone, and never after dark. We’re told a resident of our hotel was robbed at gunpoint and pistol-whipped to within an inch of their lives a few days earlier. The key to Quito is to avoid eye contact. Gulp! Back outside the restaurant a prostitute in a tiny red dress is squatting in front of us for a wee in the middle of the street and I hastily avert my gaze, which reminds me of when my mini dachshund Honey tries to avoid making eye contact with me whilst doing her business in the garden. I feel a sudden pang of longing for my furbaby…then it’s off to bed for us, ready for a mega-early start in the morning: scaling Cotopaxi, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world. Utter madness on day 1 (or any day, come to think of it)?! Probably. 

Buenes noches! (that’s good night to you, De Mama).