OK, this settles it, we will not make it to Tibet and Bhutan in this lifetime!! Dick was very sick all night both from the altitude and the cold; Carolyn’s stomach was upset from the altitude. The wakeup call comes at 7:30AM. From 8 to 9AM there is a buffet spread for breakfast with some really strange foods (cold broccoli and corn salad and popcorn for example) and the more traditional stuff. And again we don’t eat much
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We load up the luggage and leave the hotel for our visit to the equator at 9:15AM. Traffic is horrible. We are only about nine miles from the equator in Quito, but it takes an hour to get to the first of two stops at the Middle of the World. We pass some interesting street scenes along the way.
The Middle of the World Complex is first.
A monument has been built here where the French Geodesic Mission located the equator in 1765, when they were trying to determine which was the greater distance around the earth...around the poles or the equator. There is yellow line here and we have some fun taking pictures with one foot in the Northern Hemisphere and one foot in the Southern Hemisphere. Actually Jack created a bit of a stir. We took his picture and when Carolyn went to pick him up several people made me wait so they could take his picture also!
We get our passports stamped and visit some of the craft shops in a small market, buying a few souvenirs. Back on the bus we head to the Inti Nan Museum. This is also located on the GPS equator a few feet from the monument. It is an open air museum of sorts and an employee takes some of the group on an hour long walking tour.
Dick stays on the bus and sleeps. Carolyn skips the talking tour and just walks around looking at the exhibits. Most of them have some signage, so she gets the jest of the way of life of the native population in this part of the world. It is interesting that they raised guinea pigs as a meat source before the Spanish introduced cattle and sheep.
She thinks an hour would have been over kill, but it is interesting to see the living exhibits. Back on the bus we get a boxed (bagged) lunch to eat on our way to the airport. Our tickets and boarding passes are also passed out. At the airport those of us who don’t have luggage to check breeze through security and are on the plane in about 15 minutes. It is a regularly scheduled LAN flight to Guayaquil where the ship has moved to overnight.
The plane takes off at 2PM, the stewardesses pass out candy and 28 minutes later we land in Guayaquil! The airport is way north of the this city of 3 million, Ecuador’s largest city, so it is an hour's bus ride across town in Friday afternoon, rush hour traffic with a police escort. Watching the city go by we decide we didn’t miss anything! Though several of our friends said there was a very nice park and a boardwalk type area, but we missed it!
At the dock the Regent staff is out in force with music, champagne and carver to welcome us home.
Everyone is tired and glad to be "HOME"!
Dick is feeling better now that we are back to sea level, but definitely has a bad cold. We get cleaned up and go to dinner at 6:30PM when the Compass Rose opens. We have Caesar salad and Fettuccini Alfredo and Dick has the Dover sole. We each have a cup of tea, a lemon tart for Dick and chocolate ice cream for Carolyn. Back in the room by 8:30PM Carolyn loads Dick up with medicine and we both die.
It was a great trip and we are very glad we did it as we have wanted to go to Quito for several years now. Regent did a nice job moving 150 passengers around, housing and feeding them and all as a surprise part of the Circle South America cruise.
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