July 31st

 GETTING THERE

Olivia’s travel tips: DO weigh your luggage before you get to the airport. DON’T wear your cute new shoes for 11 hours of travelling before testing to see if they give you horrendous blisters.

Sunday was my first official day of the adventure!  I set off for the airport with the fam at 8 in the morning, and upon checking discovered that I would have to pay 100$ in overweight baggage fines unless I could somehow transfer about 20 pounds of luggage into another little duffel bag I had packed.  Unfortunately, the only place to do this little re-organizational activity was on the floor of Logan International Departures gates.  It took me a couple of tries, but I was finally able to get both bags under the weight limit.  Woohoo!  After that little snafu, the rest of my flights were pretty unremarkable, thanks to Brie and Lauren for chatting with me during my 5 hour layover in Miami!

So for those of you who don’t know, the plan was for me to spend the first 2.5 weeks of my time in Ecuador living in the Amazon Jungle and teaching English classes.  I had arranged for someone from the program to meet me at the airport, and was expecting for someone to greet me at my gate holding a sign with my name on it.  I was under this impression because my Welcome Packet said “you will be greeted at your gate by someone holding a sign with your name on it.” My bad.  When I got off the plane, there were plenty of people holding signs, but none of them had my name on them.  I took a couple laps around the lobby with my 100 pounds of luggage, backpack and pillow, and finally had to go to a corner and have a quiet panic attack.  By this point it was 11 o’clock and I was exhausted and terrified at the prospect of being stuck in a strange airport with all of my possessions and no way to contact anybody.  Luckily, a guy who was occupying the same corner sensed my distress (the tears and shallow breathing may have been a tip off) and offered to let me use his cell phone.  He was another American who was travelling around Ecuador for work, and was at the airport to pick up someone else from his company.   He was very kind, and let me use his international cell phone several times before I was able to sort out the whole taxi situation. 

MY RIDE WITH AN INTERNATIONAL DRUG DEALER (PROBABLY)

A taxi driver eventually approached me and told me he was sent from the Arajuno Road Project to pick me up.  I went to his taxi, and found two women and one man inside of it.  I was placed right across from the man, who was quite the chatty Kathy, and who I also suspected was an international drug dealer.  What led me to this conclusion?  First of all, when I asked him what brought him to Ecuador, he replied that he was here on business, and specifically to “schmooze with some dealers and see what kind of prices I can get out of them.”  Oh dear.  Secondly, he was sporting the look that seems reserved for men in questionable professions.  His slicked back hair, gold chain, and sunglasses that would have been weird even had be not been wearing them at 11 o’clock at night really were quite the look.  When I expressed that I was a little concerned about altitude sickness he advised me to ask for a cup of herb tea should I feel sick, but “don’t ask what’s in it-seriously!” Haha, it’s cocaine!  As my new friend Terry warned me, “you can’t take that back to the states!”  I think I’ll leave the cocaine tea to gentlemen such as yourself.

After my 10 minute ride in the taxi, I was delivered to the hostel, where I promptly crashed into bed.