Ecuador:4 Mountainous Void

As we flew into Quito at 2am, I kept thinking to myself, "when will it ever end?" Most cities have their central downtown and their outer laying towns and suburbs, but Quito, though at first only perceived in the dark, was EVERYWHERE.

Lights were everywhere, and it was quite a surreal image, that which was first displayed in all its grandeur because there were thousands of lights, and then nothing, pitch black. I wondered, "water, perhaps?" and then the turbulence began, and I was awestruck. Mountains, mountainous volcanoes, and we were flying right past these dark masses! How terrified was I to even think about a technological failure at a time such as this!

As long as we kept flying in the path of the lights and not towards any void, then we would be just fine, because that is where Quito lies, in the midst of these magnificent voids.

We bounced down the runway on the old rickety concrete and came screeching to a halt. We stumbled across the old rickety concrete towards the baggage claim. I utterly failed using my Spanish as it was that I was already half asleep, and the only two words I could produce were "si" and "taco" (which is basically an American with an appetite speaking in English).

"Como esta ud?" - woman at customs
"Si, si, taco!" - and thus spake a tacky American tourist

The streets were deserted, and in all of my vertigo and sleep depravity, I kept turning around trying to figure out in which direction these mountains were. Little did I reason that we were surrounded.

My suitcase barely fit through the hostel room door, and my roommate and I used the last few precious drops of water from our water bottles to brush our teeth. 3:30am and we hadn't even taken our showers. The floors creaked, which is what we would find as a common sound in every hostel. In fact, everything creaked: the doors, the floors, the walls, the ceilings, the dinner table, and the mattress of straw. (I found all of the mattresses to be quite nice. Now I'm going to go buy some hay.)

All of this being said, my first thoughts in my first two exhausting hours of being in South America, which felt like some bizarre dream. Thank goodness no one was hustling us along at the airport, for my sleep depravity left me little cognitive skill other than the natural duties one is capable of fulfilling when the mind is elsewhere. "where are the mountains? I swear they were there!"