We flew from San Francisco to Guyaquil, Ecuador today, to start our new 3-month adventure in Ecuador.  The American Airlines flights to Miami, and then to Ecuador were both on time and smooth, though completely booked.  Other than the lack of onboard food, it wasn’t much different from the hundred+ other similar flights we have taken in the past.

We had arranged for a driver from MIO Travel to meet us in Guayaquil and drive us to Cuenca.  We did that because we are traveling with a LOT more luggage than normal — trying to guess what we will need for 3 months, including lots of computer and camera equipment.  We didn’t want to worry about the internal TAME small airlines with that luggage.

To our pleasant surprise, Efrain was there to meet us.  He was our driver when we checked out Cuenca last Feb. We stopped for a quick dinner about an hour on the road (a small chicken-and-rice meal with more bone than chicken at a place I forgot to note or photograph), and then made it to Cuenca by midnight.

We pulled up to our Otorongo Apartments… only to find there was no apartment available for us!?  Seems I had originally told the manager last March that I thought we would arrive around Oct 23.  I updated that info in Sept, saying I would be here Oct 20. Though he responded to that email, he did not update his calendar, and someone was staying in our apartment.

HOMELESS IN CUENCA!

Well, we were that way for about 10 minutes anyway. Efrain got on the phone and found us a hotel about a block from city center.  Small little hole-in-the-wall that you can walk by without finding it — we did miss it several times the next day. Can you find our Hotel Ordonez in the following picture?

But it was warm and had a bed, so we took it and thanked Efrain profusely… 🙂 The room was so tiny we barely fit our luggage into it and still made it to the bed:

It served us well for a couple days until our apartment was ready though.  LET THE ADVENTURE BEGIN!