We flew from Cuenca to Quito, then on to Miami today.  We are here to handle some legal issues that required being in the States (more details on that next week).  When arriving, our first stop was a local Citibank branch, to handle closing out an obsolete account.  

While there, the wind whipped into a frenzy.  The sky turned nighttime dark.  The clouds opened up into a massive torrent that flooded the streets in a matter of minutes. I made some flippant comment to the bank manager, and she said “there is an active tornado watch.” I laughed and made another flippant comment, upon which point she assured me that she was telling the truth, and that I should really get out of town for a few hours.

To be honest though, this image above is a news photo from a tornado that hit here last year.  No tornado actually materialized today.  The watch was lifted an hour later as the storm passed, leaving flooded streets, but not much else.  It was exciting for a bit though — we have lived through a volcano (Mt St Helens in 1979), two major regional fires (Lexington Reservoir in 1985 and Oakland Firestorm in 1992) and a major earthquake (Loma Prieta in 1989).  For awhile there, we thought we could add tornado to our resume…

We then checked into our Miami Beach hotel (a 4-star that is really closer to a 3-star at best…), then headed across town to buy some art supplies that Evelyn has wanted, and across town again to an Apple store to buy a new iPad Mini for both of us.  Being back in the States for a few days means grab those things you just can’t find in Ecuador!

 We ended the day with a fabulous dinner at a tiny restaurant we discovered courtesy of Yelp — the Del Sur, with a tasty Argentinian style rib eye.