Made It!

Make no mistake! Any flight that leaves at 10:45 pm is a red-eye flight. We can vouch for it.

We caravanned from Sunshower Farm to SFO on Tuesday morning with a stop a Philz coffee on the way. Philz is a hot new thing in coffee, where they have about 20 different flavors that they custom brew and mix individually to your precise expectations. It was great, but mine was very high in caffeine.

We flew Virgin America to LAX, where Roz met us. We went to see “Creed” and have a bite to eat at the Howard Hughs Center. “Creed” was pretty much like every other Rocky movie, but it meets expectations.

The line at Copa airlines took quite a while. It seemed to take 15 minutes to check everyone else in. We were done in about 5. We suspect much has to do with the enormous bags that people were checking.

Eventually we took off. Sleep didn’t come easy, so we each watched “Hot Pursuit,” with Reese Witherspoon and Sophia Vergara. We were flying southeast against time zones. By the time we landed in Panama City, it was morning East Coast Time. We were able to see the Panama Canal, as well as the skyline of Panama City. It is quite a high-rise metropolis.

It was a short flight to Guayaquil, almost due south from Panama City. Our hotel was a scant quarter mile from the airport, although we took a taxi none-the-less. Once checked in, we closed the curtains, showered, and closed our eyes for a few hours. We are, after all, still battling colds.

We took a cab to the Malecon, only to be let out on the border of a big protest. Not sure exactly what it was, as the signs talked about the united workers. We saw on the news that there were big protests in Quito as the legislature has removed term limits from the constitution. The current president is a self-proclaimed socialist, but rules with quite a heavy hand.

We walked the Malecon along the Guayas River to Cerra Santa Anna, a hillside village of multi-colored houses that is noted for its 444 steps up to the lighthouse at the top. We made it about 300 steps. There was a breeze, even though it was 86 degrees during the day. As it turns out, the promised restaurants and bars tended to have music blasting and weren’t really what we needed.

We ended up going back to the hotel where we had some excellent plantains and ceviche. We went to bed, and slept about 14 hours.