After two days honing our skills at mini golf, making coconut jewelry, and grinding cocoa beans for chocolate, it was time to check out of the Arasha Lodge. We had asked to leave early so we could visit the Equator Monument before the visitors park closed at 5:00 PM. Victor had come to pick us up and we began our 2-1/2 hour drive back to Quito- or so we thought. We had only gone about 30 KM when we came upon a line of traffic with no end in sight. There was absolutely no traffic coming the other way and we could only assume that there was a major accident up ahead. Soon though, the motorcycle policia came by the other way with about a mile of cars in tow. After they passed we were moving once again and all was good. However, we only went about 10K and completely stopped again, this time for almost an hour. With very little in the way of passable Spanish, we could not understand from Victor what the issue was. Our only thought was that we would not get back to Quito in time to make our 6:00 AM flight to the Galapagos.
The afternoon progressed in this fashion of starting and stopping and our two hour ride was soon at five hours and counting. At some point it dawned on us that we were traveling on Easter Sunday and that the whole Equatorial nation was on holiday and driving back home!! Eight hours later we arrived back in Quito. It was pouring rain, and the Equator Park had long since closed. Victor was kind enough to stop anyway we jumped the fence and ran through the rain to take a photo on the line in the middle of the earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment