March 23rd: An Overdue and interesting Update of this adventure.
We are back in Toronto and on Day 7 of the 14-day mandatory self-isolation requirement for returning travelers. We are well. Our friends have been providing the kind of support that makes shut-ins feel great. Yaay!!
We said goodbye to Olón on Sunday March 15th and took the three hour bus ride to Guayaquil with the intention of boarding our one-hour flight to Quito.
The beach area in Olón was our restaurant, people-watching place, and non-judgemental watering hole for two weeks.
Step aside Julia Childs. This is real food. Shrimp and rice. Each poke into the mound of rice delivered a shrimp until it was all done. $6
The one-meal-a-day breakfast: bolón (a baseball-size, meat-stuffed plantain ball, garnished with a fried egg, and a slice of beef. Having this with coffee is an excellent start to the day. We tried, but could not finish the whole thing. Next day we opted to share one bolón. The day after that reverted to having one each. It is that good. $5.
Back to the real story of Guayaquil airport.
The welcoming party at departure level of the airport were four masked men behind yellow caution tape. “Passengers only beyond this point”. That much Spanish I understood. The surgical masks hid their facial expression, but we took that directive to be serious.
It is a bit disconcerting to try and do a self check-in with the emailed confirmation number and receive the polite electronic response “We are sorry, but there is no record of your reservation or payment or payment for a flight to Quito”. Huh? What? What? Must be a mistake. Try again. Use a different machine. Thoughts of missing the next morning’s connecting flight out of Quito to Toronto were not sugarplum fairies.
A snail’s walk-and-wait to the check-in counter brought us to a welcoming Latam airline attendant. Once we established that English was probably the best lingo for this particular set of circumstances the queries began. She could not find our reservation either. Uh oh! What now? Several consultations with colleagues, punches and clicks on the computer, and telephone calls later the jefa (female big boss) was at our elbows. Five minutes later we had boarding passes with exit row seats for a slightly later flight. I have been always wrong, but I fantasized that the check-in attendant was looking me up and down because I was so irresistible. All the while she was being merciful with the seating options. Story of my life. It was here that we learned that the Ecuador airport would be closed to international flights within 24 hours. The suggestion was that we get to the Quito airport earlier than normal to ensure that our seats were not given to someone else. The enormity, seriousness and social effects of this epidemic were now part of our lives.
Bags in hand, saxophone on my back, on the way out of the Quito airport, some masked, gowned and goggled people approached us with a “request” to take our temperatures. Obviously there was something serious happening and we were now part of it. Even the night clerk at the hotel gave us a masked welcome.