Greetings from Quito, Ecuador. The last few days have been a real exercise in patience and humility, dealing with customs. More on that momentarily. Quito is not only the capitol of Ecuador, but it is also a beautiful city with a ton of charm and character. The Indians, in their brightly colored clothing and bowler hats are everywhere. The town is in the valley between mountain peaks, but the city has grown beyond the valleys and now spills over the tops of the mountains. Beautiful colonial churches and buildings pepper the city, and at night, they light them up with different colors. One of the peaks of the surrounding mountain sports a gigantic statue of some religious saint, which is also lit up at night. Our hostel had a rooftop deck where they served dinner every night, and it was just an amazing place to unwind, drink a glass of wine and take in the view. They people at the hostel were really nice, educated and worldly. It was a good time, a real retreat from the not so fun days I had there.
Religious zealots, cult leaders and the pope will all rejoice in the fact that I have inequitably discovered hell. I spent 3 days there, and I can undeniably attest to it’s existence. It is cleverly disguised as the customs building at the international airport in Quito, and the devils workers walk the halls with stacks of papers, stamped, initialed and filed, in triplicate. Why was I in hell? Let me explain; Our motorcycles were shipped by air cargo from Panama. As you probably already know, the Pan-American Highway, which is supposed to go from Guatemala to the tip of South America, ends in Panama and begins again in Columbia, bypassing what is known as the Darian Straight. The Darian Straight is a bit of “no mans land”. Although technically owned by Panama, it is jungle, swamp and mountains which are incredibly inhospitable. From what I have heard, Panama has refused to allow the road to be built, connecting Central and South America, not only because of the huge expense required, but also because the fear that the ongoing “unofficial” civil war in Columbia will spill into it’s peaceful boundaries. Combine that with the reports on the US Department of State website that stated 42 American citizens were kidnapped last year in Columbia and that was all the reason I needed to be in hell.
Imagine a building, maybe 30 yards by 50 yards and two stories high. Within this building are little dingy offices with fake plywood paneling on the walls. The panels on the walls are coming loose around the corners, because they have warped due to the year round 90% humidity. The ones that face the hallway that occupies the center of hell, front to back, have little sliding glass windows, sans shelves, breaking up what is otherwise a sterile hallway. Behind these windows are the inter workings of hell, which look something like a woman with coke bottle bottom glasses sitting at a manual typewriter, cigarette dangling from the lips, between two huge stacks of papers, looking extremely bored if you are lucky, irritated, or even angry if you are not. All of the papers eagerly await the attention of the one guy who has the big office that smells like stale cigars. It occupies a majority of the second floor. I am fairly certain this is the devil himself, because nothing, and I mean nothing, moves through hell without his stamp and initial. (Incidentally, the devil is not red and does not have horns. He is an overweight man in his mid 50’s who wears a Yucatan shirt and a gaudy gold bracelet, is balding and has big, thick glasses.) Of course before you can request a stamp and initial from the devil, you have to have other pieces of paper that require stamps and initials from his workers, who you can actually talk to through their little glass windows. Problem is there are absolutely no signs in hell. So you have to ask the unhappy women for directions to the window required for the next step, which is, of course closed today, at least as far as the likes of you are concerned anyway. But hell has no dead ends. You don’t stop there because the next window will tell you something completely different about getting the paper necessary for this particular step, and they ARE open today. Problem is they are not in hell. They are in another building, located a few miles from hell, for your convenience. So you take a cab, and when you get there, you are told that can indeed issue the paper that will get you one step closer to the devil himself, but in order to get it, you must go find a store that will copy all of your existing documents for their files. Are you starting to see how hell works?
3 days in hell got me my signature from the devil, which in turn got my motorcycle released from purgatory. That is how I spent my days in Quito. Prior to that, I was in Panama City, Panama for 4 days. It took 4 days to book passage for the bikes and buy a plane ticket to Quito for ourselves. I didn’t mind, it is a really nice city and I enjoyed it very much. Unfortunately, while checking out of our hotel, tragedy struck and I dropped my camera in the lobby on a tile floor. It was broken, along with my good Nikon lens. Hopes of repairing it while on the road proved futile, so I shipped it home. I will se if it can be repaired when I return. Man, how I miss my good camera though.
The highlight of the Panama experience was meeting the local BMW motorcycle club for dinner. They gave us an “honorary” club baseball hat and took us out for a ride to the Panama Canal. It was dark when we got there, but what a cool thing to see. I really enjoyed that! Also while in Panama, we caught up on email, laundry and, of all things, I stared to try to diet! Phillipe is a health nut and I was trying to adopt some of his habits, which is not very easy on the road, but let’s see how it goes.
Tomorrow we leave for Chiclayo, a small town located somewhere close to the pacific coast. Until then…..
