Well, it’s 1:32 pm and all the insurance “emergency” person could tell me was that “the hold times are longer than normal to reach American Airlines as we have not been able to speak with an agent.”
We had breakfast at the Air Suites Hotel Boutique this morning, then walked down to the largest mall in Quito – Quicentro – to purchase something to replace a day pack that was just swag from a golf tournament we attended. It is almost in tatters. One of the first stores we encountered was North Face, so we bought a small backpack so we can pack stuff that now is stuffed in the day pack and another day pack we got at a golf tournament. We kind of searched for a store in which we could buy cheap wine, as we’re transferring back to that lovely colonial hotel in Puembo this afternoon. It’s much closer to the airport (15 minutes) instead of an hour and thinking we might get a 6:38 am flight on Wednesday, we wanted to be somewhere that didn’t require us to get up at 3 am just to get to the airport with two hours to spare.
We returned and repacked, asked for a taxi to 1) take us to a liquor store to buy cheap wine and 2) transfer us to San Jose de Puembo. Well, that was a challenge since no one spoke English, and we don’t speak Spanish. Our taxi driver was an old man, probably 70+, and when we gave him the address to the hotel, he seemed confused. After about a half hour of attempting to show him the location of the hotel, he finally understood (well, sort of) so we took off. Apparently, he forgot we wanted to stop and buy wine because, well, that didn’t happen.
When we got to the Puembo area, he was stopping and asking police who were manning a roundabout where protesters had just been how to get to the hotel. He stopped at least three times asking for directions. Lucky for us, Beth had it pulled up on her Google maps so he eventually accepted our help, and we got here around 1 pm.
We don’t have the rather spacious room we had when Audley moved us here before the Amazon trip. It’s smaller and has no outside access so I can’t step outside to smoke but its pretty easy access to get outside. Minor inconvenience.
None of the places have heat. It’s not cold but it’s chilly – only about 60 degrees – just chilly enough that some heat would feel nice. Minor inconvenience.
We’ve got the hotel room until Wednesday – sure hope we can fly out Wednesday. If we can’t fly out Wednesday, don’t know what we’ll do because this particular hotel is sold out on July 1. All the other hotels near the airport also are sold out. Guess everybody’s trying to leave too.
I did have a chat with someone at American but to avoid any charges for changing our flight, she informed me to contact my travel agent so I’m going to contact par excellence Elaine first thing to see if she can help get our flight rebooked and tickets reissued for Wednesday. She’s a wonder so our hopes are high.
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