Wow it was a gorgeous takeoff from Ottawa Tuesday morning with lots of low-lying fog, orangey pink sunrise, and flat calm rivers in the valley.

Flights went well. Connection through Montreal was somehow easy and painless. Connection through Miami was over 9 hours of sleep deprived wandering around – even though the city looks beautiful from the air we didn’t have the energy to wander out into it.

In all, it took us 21 hours to get from our house to our AirBnB in Quito.

Pictured below: Bryn contemplating literal naps via the world of video game naps.

Bryn contemplates a nap in videogame format.

Also, Bryn took this video of me trying to nap in the child-filled chaos of the Miami departures lounge.

Song of the day: Zombie by the Cranberries.

After they towed our original plane off the gate in Miami (mechanical issues) we weren’t sure we were going to get out that evening. But, eventually, a new plane came in from Dallas, and we got to watch this rainbow being majestic over a hangar.

We also saw an interesting art exhibit in Miami Airport – still life images of security scan images, which I thought was very cool. I think the ones on the left may be Christmas tree ornaments, but I have no idea what the big round thing on the right might be.

We eventually landed in Quito around 11:30 pm local time. Our lovely AirBnB host Miguel kindly met us at the airport and drove us the 45 minutes back to Quito city centre. He’s originally from Sucre, Bolivia, but moved to Quito to study and now teaches Latin American literature at one of the universities here. We had lovely chats, and learned the Spanish word for the type of landscape Quito is built on (“quevradas” – which seems to loosely translate to ravines). We also talked about the disconnect between average wages (~$400/month – Ecuador uses the American dollar) and average rents (also around $400/month) and the strain it’s placing on citizens here. Affordable housing is a problem everywhere.

Video of us pulling up to our AirBnB:

Quito is strewn across a series of valleys at 2,850m – our first gentle brush with real altitude this trip – driving in, we were amazed at how there were city lights both above and below us at times. The city is rich in topography!

And the Airbnb is really nice! The building is a heritage house in Quito’s old town or Centro Historico (which is a Unesco World Heritage Site) that has been restored by a local architect and now contains several apartments. It’s won awards for its architectural design and restoration work, and, well, it’s just gorgeous, and the views are phenomenal.