Getting there...

Well it was a huge few days but we eventually made it to Quito. It was Mum´s fault I cried at the airport, I was feeling good until she put on her "it´s actually happening, I´m going to miss you so much" face, then started with the water works. At that point it hit me that I was actually getting on a plane and wouldn´t be back for go knows how long. But being the seasoned traveller that I am, I wiped those few glistening tears, took a deep breath and walked to the internatoinal departure doors. Watching Ryan and Kate´s farewell was much harder than leaving for myself. But they were both brave and after a round of hugs and skulling Ryans $4 bottle of water that we weren´t allowed to take through security, we walked through the big silver departure doors. Our adventure had officially begun!

Our first flight to Auckland took 2 1/2 hours. Athough I was exhausted, I couldn´t sleep so the in flight movies and food kept me entertained. We then spent a boring 4 hours in transit at the Auckland airport where Ryan and I had our first tiff of the trip. I accidently sloped sauce from my hamburger on his ''only good casual jumper'', woops! The 12 hour flight to LA was horrible. I was cramped, uncomfortable and couldn´t sleep but worst of all , Ryan kept farting in his sleep (thanks for the corned beef and cabbage mum)!

I was very relieved to finally arrive into LA where the weather was beautifully warm. We didn´t do too much besides go for a walk around close to the hotel, where I took tourist photos of fast food stores. I was especially excited to see a stall selling Michael Jackson souvenirs!

The next day we had very good intentions of doing as much tourist stuff as we could. That idea went straight out the window when my credit card wouldn´t work and I found out that the only way to get it back on was to go to the Aussie embassy in LA. Sounds simple enough but in a city the size of LA, nothing is simple. First we couldn´t figure out which bus stop to get off at, so we started walking and realised it would take us forever. Upon the request of Ryan, I checked the address again and was surprised to find it was completely different to what I had originally thought, so, confused, we turned around and jumped on another bus. As we were about to get off the bus, Ryan checked the address one more time and pointed out that I was looking at the address to the NZ Embassy and that we were going the right way in the first place! Aaargh! We eventually left the embassy at 4.30 and made it to Santa Monica where we went for a walk along the world famous pier, but after stuffing around all day, we were so exhausted by this stage that we decided to head back to the hotel to collect our luggage.

Our flight from LA to Quito left at 2 am so we headed to the airport at 10.30pm where Ryan and I were shocked by the amount of luggage the Americans were checking in. And we thought we were bad... After an exhausting couple of days, we both passed out on this flight. We had a quick stop over in Panama City before finally boarding the last leg of our journey through to Quito. The flight was actually a bit scary because we had to fly so high to get up to the mountains, but as we got closer, the view from the plane was sensational. We saw mountains, valleys, lakes, glaciers volcanos and some amazingly vibrant shades of green, then... concrete. We had finaly made it to Quito.