They´re off!
Having stashed stuff at my folks place for a year, the driver with forearms like fat hams and much wireless gizmo ferried an early-morning Nick to the airport and, feeling a bit nervous, casting about for things to talk about, I noticed a big building facade near the Albert Bridge, with my full name on it. I´m a sucker for an omen. Whether it meant I´d shortly be a pile of rubble dotted with portaloos I don´t know.
So en route to Miami from Heathrow, after wandering round the Harrods concession and thinking how much it was like Woolworths, only tartan, I met a lass called Eriwhen from Cardiff who was going diving in Honduras. Struck home how I´m likely to meet a lot of 20-somethings on this trip.
V for Vendetta and a Cary Grant film passed and we touched down in an overcast, thirty-degree Miami International. It´s one of the worst airports I´ve been to. The place was shambolic with queues for passport control stretching back into the 1900s, wanker security guards, unsmiling and overweight staff, begrudged help. They had a notice pinned up to the Immigration desks - "Been to the World Cup in Germany? You Might Have German Measles." Couldn´t wait to leave.
So I settled down into the second plane where Van Morrison warbled about going Into The Mystic, and by jove it felt like it. But got chatting to Anthony, an nice American guy with a book of Spanish grammar and malfunctioning seat, and a woman who was born in Quito and going back for an annual family pilgrimage.
It was a clear night with a full moon, and we could see Quito laying below, fanning out like a wave. It´s situated in a valley so looks like a tiger skin rug, all strange fingers of suburbia and stripes of undulating light. Hats off to the pilot cos the landing is very tight, with mountains and volcanoes on each side of the runway. And you come in over a very busy road, can see the drivers teeth reflecting the streetlight.
Taxi to secret graden hostel, and first drink of the day, a cold beer, and just a twist of the arm later and I was in town playing pool and drinking, had been up for 24 hours by this point because of the time differences.
And so here I am now in a cafe in the Old Town, and outside are Indian ladies selling strange fruit, but herbs and mountain flowers, shouting something, and there are churches, and plazas, and police with fucken huge alsations, and it´s all good. Going to set up my Spanish lessons tomorrow and maybe get a cable car up to a smallish mountain overlooking the city. The people in the hostel have been ridiculously friendly really and long may it continue.
I think the only trouble is going to be deciding what to leave out.
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