Finally arrived in Quito after a strenuous 30 hours of traveling. My journey went like this:

• Day 1 – 4:00pm: From Cartagena I flew to Bogota, and on to Cali, which lies in the south of Colombia
• Day 1 – 9:15pm: I took a 10-hour overnight bus from Cali to the Colombian border town of Ipiales
• Day 2 – 7:30am: Arriving at the bus terminal in the Ipiales, I took a   minibus to the actual border
• Day 2 – 8:00am: I went straight to Ecuadorian customs- forgetting to check out of Colombia first. I had to walk back to Colombia (across a bridge) to get stamped out of Colombia and then walk back to Ecuador to get stamped in.
• Day 2 – 9:00am: Finally in Ecuador, I caught a minibus to the main bus terminal in the town of Tulcan, and hopped on a bus for the 5-hour ride to Quito. Almost there!

The 5-hour ride to Quito was wishful thinking. When the bus driver popped in The Bounty Hunter with Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler, I thought, 5 hours? Bring it on.

Halfway to Quito (only 2 more hours to go!), we were stopped by some demonstrations blocking the highway. From what I can understand, it sounds like the local indigenous people are protesting against the government’s proposal of charging them for using water for their land that is gathered from rainfall. They have been protesting by constructing roadblocks for many miles over the only highway to Quito from the north.

Dozens of vehicles were parked on the side of the road and hundreds of people milled about outside, waiting for several hours until the protestors quit around nightfall and bulldozers were brought in to clear the roads. It was a peaceful protest, and even quite comical when some indigenous women came up to the very people whose path they were blocking and started selling them bottles of Coke.

Since nearly everyone in Ecuador possesses some form of indigenous ethnicity, it seemed no one was taking sides or arguing against the protests that inconvenienced hundreds of Ecuadorians.

That 5-hour bus ride lasted over 13 hours, and when I finally arrived in Quito it was almost midnight. I had no idea where the apartment was, so I took a cab to an internet cafe and called Freddie’s cell phone. The group arrived at the cafe within 15 minutes and I finally met everyone for the first time. Exhausted, we went back to the apartment and I had a real shower and slept in a real bed…finally.