“It’s all fun and games until someone gets their soul stolen. ”

-Evan the cameraman, reflecting on the not-so-fun events of Episode 3

As we reported earlier, our camera was stolen recently.

You can probably imagine that it’s kind of hard to make a show about living abroad without a video camera.

And so much has happened! Laurene quit her job, Ryan and I took a boat ride on a lake named after a guinea pig, Ryan and Freddie went to the coast, I found a job, Laurene started looking for other jobs, Ryan got thrown into a jail on wheels, the boys went on an Indiana Jones adventure in the jungle, the World Cup began. And so on. All those little things like Life.

While the powers-that-be behind Jet Set Zero have been researching every possibility to get us a new camera as soon as possible, they’ve encountered headaches and hurdles like customs, duties paperwork, and exorbitant shipping costs.

Enter creative solution #1: Find a courier to fly down with the camera.

I jumped on the horn (ok, the internet) and contacted my best friend Amy Cao, a food writer and blogger in NYC. Would she be available to fly down to Quito with the camera on a moment’s notice? An email response from her later, it was a done deal.

She arrives tonight into Quito, and the show will go on!

Food writer Amy Cao arriving in Quito soon!

So yes, Baños was a wonderful getaway and we soaked up the scenery, soaked in the hot springs, and then got soaked on the river.

Little did we know our luck was about to change.

On our way back from Baños, we split up and took two different buses. Laurene and Freddie needed to get back to Quito to work/find work the next day so they left after lunch. But I didn’t have any pressing engagements (let’s be honest, no job prospects in sight) so I was contemplating traveling further south for a few days. After much deliberation, I ended up going back to Quito, so I took an afternoon bus with Evan, our field producer and cameraman.

We were seated in the last row of the bus on the right hand side. On the left side of the bus there was one additional row of seats further back that were directly across from the bathroom. Our bags were under our seats, and our seats backed up against the bathroom.

The 4-hour bus ride had lulled me to sleep and by the time I woke up about 30 minutes from Quito, our camera was missing. We searched frantically all around us, on the top shelf of the bus and under our neighbor’s seats. They noticed us panicking and one young couple offered to help: the girl went to talk to the bus driver, who called the police. (more…)

I know we make the whole travel-story-production-video-etc look pretty easy (and cool), but it actually takes a staggering amount of work, research, and planning for each season.  Right now we’re in the final stages of switching all our production gear over for Quito and I figured it would be fun to share what some of the behind the scenes on it looks like.  Here’s one of our mock ups.

Image courtesy of Jedidiah Mitchell.