It rained for the most part of the night. I think. And a little bit in the morning, judging by the look of the streets and the mist that engulfed the whole town. Besides, it’s very, very cold! It’s like an early morning in Predeal in autumn.

When we went out for breakfast we felt like in a ghost town – no one on the streets and all the shops closed. Today and tomorrow they celebrate the Day of the Dead, therefore everyone is at the cemetery. They clean up the tombs and people bring flowers and colored breads shaped like children, as an offering.

Big day today. We woke up around 6 a.m. First thing was to pack everything quickly and to decide what bags we were going to leave in storage at the hostel for the 3 day trip to Otavalo (small mountain village some 3 hours away from Quito where we were going for the Day of the Dead celebrations).

Tudor was very nervous. He remembered last year’s episode in Addis Ababa when we were unable to board a bus because of the chaos at the bus station. I hope history doesn’t repeat itself.

We worried for nothing. It was crowded at the station, indeed, hundreds of people were traveling to Otavalo for the celebrations, but everything was well organized. It went smooth. Ok, I admit, we had a little help from a lady who was also waiting in line, and whose husband worked for a while in Romania. She said that our countries are much alike – mountains, valleys, seaside, delta, and that he loved it.

To read the full story click here.

Pentru varianta in limba Romana dati click aici.

]]> http://blog.tudorvintiloiu.com/?feed=rss2&p=1048 http://blog.tudorvintiloiu.com/?p=1023 http://blog.tudorvintiloiu.com/?p=1023#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:01:49 +0000 admin http://blog.tudorvintiloiu.com/?p=1023

I woke up around 4 a.m. The jetlag is a killer. Last night I went to sleep at 19:30. When I opened my eyes it was still pitch dark outside. So I stayed in bed staring at the ceiling for another couple of hours.

At 6:30 I decided it was enough. I woke Tudor up and we had a wonderful breakfast: coffee with milk, fresh mango juice, scrambled eggs, toast, butter and jam and a banana on top of everything.

After that we took a taxi and went a few kilometers out of town to “Mitad del Mundo” – the middle of the world.

To read the full story click here.

Pentru varianta in limba Romana dati click aici.

We arrived in Quito around 9 a.m., after a flight change in Amsterdam and two other stops – one in Bonaire, in the Dutch Antilles and another in Guayaquil (port town in Ecuador). Total travel time – 22 hours.

We gained 7 hours travelling West, and although we felt like at the end of a day, here the day was just beginning.

To read the complete story, please click here.

Pentru varianta in limba Romana, dati click aici.

As a novelty, the diary will not be accessible in its entirety on the main page of the blog. Instead I have divised a special section for travel diaries which you can access by clicking on the “Ecuador Diary” button under the header of the home page.

Also, this year, the diary will be available in both Romanian and English.

EDIT: Some sort of error prevents users with Internet Explorer 6.0 browser to comment or view the page properly.

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