You can plan a trip to the last second or you can not plan it at all and wing it. Either way it's never what you envision in your head. I stayed up late on the 29th in Vancouver packing, checking and rechecking my luggage, passport, yadda yadda. I confirmed all my flights. Good to go.... I went to bed at 130am and woke at 545am, took a shower, shaved my beard off,put my coller shirt on, pulled on my new jeans and left the house feeling liked I looked like a preppy school boy rather then a terroist. I hate catching connecting flights through the states. I hate the security, I hate feeling like a sheep. I figured I'd try to look as harmles as possible to avoids any problems Aka delays.. My air Canada flight left on time and actually landed in Toronto 30 mins early. I had to go to baggage claim, grab my shit and book it to USA customs. I cleared customs, made it to my gate and was feelin pretty chill. Next stop Newark New Jersey. As I was sitting there I watched this massive storm roll in.. Pretty pink sky underneath massive black swirling clouds. As I'm watching this, I can here 2 diffent people on their phones talking to their friends or family in New York. I heard the words mass flooding, 12" of rain in 8 hours (this was in carolina) and canceled flights into new York.. Yikes.. The ladies called for seats blah blah blah on time, I hear some guy tell his buddy that's flights into laguardia are all canceled from toronto to new York so I'm feeling pretty lucky.. Not more then 30 people scan their tickets before I hear an anouncement saying sorry for the inconvience folks but we have to stop boarding. Someone forgot to do a security sweep.. Fuck.. Normaly I'm pretty patient but I only had 3 hours from the time I landed in NJ till I flew out of JFK.. So the security sweep was done, and we flew out 22 mins late.. No biggie, still time to make it. The flight out was good for about 10 mins before we hit the storm And the turbulence started crashing us around.. As we flew I got to know my seat buddy (a new jersey resident) and he calmed my nerves by telling me I still had a decent amount of time to get a cab from Newark to New Jersey. The rest of the flight was bumpy but nothing to worry about. We started out approach and as we defended onto Newark I got an awesome view ofthe city. We were about 100 meters off the ground (I swear like 30 secs from touch down) when all of a sudden the plane went nose up and the engines went full power... What the fuck! Watching the city disappear behind the clouds the captain came on and said something about a plane on the runway we were about to land on..... Nice.. So we climbed and did a massive circle to approach again, landed without further complications and I was off and running to get my bag. What should have been an hour flight took us 1.5 hours.. I got my bag, went outside and jumped in a flat rate taxi.. 100 buks from Newark to JFK.. Sigh.. On route thisfunny Cuban cab driver tells me about record rain fall and turns on the weather radio station just in time for us to hear "5 hour delays in JFK". Well at least I won't miss my flight.. I guess there was weather warnings because NOONE was on the road.. Haha we made the drive in Mach speed.. I got to JFK at 10 something PM... I was prepared for a 5 hour delays but was not prepared for what the check in lady told me...the police force in Ecuador were rioting, the president was kidnapped and marital law was declared. All airports in Ecuador were closed and the land boarders with Peru and coloumbia were shut down. My flight was canceled until 830 am. I tried to cancel my flight and get a refund with the intention of avoiding ecuador for a while but the airline told me it was was travel agents responsibility and the travel agent told me it was the airlines problem.. 2 hours of being on hold and I gave up..I waited around till 930am in JFK and I was finally on my way to Guayaquil.. With nomore hiccups I flew into town, cleared customs with my one way ticket haha and made it to the hostel cati had booked for me. I went for dinner with this 65 yr old dude I met, 3.50 USD for a decent fish dinner.. Yumm.
So, tomorrow I fly to cuenca. Hopefully I can climb and HOPEFULLY the day goes smoother then the last 36 hrs.
good to hear you made it safe bro!
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