Day 88 – Happy Anniversary!

It was like camping but inside.  We woke up to seeing our breath in the room but thankfully there was hot water. Cuenca is pretty high in the mountains so at night and in the morning the temp really drops.  But it was a beautiful drive. The landscape really changes and the lush green foliage is replaced by different tones of brown and rock. We were all glad we had stopped and gotten some sleep instead of pushing through.  We got on the road pretty early and got some breakfast about an hour into the trip. The restaurant was as cold as the hotel so they turned the fireplace on for us but it didn’t heat up very quickly, or at all.

Notice the grey pajama pants with the green jacket?

We sat huddled around it and ate our breakfast…but at least we had a nice view. As we got closer to the coast the mountains flattened and the temperature rose quickly. Thank goodness Erik could change out of the scary outfit I grabbed out of his bag the night before in the dark.

View along the drive

We got to Milagro, safe and sound, around 11:30. I forgot how hot it is there. We went to Aaron’s house to say hi. I was a bit stressed because by now my damp clothes had been in plastic bags for more than 24 hours. I wanted to find a Laundromat ASAP. Fortunately, there was one close, 30 minutes & $2 later all my clothes were dry and folded in the bag-Yeah! We headed for Guayaquil around 1:30. The plan was to go drop off our stuff at the house where we were staying for the night and then go to Artisanal Market and then meet up with Aaron & Keila. (We rented a room from a witness family that lives 10 minutes from the airport and shuttle to the airport. We had a little bit of difficulty finding it but it was definitely worth the effort. For $10 bucks a night per person you can stay in a really nice clean room with A/C and hot water & bfast. Another $5 gets you a ride to the airport).

It started pouring while we were at the market so we decided to meet Aaron & Keila at the mall near where we were staying instead of sightseeing. We had coffee and chatted with them and Shawn for a long time. It was really nice they drove into Guyaquil to see us our last night. They all brought us back to our place and we said our goodbyes. No doubt Shawn did a happy dance after leaving us as he no longer had to cart our sorry butts around. We really appreciate our personal chauffeur we had for 3 months. He was VERY self-sacrificing.

We got back around 10:30 and now had the fun task of packing. Somehow it seemed like we had so much more stuff even though we really hadn’t bought anything. Around 12:30 we went to bed, had to be up by 3:30. All in all, it was a great and memorable 18^th Anniversary!