Quito, Eucador

Courtyard of monastery where we had dinner

Center of the world monument

Crew greeting when we returned to ship

Sunday we were supposed to leave the ship in Manta, Ecuador and travel by chartered plane to Quito at 8 am.  After sitting the the ship's theater for about a half hour we were informed that because of the poor visibility due to rain that the Manta airport was closed.  The travel department arranged for us to go ahead and board the buses and we were taken to the local museum, the museum was very small but had some nice displays of the local culture and some modern art.  After about an hour we were advised that the airport was open and our plane was on the way.  We waited about another hour before we boarded for the short flight to Quito.  We were on a small turbo prop plane, the flight was a bit rough due to the poor weather but we made it okay.  Since we were so late arriving our plans had to be adjusted and instead of being taken on a tour we went straight to the hotel for lunch.  The hotel was nice, very upscale, and all the ladies were given beautiful long stemmed roses when we checked in.  We later found out that Ecuador produces more roses than any where else in the world.  We had a short tour of the city after lunch and then back to the hotel to get ready for our gala dinner at a monastery.  The dinner was quite nice with a beautiful setting in the monastery that included a rather large museum.  It was still raining (as it had been all day) and it rained all night but the next day was sunny.  We were taken to the "Center of the World" monument where we had our picture taken with one foot on either side of the equator.  We were bussed back to the airport in Quito for our flight to Guyaquil (sp?) where we met up with our ship.  We had a nice welcome back with a big "welcome home" banner, music from the ship's band and greetings from the crew. We were also surprised to have the Captain checking us back in when we boarded instead of the usual security officer. This evening we had dinner with all the members of our trivia team as our one member will be leaving us in Lima.  One of our members is a doctor and another is a lawyer, so we have done pretty well and we will have a hard time replacing our member that is leaving.  Tuesday is a sea day so hopefully we will be able to catch up on our rest. Neither one of us slept well in Quito, the beds were really firm and we think the altitude bothered us some.  Quito is over 9000 feet in elevation.