Day 10 Travel from Cusco to Quito

 Plan A for this day was: early flight from Cusco to Lima then connect to a flight to Quito. Well the fairy godmother that had paid us positive attention passed us to the tricks and jokes department.  Our Lima flight turned back due to low visibility and our group could not get another flight via Lima to Quito.  We were forced to take a much later flight to Bogota Columbia and then a flight BACK to Quito.  All of these flights were delayed causing us many hours in three airports. By the time we got to Quito were were on Plan D 

  We should have landed in Quito at about 2 pm but instead landed in Quito at 1 AM!  11 hours late!  It was easily the WORST travel day in our 60+ years of traveling - made worse by the fact that our travel company chose to leave us on our own for this transfer.  We changed trip leaders with our new leader waiting for us in Quito.  Patti and Alberto worked hard to reroute us but we were still on own to negotiate security, customs, and finding our gates .  One of our group spoke enough Spanish to keep us on track - thank goodness!

We reached our Quito hotel and collapsed into bed at about 3 am.  Lessons learned?  Be flexible and keep a positive mindset- not always easy.  Also, think carefully about traveling to places with fragile/overtaxed transport networks.


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