We woke up at 4.15 am on Wednesday to go to the airport. We were very touched that Javier from the hotel had bought us a goodbye present. He has just (this week) been granted a visa to go and work in the USA...another Ecuadorian forced to leave his family behind in order to find economic stability. We will be thinking of him in his new adventures!
We knew there was a departure tax to pay when leaving Quito but had assumed it was just a few dollars. In fact we had to pay more than $40 each....(even the babies) so the total was just short of $300. I couldn't help thinking that I would have preferred to spend this on a year's schooling for a child in Canoa...but there we are.
As soon as we arrived at the airport we were approached by a woman selling chewing gum. Having been immersed in the realities of Ecuadorian hardship for the last five weeks I know that her life can't have been easy. At the same time though, we were arriving in two taxis with seven family members and about three hundred bags. (I exaggerate but you get the picture). I needed many things, but at 4.30 in the morning chewing gum was not one of them.
The next thing was that a man arrived and started loading our bags on to a trolley. Frederic said politely that we could manage (thank you) but he was not interested. He was taking out bags and that was it. He took them, and off he went with his trolley. This was fine, until we found ourselves at the check in desk trying to explain that we were going home via Lima, Amnsterdam and Sweden. We were asked a lot of questions about our route/bags/seating requirments and at the same time Bag man was in my ear insisting on a tip for a service we had not asked for.
I told him (less politely than Frederic) that he would have to wait. I had no change, I was talking to the check in lady and we still had to pay departure tax which was another queue in another part of the airport. He became almost aggressive, insisting that he wanted payment. I am afraid that this attitude did not have the desired effect.
I have come to hugely admire the determination and hard work of the Ecuadorian people. That is genuine. At the same time I still protect my own right to choose the services we genuinely want to use and when a man starts shouting at me in an airport I am afraid that the last thing I am going to do is get my purse out. Machismo is alive and kicking in Quito, but not where I come from. I shouted back. He left.
Not quite the departure I had in mind, but there we are. The silly thing is I would have been quite happy to pay the man if he had just been patient when we were trying to organise a hundred other things, but I was not prepared to give in to threats.
Eventually we managed to get through security and through to passport control. At this point we were asked to produce some forms which we had not been told about. We were given one form for each person and sent to the back of the hall to fill them in.
We did this, returned to the queue, and eventually got through to the departure lounge, by which time Frederic was desperate for his morning coffee. The next we knew Frederic's name was being called over the tannoy...he had to present himself at the desk. I checked to see that we had not mislaid our passports or tickets...but they were all safely with me. I went with Fred to see what he was being called for...only to discover that he had been selected "at random" to have all his baggage checked by Interpol. I couldn't help asking myself whether Bag man had made a quick call to one his contacts to get his revenge. In any event I understand that in the event the check was only a very cursory one. I guess when they saw the baggage in question they came to the conclusion that if we were carrying drugs or weapons we would not have chosen to put them in a bag that was pink.
The flight to Lima was painless,a nd two hours later we found ourselves in Peru. How strange is that? When the children were little we used to play the "capitals game" when we were out in the car. I used to ask them to tell me the capital of Peru....and all of a sudden we were there...in Lima. Wow.
On arrival we were asked for yet more forms. No-one had given us any forms so we took the ones presented to us and filled them in (seven of them). By this time I was sick and tired of filling in forms that no-one had ever previously mentioned. When I was asked for yet another form at customs I was about ready to explode.
We had just ten hours before our next flight so we asked for some suggestions at passport control as to how best to spend it. By coincidence it was Independence Day (28th July) so the city was one big party. We went to the Indian markets in the Miraflores area and then to Plaza Mayor where there was a very festive atmosphere and red and white flags flying everywhere.
Everywhere we went we were stopped by people desperate to touch the little ones. Niko and Luca were treated like something between film stars and extra terrestrials. "Qué lindo....qué hermoso.... qué precioso...muñecos...." People even wanted to take pictures of them and with us....I now know what it feels like to be the mother of someone famous...if they had been a bit older they would have had to sign autographs.
In any event we were very pleased to have had the opportunity to have seen Lima, even if our visit was only a very brief one. I took some great photos which I was looking forward to sharing with you....and then all of a sudden we were exposed to the other, less friendly, side of life in Lima when my camera was snatched straight from my hand.
I had told the others to keep their possessions close to them and to take care, because I had heard that tourists are often targeted...but even I had not expected my camera to be snatched from my hand in broad daylight. The man simply took it and ran off. Easy as that.
I have to be honest, quite apart from losing the camera and the pictures stored on it of us in Lima it flet horrible to have been targeted in this way. What was worse though was the complete indifference of the people who saw what happened. One side of Lima is the people who are friendly, smiling and welcoming and eager to talk to you. The other side is the people who turn their backs when a crime is committed, and don't even ask if you are ok.
There we are. I was shocked at the time, but now I have just put it down to a "cultural experience". My only regret is losing the photos of our day in Peru...the others (thanks to Saskia) are all on the computer. If it had to happen, then at least it was at the end of our trip and not the beginning.
We then took a taxi back to the airport. Here are aome bullet points of the next two hours....
- The taxi driver, having agreed on a fair of 30 soles, suddenly raised the price to 40 soles on arriving at the airport. I refused. He didn't kill any of us so I guess we were lucky.
- We followed the signs to "departures" and stood in the queue.
- Upon reaching the front we were told we actually had to check in somewhere completely different first, despite there being no signs saying this. The check in desk was miles away.
- We checked in and then traipsed across the airport again to return to the first line.
- Upon reaching the front of the queue a second time we were told we had to pay a further departure tax (ten hours in Lima comes at a price) which amounted to just over $200.
- When trying to pay this tax we realised that we had only been given six boarding cards instead of seven.
- I crossed the airport once again to the check in desk, to find the agent who had served me smiling smarmily and waving the missing boarding passes at me.
- He did not apologise.
- For a third time we went to the departures queue, showed the missing boarding pass and paid the seventh departure tax fee. The agent did not smile.
- We proceeded to passport control and said hello to the official. He did not respond or smile. In fact he did not speak at all. I wondered what we I had done to him in a previous life, because it was clearly something unpleasant.
- I decided to spend my last remaining dollars on some chocolate at "duty free". It turned out to be double the price of the same chocolate in Finland!
So...that was our day in Lima. Despite losing the camera I am glad we had the chance to see it, although I am in no rush to go back.
The rest of our journey, to Ansterdam and then to Stockholm and the boat back to Finland all went smoothly. I was able to see Europe with totally different eyes and am still feeling totally overwhelmed at how lucky we are here.
Anyway, we arrived back tired but safe yesterday morning and have already received several mails from our new friends in Ecuador. I thought before we left that our trip to Ecuador was likely to be a life changing experience and this is exactly what it has been. We have learnt a huge amount, both about ourselves as well as about Ecuadorian culture and how lucky we are to have the friends we have in Finland, France and elsewhere.
I will write a final post on how we distributed the money collected and also a story which had a happy ending on our last day in Quito, but for now thank you to all of you who have followed the blog and supported us in our Latin American adventure. I am pretty certain that it will not be our last!
