An Interesting Start

9/3/08

Well, after months of planning and waiting, we are finally off. I was up at 4:15am to catch my 7:20 flight out of SFO. I slept the first two hours of my flight and then decided to purchase a movie (Delta now charges $6 for movies also they charge for snacks and basically everything else. Anybody who has seen the Southwest commercial knows what I am talking about.) I arrived in Atlanta 20 minutes early but had to wait for the plane in our gate to depart, so I ended up arriving right on time, which for the airlines these days is very good. I met Unger at his gate and we are now currently waiting for the maintenance guys to repair the telephone. Assuming we arrive safely in Quito I will have more to report (hopefully interesting stuff) later. One thing to add; we finally took off. This plane is really old and loud. I hope the plane can make it the 2600 miles.


9/4/08


Well the good news is that I am writing which means the plane managed to survive the flight (who knows how many more flights the old fellow has left in him). Along with the rattling and other noises the plane still had ashtrays in the bathroom so I´m assuming the plane is more than 20 years old. All in all the flight was ok. (fastfowarding a bit; our taxi driver from the airport told us they are building a new airport outside of the city because the runway is too short. We coincidentally ran into our flight attendant and the two pilots while hiking a volcano in Quito and the pilot told us a story about an Iberian Airlines flight that landed, went straight through the end of the runway and came to a stop about 100 feet from a neighborhood. So now I am extremely happy we landed ok). I got ahead of myself but the story was relevant. Anyway, we arrived at the hostel which for $8/night is pretty nice. The building is very old, and the hallways and ceilings in places are narrow and low, respectively. But the view of Old Town Quito from the fifth floor terrace is incredible. Although the room is clean and bunk beds are actually relatively comfortable, I did not sleep much because some late night revelers were yelling at about 3:30am until about 4:30am. I don´t think the same noise rules apply to hostels as they do to hotels. But once again for $8 it is good. We woke up early and went up to the terrace for a relatively expensive breakfast for Ecuador standards. It was $3.50 all you can eat freshly cooked omelets, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, fruit cups, coffee, and juice. When we saw the price we said "screw it" and decided to splurge a little. After breakfast we hiked up a flight of stairs to a park called Ichimbia. Now I realize although I do exercise regularly, I should be in better shape, but man I was winded. The view was nice but I realize now it was peanuts compared to what we would see later in the day. We decided next we would go to the Basilica in Old Town. We paid the $1 entry fee and climbed to the top of the tower. On the way up we met a one-legged American ex-marine (lets call him George because I don´t think we ever got his name). George was a 61 year old fugitive who could not leave Ecuador. He is traveling in South America for two years and apparently he took a military plane into Ecuador and the guy who checked him into the country said he didn´t need his passport stamped. Well when he tried to leave Ecuador they arrested him. He sat in a holding room for a couple of hours until he decided just to walk out. He caught a lift with a couple of Colombian drug dealers driving over the border and when the police pulled the car over they didn´t even notice George and just arrested the Colombians. Now whether or not there is any truth to this story I don´t know but George seemed like an honest one legged ex-military man. After the Basilica we grabbed some coffee and walked to the main plaza. On the way I experienced the highlight of my day; my first empenada. An empenada is basically a fried piece of dough wrapped around chicken, peas and carrots. It was $1 and it was incredible. This country is really cheap by the way. We then took a taxi over to El Teleferico, which is a gondola($4) up to a hiking path that leads to a volcano. We hiked a little way and ran into a barbed wire fence. We asked a policeman working there if we could continue on and he said just climb under the fence (we found out later that people in this country don´t really view barbed wire as a way of saying "stay out"). Of course being with Unger we had to climb to the top, regardless of the storm clouds drifting our way from every direction. We hiked about a mile when we ran into the flight attendant and pilots. While talking, we saw our first flash of lightning and the pilot told of a previous trip here where he got stuck because of an ice storm. Well Unger kept an eye on the clouds and stated that it looked like it was clearing. So we continued on. About another half mile later my lungs began to feel like anvils and I believe my heart was beating at an unsafe level. So I stopped and sat down in the middle of the path. We were at about 15,000 feet so it is acceptable. Unger continued on. I turned back. an hour or so later we met at the gondola and started our descent down. 5 minutes later the sky opened up and it began to pour. I was right; going to the top was a bad idea. We went back to the hostel, attempted to read a Spanish newspaper, walked down the street and split 3 more empenadas (chicken, meat, and cheese). Did I mention they are really good. We then went into a restaurant and ordered the ¨Desayuno Completo" translated as the complete breakfast. It was 2 fried eggs on top of a piece of steak on a bed of rice with french fries, tomatoes, cucumber and avocado. It cost $2.50 and it was good.

Rewind Six Months

So I was sitting in my cubicle about six months, thinking to myself; I´m 25 years old, what am I doing sitting in a call center for Chase Bank trying to sell home equity loans? Now, unless you have been living in a bubble, six to eight (possibly a little earlier; it doesn´t matter, things were getting bad) months ago was about the time the housing really burst and the economy began to free fall. So now, not only was I doing something I really didn´t want to be doing but also the money I was making from 2007 was no longer going to be going in to my pocket, but instead it would be going into trying to save the bank from completely losing control of its retail finance sector. So I began to discuss with my friend Daniel Unger (who equally hated his job for different reasons) the possibility of just up and leaving Chase and begin to travel. Now ¨"travel" and "no" are two words that do not go together in Unger´s vocabulary so his response of course was ¨"sure, where are we going?" I´m not going to bore you with the details of our discussions but we both wanted to go to a Spanish speaking country and Europe was way too expensive (see above statement about our economy; that especially applies to the value of the dollar), and also a majority of the continent, well all of the continent except on country does not speak Spanish. It just so happened that I had recently found out I was going to have a brother-in-law and he just so happens to be from Chile and so Unger and I began to discuss South America. The more research we did the better idea we got of what we would be able to do. We got a smoking deal on a flight down and flights within the continent and decided one night "screw it, lets buy these tickets and go travel. If we don´t do it now we are going to look back one day and say, "what the hell was I thinking not to take advantage of that opportunity?"" So we looked at each other, clicked submit, yes that is how you book flights in this era, and our fates had been sealed. The six months between six months ago and present went by in a blur, so that is how I´m going to explain them. Gave Chase Bank my notice the day I got back from Puerto Rico (which happened to be an incentive gift from Chase Bank, but we won´t get into that, my mind had been made weeks earlier), packed up the house in Phoenix, Unger (the good friend he is) hopped in a Uhaul truck with my car in tow and the two dogs in the car (it was not inhumane, we left the windows open and stopped frequently), arrived in Monterey, worked for both of my parents for about a month, took an 8 week spanish class, continued working just for my father, went to the gym as much as possible (didn´t help, I´m still out of shape at 14000 feet), celebrated my sister´s wedding (it was a very nice event. Sorry Lisa; I´m not going into more details about it because this is my selfish blog all about me.), and before I knew it I was in a plane from SFO to Atlanta to meet Unger and take our flight down to Quito.

So now you know my story. I will update my blog as often as possible. Disregard grammar because I am basically writing what I´m thinking and I will never have time to make sure my writing abides by MLA (or whatever it is called) standards. I would love to hear from anybody who would like to post a comment, email me at brian.kroopf@gmail.com, or of course there is facebook. There are not a lot of Americans here so any news about anything American or just a hello would be much appreciated.