After months of planning and sending and receiving about 150 e-mails we finally were ready to leave for Ecuador. The airport shuttle arrived a few minutes early to bring us to Brussel Zuid/midi where we checked in for the high speed Thalys train to Schiphol airport. KL751, a KLM/Air France B777 took of almost an hour late for the 12 hour, 9600 Km flight. After two years of flying with Emirates A380 we were spoiled but this triple seven must have been one of the more modern planes of their fleet as we unexpectedly had USB power, a nice screen and decent legroom. The seats are narrower than on Emirates so we were glad when we finally landed in Quito around 16:40.
Immigration and customs were a breeze as this is not a big airport so soon we were in the arrivals hall where an hotel driver would pick us up. Unfortunately no one was waiting and after a quick check with the hotel we took a taxi to town. It took more than an hour to cover 30 Km as traffic was backed up everywhere because of the president’s last day in office.
The hotel made up for the inconvenience of not picking us up by offering a nice fruit basket.
We just had to wait for our guide for tomorrow’s tour to call us before we could just relax in our room at the 12th floor overlooking part of Quito.