Go Solo Girl

I love when people ask me was the highlight of my trip to Ecuador was. Such an easy one: Hailing an on-duty school bus to take me to the tourist district.

Allow me to set the stage. I had just arrived in Quito the night before and I decided that I would walk the mile to the Centro Historico. The plan was foolproof really – I had found my hotel on a map and then outlined a route that made use of what appeared to be main roads all the way to the square. All I needed was for the receptionist to tell me if I should begin by taking a right or a left when I walked out the front door. What could go wrong?

As a surprise to absolutely no one, I spent the next hour wandering the zig-zaging streets of Quito and stopping every so often to ask, “Donde es Centro Historico?” even though I rarely understood the answers. Once I realized that I wandered off the map entirely, I finally admitted that a taxi was the way to go.

Lucky for me, yellow cabs are everywhere in Quito. As usual, if you look foreign and lost you should have no trouble finding one because drivers always love to charge the clueless double. In fact, it was such an easy process that when the first car pulled over, I shooed it up the street to an Ecuadorian woman who was in a suit and clearly on her way to work. I was in sneakers and trying to find a place where I could eat empanadas before noon, so I figured she needed it more.

Seconds later I saw a yellow van coming, so I flagged that too. The driver opened the passenger side door and leaned out. “Centrol Historico?” I asked him. And he motioned for me to get in. Quickly, his hands seemed to say.

So I did. And there was something familiar about the sound my shoes made when they clunked against the three big hollow steps as I hauled myself in. It made me think, “This is a bus.” And then I looked around and saw that the only other people inside were three kids. I thought, “No. This is a SCHOOL bus.”

This mattered not. After dropping off the children, the driver took me downtown. He pointed out where they would do the changing of the guard and the direction of the cathedral. He told me where to get good ice cream and where to have a nice lunch overlooking the plaza. And then he parked the bus a few blocks away and walked me to the main square. When I tried to pay him, he pushed the money back at me and said, “No No. Something something amigos.”

And that set the tone for the rest of the week. Ecuador was going to be the best – that man just proved it.