Dalama Adventures Tale of two corporate types ditching their jobs and traveling the world for 14 months... check out all photos, blogs & interesting tid bits at http://www.dalama.net

You'd think going from Panama to Ecuador should be just an hour and a half flight, right?  Thanks to our One World Alliance Global Explorer ticket, we need to first fly to Miami, check our bags and selves through customs, and recheck everything again, for a flight to Ecuador.  Same deal when we went from Guatemala to Panama.  It's a horrible set up, but we deal with it.  Our flight departs Panama just before 8:00 a.m., so we're at the airport by 6:00 a.m.  Just our luck, the flight is delayed for mechanical reasons, and we sit in the airport for 6 hours before the flight finally departs.  We miss our connecting flight to Quito, but make it to the airport with just 30 minutes to spare to post our goods from the airport post office.  We're not taking chances with foreign mail anymore, seeing as our packages of souvenirs, books, journals and other important documents from both Australia and India never made their way back to the US.  We post off two big boxes of thing that have been dragging us down, and we feel much lighter.  It's amazing now, after 10 months, how little we really need to get by... a pair of pants, a couple of shirts, a couple pairs of underwear and we're set.  We make a late connection to Ecuador, and finally land in Quito by 9:30 p.m.  

Yep, we fall victim to the "your hotel doesn't have your booking" scam by the local guy at the transportation counter.  Luckily I have several back up hotels that I've emailed, and know at least one has a room, as we had free wifi in Panama this morning and I did get an email from them.  We get the taxi to the Old Town in Quito to Hotel San Francisco, and check in for a great nights sleep, after nearly an entire day in transit.  Landing late at night is always a big mystery for the next morning, and we're anxious to get up in the daylight and see what Quito looks like!