Day 1 (2019) - Travel Day!

Yesterday morning, June 18th, our mission crew met at St. John's to offically head off on our journey to Ecuador. When we met at the church, Caroline had gotten us Krispy Kreme donuts that we quickly ate. After our quick breakfast, we split up into three different vans to head to the Atlanta airport. Mary, MaryMac, Madeline, Mrs. Shelton, and myself rode in a van. In my car, we all started off with a nice nap. After our naps, we got out of the car for a quick lunch break at Chick-Fil-A. When we had finished our lunch, we went back to the car and continued on to Atlanta. During our last couple of hours in the car, we almost got hit three times!! Which added an extra fun aspect to our journey.

Eventually, we made it to the airport where we took a shuttle to the international area. Once we had gotten there, we found our boarding passes and checked our bags so that we could head to the right gate. When we got to our gate, we had about 20 minutes where we were able to go get food. After we had gotten food (I got a cheese quesadilla, yum!), we went back to the gate to start boarding.

When we got on the plane we all found our seats and got ready for our five hour flight. When we were taking off and getting into the air, we hit a tad bit of turbulence; but when we hit cruising altitude, most of the rough air was over, or so I thought. As we continued to fly, we hit more turbulence, but overall it was ok. When we had been in the air for the five hours that it was supposed to take, we were told that there was volcanic ash cloud over Quito and that we would have to turn around and head to Panama because they couldn't land the plane safely. This added an extra 3 hours to our plane ride. As soon as we got into Panama, we sat and waited as our brutally honest pilot told us that he had no idea what was going to happen and that they were trying to find a plan.

After sitting in our plane in Panama for about 20 minutes, we were told that the plane was going to fueled up and then we would be on our way back to Ecudor. When we left Panama, we again experienced turbulence which got better when we hit cruising altitude. About an hour into our flight back to Ecuador, we hit even more turbulence which was quite bad. Then after a good 8 or 9 hours on our plane we finally landed in Quito.

As soon as we got off the plane, we headed to customs where we were asked questions upon arrival. After customs, we grabbed our bags and headed out to meet our hosts. When we got to our hosts, we waited another 10 minutes for our bus to arrive. When the bus arrived, we quickly put all of the luggage in compartments under the bus and piled into the bus for an hour drive to our hostel. We arrived at the hostel and went straight to sleep. We finished our first day of travel with 19 hours under the belt!

- Written by Sibley Shippen