If they made it so difficult to enter the United States, they made it equally simple to leave. This policy actually made a lot of sense. I can but merely wonder what the Vietnamese were thinking when they decided to make it quite simple to get into their country but gave me a pretty hard time when leaving.

Anyway, so here I was on my way to Ecuador. My first time ever in South America. My first time ever in the southern hemisphere of the planet. What an absolutely incredible feeling it was to be able to finally fulfill a long-cherished dream.

The plane that flew me to South America

Although my ultimate destination was Guayaquil, the first stop was the capital city of Ecuador, Quito. On arrival, everybody disembarked from the plane, but onward passengers were led to a separate waiting area. It was here that I really felt the massive Spanish impact. Nobody, besides a few of the airline staff, spoke a word of English. There was no way out. I was going to have to pick up some Spanish if I was to communicate with people.

It was a short flight to Guayaquil, and we landed late in the evening. Before going through immigrations, I had to fill in my details and my expected duration of stay in a short form. I filled in the maximum allowed duration of 90 days. When it my turn at the immigrations counter, the officer pointed at the 90 days that I had filled in and looked at me questioningly. But I could only nod at him and give him my most winning smile. All his attempts at asking me questions were only met with a clueless face and a helpless shrug… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Finally he gave up and stamped my passport :)

A long time ago, actually when I was still in India, I had written to a small school called Katitawa, in Salasaca, Ecuador, expressing my desire to volunteer there. I had found the school using the website volunteersouthamerica.net, which by the way, I would highly recommend if you are ever considering volunteering in South America. The school had written back saying that they would be very happy to have me, so that was where I was headed. In one of their emails, they had advised me not to venture out after dark in Guayaquil as it could be unsafe for tourists. I decided to heed that advice and spend the night inside the airport itself.

Luckily for me, cafes in the terminal were closing up for the day, and they didn’t seem to mind people sleeping on their comfortable couches. So after a long time, I got some much needed rest.