We made it to the Southern Hemisphere! Well, C has been to the Southern Hemisphere before, because he went to Australia on a work trip many years ago, but it's a first for me! We got pretty close in February 2020 when we visited Singapore, which is located at about 1.35 degrees north, but Quito, Ecuador is located at about 0.18 degrees south!
We got up to early, took an uber to the airport, dealt with immigration and security, and then waited for our flight in the airport lounge. We once again were in the premium economy section, so we had an empty middle seat between us, and because the flight was longer than an hour, we got a little snack of bread, cheese, and fruit!
We were about to land - like only 10 or 15 feet above the ground - when the pilot suddenly aborted the landing, accelerated quickly, and took the plane back up into the air! He announced that severe and unexpected crosswinds were making it too dangerous for us to land, so he was going to have to try again from a different direction. This added about twenty minutes to our flight, but obviously the only thing that matters is landing safely! This also happened to us one other time - when we were flying from Bangkok to Phuket and had to make a second landing attempt!
Immigration in Ecuador went smoothly and we took a fairly long uber ride to our hotel on some of the craziest streets! We ended up napping this afternoon and just ordering room service for dinner because we are pretty tired today. Tomorrow looks to be a great day!
One other noteworthy happening...we experienced an earthquake last night in Bogota! We were in our hotel room on the fourteenth floor, when suddenly we felt the entire building sway back and forth. It wasn't the first earthquake we've experienced, but being up in a tall building was a little disconcerting to say the least! It was originally reported as a 5.4 magnitude, but was downgraded to a 4.3 today. Just another fun anecdote to add to this trip!
Happy Tails to you!
