Javier

This past weekend, we flew from Cuenca to Quito on Saturday. On Sunday, we flew from Quito to Guayaquil, Ecuador's "most dangerous city," according to our Baños friend, Darwin (and about a thousand different websites and all the Ecuadorians we've talked to thus far). The kids were NOT happy about being in Guayaquil, as they had heard Darwin's commentary and other chatter, and we assured them we wouldn't be leaving our hotel -- we were really there just to sleep.

Monday morning, Wyatt and I hit the hotel gym. He lived out his lifelong dream of running on a treadmill. The kid did pretty well!

At 10am, we received a phone call in our hotel room that our "taxi" had arrived. Tim had booked us a hotel in Montañita, a small coastal town about a three-hour drive from Guayaquil. Over email, he had previously arranged with the Montañita hotel to have a private transport pick us up in Guayaquil, and take us to the coast. He shared that he had a large surfboard bag, and so could we please have a van. Yep, no. No van. We got a taxi. A yellow taxi. But we also got the friendliest driver, Javier. Javier came prepared with ties to cement the surfboard bag on top of his taxi roof, and he affixed that board bag like a pro.

Tim climbed in the front seat, and the kids and I piled in the back. Off we went, and mercifully, we quickly left tight city roads and got on the highway.

Not 30 minutes into our ride, but the air conditioning went out. Javier didn't speak much English, and as you already know, our Spanish is lame, so there was a lot of pantomiming. We rolled down our windows and let the heat -- and wind -- come in the car. Javier pulled over to the side of the highway (not much of a shoulder, let me tell you), jumped out of the car, and opened his hood. He tried fixing some things, but to no avail. He got back in the car, started back up on the highway, and made a couple phone calls. Ten minutes later, he pulled off the highway and drove into a small town -- right to the auto mechanic's shop on the main road. We understood that he was trying to get the A/C fixed.

At the auto mechanic's shop: Hood's up. Hopes up.

Welllll, not exactly how we had imagined the drive going.

It. Was. So. Hot. But the mechanic worked quickly, and honestly, we were going again after 10 minutes with functioning A/C. Our cooler air was not to last -- the A/C went out again after another 10 minutes. C'est la vie. So we drove and drove with the windows down.

Somehow, wedged in between my child heaters, I took a nap. Taylor and Wyatt were content to look out the window. And thankfully, no one puked on this trip!

We did have to slow down for the occasional cow crossing the road, but otherwise, the rest of our drive to Montañita was uneventful. We really liked Javier. We'll be asking if he can drive us back to Guayaquil on Thursday -- but this time, in a van. With A/C.