Houston we have a problem!

According to the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), there have been over 121,000 wildlife airplane strikes between 1990 and 2010.

Not sure the total for 2013 yet, but add one for me will ya! LOL
The flight from Houson to Quito was interesting.

Upon take off, no one wants to hear a bang and then the smell of something burning LOL
Our flight attendant comes on the intercom a few minutes later...

"The Caption had high suspitions that we have collided with a bird and we are currently going to land the plane back in Houston and have our team of mechanics inspect the plane"

HAHAHAHA, poor bird. Poor plane.

Mechanics deemed our plane unfit for service, so we boarded a new plane. Only to be told our flight attendants were "timed out" and we had to wait another hour for the new ones to arrive. Fun times fun times.

Glad I had some entertaining people to sit beside on the plane during our wait. (thanks Meeca and Conner, you guys were awesome!)

It is so amazing to share travel stories with like minded people and bullshit on a plane.

Makes a crappy time way way better. 

I would like to give a shout out to "United Airlines" for being the absolute worst airline ever. Not only did you make me angry 3 years ago, but you lost Meeca's luggage. 

Meeca and her boyfriend are volunteering in Peru at the moment and I am SO pumped to be following their blog

http://www.wanderlust-theurgetotravel.blogspot.com/

One last thing about Houston... their Priority Lounge is rock star! I get to use 4 access passes a year, and I was glad I popped in to use this one!

Free wifi, showers, food (which I took FULL advantage of), quiet area, and lots of places to sit.

Arriving in Quito (Ecuador), I dropped my bags off at Casa Aliso, grabbed a map and cruised the city.

 

Found a hooka bar, subway, KFC's, lol and finally stopped at a large park. It was full of beautiful huge trees, play grounds, an enclosed glass library (in the middle of the park!), volley ball court, and a gambling area.

Yes, a gambling area hahaha, pretty sure they were playing cards of some kind.

Hey Nadia! Ecuadorian baby wearing!

The boys that were playing volleyball competed on a concrete floor, used a SOCCER ball, and only had 3 players.

No power house, every "set" was for a tip.

And these guys were awesome!

Serves were made underhand and looked sloppy as hell, but always made it over the net.

What blew my mind what that they ran for the ball and did their best to dive for it too. Never saw a knee scrape, but it came close a few times.

The entire court was packed with viewers, and seemed to get even larger as the game went on. It was quite a show!

The underhand "serve"

Diving for the ball, but not colliding with the pavement!

Such a packed spot, people had to move out of the way so the guy could serve lol

For an evening snack (before I met up with the group), I was approached my an Irishman named Owen.

His first words to me were "Hi, would you like a brownie?"

Stop right there... Ugh what?

What are the first things that come to your mind if someone were to ask you that....?

Ya, me too.

So, I kindly declined the offer, but proceeded to visit with the guy. First english conversation of the afternoon, might as well lol.

Ended up meeting his brother Ian and chatting it up with these brownie selling Irishmen for a 1/2 hour.

(this is all happening in a VERY public place btw, haha)

Eventually, I caved and bought 2 brownies. MMMMmmmmmmmm, gotta love south american chocolate. 

It was soooooo good.

And no, not laced with any sort of drugs. If they were, they haven't kicked in yet LOL.

Met up with our group later on, and immediately it was apparent that we were doing to have a stellar 12 days together.

I am the youngest by 12 years. The oldest being 71 years old!!! And he is a hoot.

It is nice to see couples going full YOLO and travelling the world at their age.

There is 6 of us in the group... and I am the only Canadian. REPRESENT! BOOYAAAAAA

My awesome roomie Tanya is from Washington, and we seem to have very similar interests!

I love connecting with people all over the world <3 <3

This is going to be a fun time.

Up at 430am, and off to the Galapagos tomorrow.

This might be the only blog post for a while. But I will try my best to get it done!

P.S. Our dinner restaurant was at Zazu and it had the most beautiful wine room. 

Hey Jason, my love... -nudge nudge-, my birthday is coming up LOL

Isn't this freaking AMAZING!!!! *drool* 

Here kitty kitty kitty

Not much happened today other than seeing some wicked wildlife, so here goes some stellar pictures -not tooting my own horn or anything lol-

. . .

Up again at 5am. Yikes!

Not of a lot of activity most of the day. Fell asleep a couple times during our game ride...

Finally got to see a Sable! They are gorgeous <3 <3 ...I feel bad, those guys are mostly black! A cruel joke Africa, tsk tsk tsk.

Did finally get to get close to some Ostrich and their babies!

The female is the brown one

talk about 'rubber necking'

After each game drive, we get greeted with warm smiles and a lovely wet towel !

Damn, we are spoiled !

After a filling and satisfying lunch we popped in the pool, it gets VERY hot at noon. 

We get 4 hours to do whatever before the afternoon drive, so instead of a nap we then drove out to the "Hide" behind the water hole for some sneaky shots of all the animals. 

The "hide" is a steel box covered in large fallen trees, so we can sit hidden right beside the water and be UBER close to the wildlife.

But just like this morning... Not a lot of action, just elephants coming to cool off... I WISH I could have joined in hahaha it was LITERALLY 55 degrees Celsius out in the sun. Ha. Oh my. Hot enough that Jason couldn't even walk back to the tent barefoot on the sand. 

Blows my mind how hot this sand was, and this guy was a Boss and handling the heat.

At 4pm we went out on our afternoon drive (ugh so much driving BUT I can't complain. If we had to walk in the heat, well, no one would enjoy the afternoon lol)

But BAM! Right away we see 2 Painted Dogs. Herds of zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, elephants and one lone waterbuck. 

No, these aren't Hyenas, these cool creatures are "painted or wild dogs"

The guy to the right is an Antelope, not a water buck

Besides the awesome Giraffe, the structure behind him will be another "hide".
Where we can camp out any time of the day to sit to watch the 
animals come and drink -or whatever- at the watering hole

Zebra's get spooked pretty fast, when we show up... they almost always leave

And then!!!!! THREE CHEETAHS!!!! Mwwwwaaaahhaha

So awesome. So awesome. So awesome

If the Painted Dogs hadn't stopped us, we would have just driven right along by, but as we sat there chillin with the dogs, one of the British campers spotted something in a log pile 1/2 a km away... all because the Zebras weren't looking at us. 

Which was not normal.

They were looking at... what?!!!?

So ZOOM ZOOM we went -giggling all the while-

And boom, Cheetahs. These cats were gorgeous. Even tho they were just lounging about, they had this beautiful dangerous grace to them. 

Television never quite accomplishes what really hits your 5 senses.

Literally blows your mind how different it feels when you can look at a wild cat with your own eyes...

WOW.

It's just... freaking... cool.

Don't get me wrong, the small guys get some credit too (termites, chameleons, etc) lol. But I love cats. Meow!

So please enjoy the next 20 pic or so of these guys =D

The Zebras attentively watching every move the cats make, they sure as hell don't want to be dinner

"what ya'll staring at meow?"

Although for their numbers and their quickness, the Cheetah still must stay on alert -not like a Lion- for any larger cats near buy that might make trouble

Don't you just wanna get close for a nice belly rub! ;)

The Painted Dogs came by the opposite side of the water and took a bath.
They had NO idea the Cheetahs were there for a good 5 minutes, but when they did, the female started whoofing and they took off.

Damn kitty, you are purdy!

Itchy back ITCHY BACK!

The other animals waiting patiently for the felines to vacate the water hole, who do they think they are anyway? :P 

Sat there taking pictures for a while. Came to a conclusion that a Zoo will never do this justice. Ever. 

This is just too epic. 

Not to mention unlimited beer and wine while touring around. 

At sunset, we parked by a bunker near a watering hole, cracked a couple beers and had a great chat. The wildebeest were the only guys who came for the evening show, better than nothing!

I cannot remember what this bird is called, but his elongated wing tips give him the look of an ENORMOUS butterfly in the night. It is stunning. Anyone know this bird???
Lol, we almost ran this guy over on our drive back to camp.

One last note... During the game drives one eventually has to go pee, well... going to the bathroom in the middle of dangerous African territory feels like you are painting a target on your head LOL

It just feels like something is lurking near by and will pounce when you are in mid-pee or something.

Or is it just me? ;)

One more blog post to go!