‘Did you know Quito is one of the most dangerous places in the world for an aeroplane to land?’ the large American man in the next seat informs me cheerfully, as the fasten seatbelt sign comes on and my ears begin to pop.
We’ve been flying for nearly eleven hours and I haven’t slept a wink. Any form of relaxation has been rendered impossible by the buzz of excitement and trepidation at the thought of finally beginning our adventure.
Harry, in the window seat beside me, has been very quiet ever since we took off – at first I thought he was asleep, but several times, towards the end of the flight, I catch his reflection in the window, staring out, away from me, his eyes wide and serious, looking down across the blackness of ocean and sky below us. I tell myself he’s probably just uncomfortable, his six-foot frame meaning he’s even more restricted than me by the limited leg room. And we can hardly engage in conversation, as the cabin crew turned the lights out not long after take-off, and everyone else around us promptly tucked themselves up under the flimsy aircraft blankets and proceeded to snore their way across the Atlantic.
So I switched on the little reading light over my seat and spent the flight eagerly leafing through my various guidebooks for the hundredth time. I may not have slept, but I’ve learnt that Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is the second-highest capital city in the world, at 2,800 metres above sea level. It is surpassed only by La Paz in Bolivia – at 3,200 metres – where the locals use a special brew of coca leaves to alleviate symptoms of altitude sickness. I’ve discovered that some parts of the Peruvian rainforest have more species of plants and animals per square mile than anywhere else on the planet. I have read about Canaima national park in Venezuela, the same size as Belgium and home to the famous Angel Falls, considered by many the most beautiful place in the world.
I’ve also been rereading my notes and ideas for this trip, all compiled into a folder and organised by country. I hold the folder on my lap now and leaf through the neatly labelled plastic wallets inside, even though I already know their contents by heart. Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Three months, three countries and a checklist of unmissable attractions in each.
My travel folder became a bit of a secret from Harry in the weeks leading up to our departure. His attitude to my planning hadn’t improved as our trip drew closer. In fact, it became a source of tension between us to the extent I ended up preferring not to share all my ideas with him, to avoid any more irritable reactions. It’s just the way he is, I kept telling myself. He’s not a planner. He doesn’t see the point. Mum and my sister had been known to call him lazy – no, what’s that silly word Mum was always using? Lackadaisical. But I know he just prefers to be spontaneous. At a time like this, however, planning is crucial. For example, Isabela Island in the Galápagos must be visited during a specific two-week period in January if you want to see its native tortoise eggs hatching on the beach. Imagine missing an experience like that just because you didn’t plan properly! Rocking up a week too late and finding only the remnants of empty egg shells strewn across the sand, the locals shaking their heads sadly at you and saying ‘sorry love, you’d better come back next year’. That would be awful!
I’m finally forced to put down the guidebooks when the plane starts shimmying from side to side like it’s dancing to a Beyoncé song. I look down and notice my knuckles have gone white holding on to the armrests.
‘Please, keep your seatbelts fastened. We are traversing an area of turbulence on our descent into Quito Mariscal Sucre airport,’ an air hostess announces over the speaker in a bored voice.
Oblivious to my nerves, my American friend goes on to explain that Quito’s brand-new airport is situated in what is basically one giant wind tunnel. Built only recently to replace the old airport right in the city centre, it is now located in a small valley surrounded by Andean mountain peaks. ‘It’s a whole cocktail of dangerous weather down there,’ he tells me with a delighted smile. ‘Changing winds through the valley, fog every morning and rainstorms most afternoons…’ He explains that, when landing the plane, the pilot must actually gain height to avoid the treacherous mountains, before plunging rapidly downwards to land almost vertically on the runway.
But when I lean over Harry to look out of the window, my apprehension disappears. Dawn is just breaking as our pilot begins his valiant descent, allowing me a proper view for the first time in hours. Piercing the bluish mist below us is a scattering of emerald-green peaks tipped with snow, at first looking like nothing more than the white crests of waves on the surface of the sea, but rapidly growing in size and magnificence as they come up to meet our descending plane.
Feeling childish, I realise these are the first real mountains I have ever seen in my life. And we seem about to land directly on top of them.
However, suddenly a runway seems to appear out of nowhere, and before I know it the mountains are around and above us, the tiny plane taxiing to a halt in their shadow.
Staggering off the plane a few moments later, I decide Harry made a good choice by insisting we start our travel in Ecuador. Bright sunshine is already blazing through the floor-to-ceiling glass of the footbridge we cross into the airport. After leaving behind an English February, it feels fantastic.
We are easily the tallest and blondest people in a sea of dark heads, and as we queue for passport control I expect some kind of interrogation. At the very least: what are you doing here, what about your jobs, what do your parents say about this? But the immigration official simply stifles a yawn, smiles, says what I think is ‘welcome to Ecuador’ and thumps our passports with his big stamp. We’re in!
Full of trepidation, excitement and curiosity, I follow Harry through the sliding airport doors and into the new world waiting for us on the other side.
Outside, it’s chaos. Bright-yellow taxis clamour past each other, practically mounting the curb trying to reach the entrance, honking their horns, drivers leaning out of the windows and shouting.
It’s a million miles away from the orderly lines of Vauxhalls and Peugeots queuing outside Heathrow. Amid the honking of horns and cries of ‘Taxi! Taxi!’ tourists and locals bustle past, tripping over each other, jostling for the nearest cab and leaving baggage trolleys stranded and freewheeling in the middle of the road.
Then, rising up out of the early-morning mist ahead are the mountains, a breathtaking expanse of purple and green, so close it’s as if they’ve grouped around to peer down serenely on the chaos below. I gaze up at them, totally awestruck, their beauty momentarily distracting me from the twinge of nerves that zipped through me as the airport doors closed behind us.
‘Good call on the hotel booking,’ Harry says quietly beside me, and I glance up at his face to see he looks as overwhelmed as I feel. Together we unscramble the piece of paper from his pocket, containing the precious information about our hotel reservation, printed off last night (was it really only twenty-four hours ago?), and cling to it as if it is the last ticket to Mars in the middle of the apocalypse.
Then Harry steps protectively in front of me, one arm around my shoulders and the other holding out the piece of paper like a peace offering to the nearest cab driver. ‘Can you take us… here… please?’ he asks, his voice sounding strangely unfamiliar as I hear him speak Spanish for the first time in years.
Seeing Harry take charge like this makes me feel a bit funny. My legs suddenly go all wobbly and black dots dance before my eyes, so I sit down heavily on my backpack.
Actually, I don’t think it’s Harry. I actually am going to faint.
‘Altura!’ the taxi driver says affably, bending down to pull me to my feet. Harry has my other arm and they haul me towards the car. ‘It’s just the altitude. Come on, get in the car.’ He must be at least sixty but he effortlessly swings both our massive backpacks into the boot of a knackered Hyundai that looks older than he does.
Comfortingly, taxi drivers in Ecuador seem exactly the same as those in the UK: they love to talk. Harry and I half-listen to ours – Rodrigo, apparently – tell us about his wife’s kidney stones and eldest daughter’s graduation, while we stare out of the window in awe. At every turn there is something new assaulting our senses.
On the corner of the road, right there outside the airport car park, an elderly woman is bent over a small rickety grill, totally absorbed in her task of turning over the various unidentifiable pieces of meat sizzling away alongside what look like giant corn cobs and monster-sized bananas. Two young boys in school uniform shove spare change into the old lady’s hand and scamper off holding their grilled sweetcorn, the smoky concoction of smells hitting my nostrils through the open car window.
We whizz past faded murals painted on a long wall enclosing a school, the smiling painted faces of children and animals strangely at odds with the barbed wire and vicious shards of broken glass topping the wall’s perimeter. Clusters of box-like, pastel-painted concrete buildings seem to tumble over each other almost into the road ahead, some shiny and new, bearing embossed signs like ‘Internet Café’ and ‘Travel Agency’, while others are shabbier, with rusty metal grilles covering the windows and paint peeling from doorframes. The almost continuous car hooting doesn’t die down as we leave the airport behind us, and I find myself gripping the door handle with white knuckles as Rodrigo calmly performs a series of dangerous manoeuvres through the zigzagging morning-rush-hour traffic, the little plastic rosary and crucifix hanging from his rear-view mirror dancing and bobbing at every sharp turn.
Rodrigo flicks a switch on the dashboard and the sound of Lionel Ritchie’s crooning voice fills the car. ‘… I can see it in your eyes…. I can see it in your smile…’ the inimitable voice warbles.
‘Nearly there!’ Rodrigo shouts at us over the noise. ‘This is the historic town centre of Quito – first ever World Heritage site, you know!’ His voice bursts with pride, and I feel a sudden rush of affection for this little old Ecuadorian man we’ve only just met. ‘Don’t you just love eighties music?’ He turns all the way around in his seat to beam at us, before twisting back to look at the road again. ‘My granddaughter got me this tape for my sixtieth.’ I realise it is in fact a tape deck in Rodrigo’s old car.
The roads are getting steeper, from slight incline to dizzying climb, and Rodrigo clunks his old car from third, to second, to first gear. I can see the city opening out below and behind us, spread as far as I can see, the sun glinting off distant widows and windscreens. It’s incredibly beautiful.
‘Harry – look!’ I nudge him impatiently, ‘You’re missing everything!’ Incredulously I realise Harry is peering at his mobile phone, a look of anguish on his face, muttering something that sounds distinctly like ‘fucking quad band’. ‘Harry – what’s the matter?’
He jumps as if he’d forgotten I was there, and shoves the phone back into his pocket. ‘Oh, nothing, sorry, just can’t believe there’s no signal.’ I stare at him. I don’t even know where my phone is or whether it made it off the plane. ‘Sorry, babe, what were you saying?’
I feel annoyance surge inside me. I had managed – just – to overlook the numerous moments Harry spent engrossed in his phone, or simply staring off into space, while we were back in Fenbridge. However frustrating his distractedness had been as my own excitement about the trip slowly grew, I had told myself he was just preoccupied with all the arrangements we had to make before leaving. But now we were here, in the midst of this beautiful country he chose to come to – and he’s worried about phone signals? I bite my lip and force myself not to say anything, telling myself it would be awful to get cross with each other on our first day here.
Rodrigo’s tape is playing George Michael now. ‘Though it’s easy to pretend… I know you’re not a foo-oool.’
I grit my teeth. ‘Nothing, Harry, just… Look. For heaven’s sake, look where we are!’
We’re obviously getting nearer the heart of the city as there are people everywhere now. Street vendors balance tall racks of magazines, newspapers and cigarettes on the corner of every street, looking just about ready to tumble into the oncoming traffic. Tall colonial buildings lean in on both sides, their peeling paintwork and intricate masonry granting them what my mother would probably describe as ‘faded grandeur’.
We have to slam on the brakes as a huge bus lumbers around the corner ahead, occupying both sides of the road, belching out black smoke as it continues on up the steep street to our right, creaking and groaning.
As we pull away again cautiously, pedestrians bustle past, brushing right up against the car. Smart men and women dressed in suits striding to the office, lines of schoolchildren in identical and beautifully starched red-and-white school uniforms, and plump, squat women wrapped in brightly coloured shawls, wearing what look like shiny bowler hats over their long, plaited, black hair.
‘Look at the indigenous ladies’, says Rodrigo, thankfully turning the music down. ‘The Quichua. They were here before the Spanish… but now they’re almost foreigners like you.’ He gives a sad little chuckle. ‘Some of them don’t even speak Spanish – just their language – Quichua. My Grandma spoke it. They live their own way. Many of them are very poor.’
As we crawl through traffic, one of a group of Quichua women approaching us looks up from talking animatedly to her companions and meets my eye for a second. I note her beautiful, Pocahontas-like features and slanted dark eyes, and wonder what she makes of the face staring back at her. I notice my reflection in the car window and suddenly see my mousy blonde hair, pale skin and uneven sprinkling of freckles in a new light. Here, I am the foreigner. Fascinated by the women, I twist round to stare after them out of the back window and take in the heavy-looking bundles tied in place across their backs by what looks like just a piece of cloth, containing a variety of carrots, corn cobs, potatoes and, in one case, a peacefully sleeping baby.
The day is already promising to be a scorcher as the equatorial sun beats down on the car roof, and I marvel at two young policewomen of about my own age, dressed in impossibly hot-looking long-sleeved khaki uniforms, standing in the centre of a crossroads blowing into whistles and flailing their arms to direct the traffic.
‘Here we are!’ announces Rodrigo proudly, as if he’s just safely delivered Frodo and Sam to the gates of Mordor. ‘Casa Hamaca. Hammock House. Your hotel.’
We’ve mounted the kerb outside a three-storey building, in the same restored colonial style as the rest of the street. Except, it’s painted bright turquoise. A wooden plaque over the door says ‘Casa Hamaca – hotel and restaurant’ and there are flags flying in the breeze from the first-floor balcony. Ecuador, United States, Spain, Italy, Union Jack, Scotland… and several I should probably recognise, but don’t. All in all, despite the garish colour, it looks like a proper hotel. Thank goodness for that booking website.
We give Rodrigo a hug and a tip, then find ourselves on the pavement in the middle of a city where we know absolutely no one.
Suddenly a voice, in what sounds like a Scottish accent, calls down from somewhere above our heads, ‘Harry and Kirsty?’
We look up to see a scruffy dark-haired man of about our own age leaning over the second-floor balcony, grinning down at us. ‘We have been awaiting your arrival. I call myself Ray!’
He disappears briefly, and there is just enough time for a frightening Norman Bates image to flash into my mind before ‘Ray’ materialises in front of us, swinging the front door open. ‘Come in, come in, welcome to my casita, my little house in Quito!’ He’s still grinning, as if he’s never been so happy to see two bedraggled, confused backpackers in his life.
As we enter the hotel we realise it is much more than a ‘casita’. Opening out tardis-like around us is a bustling restaurant and bar, filled with tourists of varying ages and nationalities enjoying breakfast. The tantalising smell of brewing coffee wafts past, and as we follow Ray towards a steep, wooden, spiral staircase at the back, we hear German, Italian, Spanish, and several unrecognisable languages being spoken at the tables around us.
Ray leads us up the stairs and flings open the door to one of the rooms. ‘This, mis amigos, will be your habitation! Please make yourselves comfortable, then perhaps later come downstairs for some lunch and a cold beer, on the house?’
The room, or ‘habitation’, as Ray bizarrely put it, looks wonderful. Blue-and-green silk drapes billow in the breeze from the open balcony doors opposite us, and a string hammock in the same colours sways gently in the corner. The walls are white and fresh, and a huge bed with multicoloured patchwork covers spreads out before us invitingly. A voice in the corner is talking loudly in Spanish about the release of three thousand drugs mules in Ecuador.
Wait – what?
‘Sorry! I must have left the television on when I was cleaning the room.’ Ray picks up a remote from the side and points it towards the flatscreen TV on the wall opposite the bed.
‘No! Wait… I want to listen to this.’ I hold up my hands to stop him, and sink down on to the edge of the bed without taking my eyes off the TV.
‘Ecuador’s president confirms that a new and controversial law, coming into force next week, will mean the reduction of almost every sentence given in the last ten years for drugs crimes. This will lead to many of the worst narcotics criminals in the continent being immediately released from prisons around the country.’
Woah – even in my sleep-deprived state I realise this is very big news. Still not allowing my eyes to leave the screen, I tug the remote control from Ray’s hands and turn up the volume. I’m dimly aware of Ray and Harry drifting out on to the corridor and talking about Wi-Fi passwords.
‘This news comes at a time when the government is focusing on the quality of penitentiary conditions for the first time in decades, with the construction of two brand-new prisons in the north and south of Ecuador. This investment in living conditions and the release of so many detainees at once is a bold move never made before by any Latin American government, aimed at drastically reducing overcrowding. However, public safety concerns are rife and protests took place today outside parliament.’
The television cuts to a scene of an angry crowd pushing and shouting outside a beautiful white colonial-style building, presumably the presidential palace. Next, it split-screens to a map of Ecuador, two flashing red dots showing the locations of the new prisons, then finally a picture of a huge, sprawling building complex – presumably one of the new jails, still empty. Then, suddenly, the newsreader’s calm, smiling face is back on the screen, talking about the football results.
I feel like an ice bucket of reality about our first holiday destination has just been thrown over me.
A noise in the doorway makes me jump.
‘Ray just told me the weirdest thing.’ Harry reappears in the doorway holding his phone and a sheet of paper. ‘All that stuff about prisoners in the news… well, his wife actually visits the prisons. Some kind of volunteering, apparently.’
I turn to stare at him, feeling a fizz of interest, despite the tiredness almost overwhelming me.
‘Crazy, huh? Rather her than me…’ Harry shakes his head and goes to sit down on the end of the bed, still staring at his phone.
‘Yeah… definitely,’ I mutter, but already my mind is whirring. Just the mention of prisoners has revived my memory of Joel, all those years ago during my work experience at the solicitor’s office. For the thousandth time in the interceding years since I met him, I wonder what he is doing now and whether he managed to rebuild his life as he had promised the courts. Then my mind turns to the news I’ve just witnessed and, if it is to be believed, the thousands of men and women about to be released into the real world after years of confinement, faced with the daunting and possibly terrifying task of starting all over again…
Some kind of volunteering… As I climb exhaustedly into bed, Harry’s words echo in my mind, and behind them a tentative question starts to form. Could I do that? I’d already been researching volunteer opportunities, although admittedly none of them had been in such a hazardous location as a prison… a tingle of excitement, tinged with fear, darts through me at the idea. Actually, I think I could do that. As I finally surrender to sleep my head spins with thoughts of Joel, Ecuadorian prisons, volunteer opportunities and my folder of travel ideas, and my ears are filled with the repeated pinging noise of two days’ worth of emails flooding through to Harry’s phone.
***
I wake up from scrambled dreams about being chased through a busy airport by a throng of angry men in prison uniform shouting at me in Scottish accents. The first thing I see is a vividly coloured wall hanging, depicting in graphic tapestry an Inca warrior cutting the head off a bearded white man on a horse. A shiver runs down my spine. Gradually the events of the past day come flooding back and I remember where I am. I scramble for my phone on the bedside table and see that it is nearly six p.m.
What the…?
It feels like first thing in the morning.
Harry is nowhere to be seen. I sit up, feeling disoriented. The doors to the balcony are open and a lovely warm breeze brushes my face, bringing with it the sounds of traffic and cars hooting and children calling in the street outside… and Harry’s voice, unmistakable and shouting, filled with anguish.
I stagger out of bed and tiptoe towards the balcony, teeth clenched in sudden fear. Who could he be shouting at? What if something is happening to him – maybe he’s being mugged, or kidnapped? Could this be the last time I see my boyfriend before he’s bundled into a waiting car and driven away as a hostage, and all this time I’ve been here in the hotel room sleeping. Suddenly my mother’s voice bursts uninvited into my consciousness. ‘Dangerous part of the world… drugs everywhere…’ I physically shake my head and tell myself I’m being silly. But, even so, I edge towards the balcony, keeping my back flat against the wall while craning my head as far forward as I dare to see out over the wrought-iron bars.
Harry is standing about three metres away in the street below, his back to me, mobile phone pressed to his ear. His raised voice reaches me again over the background noise of cars passing and distant salsa music playing from a café at the end of the road. Although I can’t make out any actual words from so far up here, his body language emanates anger and frustration. Still with his back to me, he raises his free arm and seems to shake it at the street in general, then brings it to his face and runs his hand through his hair in an all-too-familiar gesture of exasperation.
There are no gangsters, hostage takers or drug pushers anywhere near him, just a few bemused pedestrians who all turn to look back at Harry as they pass. He seems to be really shouting, but from up here all I can make out is the anguished tone of his voice. Relief floods through me that he is in no apparent danger, but is then immediately followed by troubled curiosity. Who the hell could he be talking to?
I edge forward on the balcony and strain to hear more, just as Harry starts to swing round and pace back towards me. I hurl myself backwards into the hotel room and out of sight, as snatched words from his conversation drift up to me, clear as crystal – in Spanish.
‘Por favor! No entiendes!’ is all I hear him shout before the balcony curtain swishes back in place and Harry is once again drowned from earshot.
Please – you don’t understand.
I sit down heavily on the cool marble floor of the hotel room and lean back against the foot of the bed. What was all that about? Who would Harry be speaking to so forcefully, in Spanish? He had said something about making a complaint to the airline when our connecting flight in Madrid was delayed. But surely he wouldn’t do that on our very first day here? They had been really polite and apologetic, and served everyone orange juice while we waited at the departure gate. And he’s usually so laid-back… it’s very unlike Harry to get upset over something like that.
‘Jet lag?’ I’m suddenly aware he is standing in the doorway, smiling down at me warmly. I swallow back my irritated curiosity and silently watch him enter the room and start pulling clothes out of his backpack, slinging them over a chair. All traces of the anger and tension I saw in him just now have gone. He even starts to whistle to himself as he pulls out his razor and heads into the bathroom, turning the tap on.
‘Harry? Are you… okay?’ I call after him.
He turns to look at me through the open bathroom door, and his face breaks into a broad, gorgeous smile.
‘Of course, babe – why? I was going to ask you the same thing… you look a bit rough sitting there on the floor like that.’ He chuckles and turns back to the mirror.
‘Oh… just the jet lag, like you say,’ I mutter, feeling stupid, and haul myself to my feet. I potter about unpacking some clothes and the silence in the room grows.
Just ask him what the hell all that was about.
The question is on the tip of my tongue. But something about Harry’s overly cheerful demeanour feels like a kind of warning. He has to be faking it. There’s no way even someone as impulsive and spontaneous as Harry could go from shouty, hair-tuggingly anxious phone calls to bright and breezy unpacking in the space of two minutes. With a wrench, I’m reminded of Harry’s increasingly distant behaviour in the weeks before the trip. His irritability when I tried to ask him about it. It had seemed so unlike the laid-back bloke I was used to living with, and I’d put it down to the stress of planning such an ambitious voyage. But now we’re here, shouldn’t he be relaxing and embracing the adventure ahead? I stare at Harry’s back and admit to myself the uncomfortable truth that, at times, I feel like I have no idea what makes him tick.
Wasn’t this trip supposed to bring us closer together?
If his behaviour over the last few weeks is anything to go by, he’ll only get all defensive if I ask him what that phone call was about, I realise. I briefly imagine what it would be like if we fell out, now, today. He’s all I have in a strange country. Plus, I still feel like my body clock has been taken out, rewound and shoved back in upside down. It was probably nothing anyway, I almost manage to convince myself. It could have been the airline, or one of the hotels or tour companies we’ve looked at.
‘By the way, it’s because he’s been living here twelve years and Spanish and English have started to mix together in his head,’ Harry calls from the bathroom, patting his face off with a towel.
‘Eh?’
‘Ray. That’s why he speaks like that. He can’t really tell the difference between the two languages anymore, so he uses Spanish word order when speaking English, and vice versa. He came backpacking here after uni, met a girl and never left.’ He comes back into the room, produces a cold beer from somewhere and hands it to me. ‘I’ve been down in the bar all afternoon with him, waiting for you to wake up.’
‘Oh.’ Suddenly I’m hit by a wave of homesickness. But not for our house in Fenbridge… to my surprise, an image of my mum’s living room fills my mind. I’m in the armchair, drinking hot chocolate, with Steve in the corner behind his paper and Mum watching Strictly Come Dancing with the volume turned down. I wouldn’t need to worry, then, about who Harry has been shouting at, or whether he’s keeping some sort of secret from me. I could just slide back into my old routine and pretend none of this had ever happened. For the first time in weeks, I feel something other than excitement and eagerness about our forthcoming adventure. For if we’ve only just arrived and Harry is behaving like this… what do the next three months hold for me?
I don’t know what takes me more by surprise, the feeling of actually wanting to be at my mum’s house or the sudden pounding music that starts to blast out from somewhere below us.
‘That’s Ray getting the bar going – come on, Kirst, our first night in Quito has begun!’ Harry looks so happy and mischievous, I resolve to push my concerns to the back of my mind for now. He obviously doesn’t want to talk about whatever it was, but I’m sure it will all become clear in time, and I will have been worrying for nothing.
‘Drink up that beer and let’s go!’ Harry stops to kiss me on the cheek and cracks open another beer for himself.
After a brief effort to make myself look presentable, I follow him out of our hotel room for a night of wild partying.
‘Oh, wait.’ Harry stops dead in the corridor. ‘There are six missed calls, an email and about a hundred WhatsApp messages from your mother. You should call her first.’