Amazing!

The story is long.  

I am in the process of trying to obtain a resident visa here in Ecuador.  This past Wednesday when Jill and I were out in El Pescado, I got a telephone call from the lawyer-in-training that is helping me through the process.  "You need to be in Quito on Friday morning," he informed me without preamble.  "Your police records are going to expire, and they won't be accepted.  We have to apply for your visa NOW."  How interesting is that?  Two weeks ago, last week, when I was trying to get things moving because it was a convenient time for us, you weren't in any hurry at all.  Now that we're on the backside of nowhere, it has to be immediately.  (I hope the sarcastic tone of my thoughts did not come through in my voice. :-/ )  "Actually, I'm out in the country.  I can't come on Friday.  I could probably make it by Monday morning if it can't wait."  So an appointment was made for 7:00 am on Monday.  Guess that means we'll need to cancel two of our Sunday meetings.  So, that is what we did.  After our second meeting on Sunday morning in Las Mercedes, we jumped on the first bus that would take us to Portoviejo.  Once there, we packed our bags and got on another bus to the airport in Manta.  (We had decided to fly instead of traveling overnight on the bus to get to Quito. We really do need to sleep on occasion!)  That said, we arrived to our Quito "home" around 11:00 on Sunday night.  So, we won't get much sleep but hopefully a little.  To shorten the story a bit, the paperwork deal the next morning went basically without a hitch.  We arrived at 7:00 as agreed upon and waited until 8:30 when they actually start attending people.  (If you don't get a good spot in line, you could spend your whole day at the ministry!)  Then we had to wait until 9:00 or so when a necessary employee finally decided to show up for work.  Other than that, it was all good.  After having breakfast with B, our lawyer helper, we parted ways.  But wait, an essential detail is missing.  B asked if he could keep my passport so that he would have it handy for the next step in the process.  "Sure," I said.  "Guard it with your life."  (B had been robbed two times in the previous month.)  Other than that, I didn't give it much thought.  I have in my possession an "empadronamiento."  That's a piece of paper issued by the foreign ministry that contains my visa information and is to be used in place of a passport until I eventually get my resident ID.  I've never had any problem.  

Insert suspenseful music here...

Jill and I used a couple more days in Quito to work on the Spanish hymnbook project as well as take care of a few things that can really only be done in a large city.  In order to make the most use of our time and not have to spend a night on the bus when we were already beyond exhausted, we decided to fly back to our field on Friday evening.  We caught a taxi to the airport at 4:30 on Friday and arrived at Mariscal Sucre International Airport in good time.  No line at the Avianca counter - wonderful!  We stepped right up.  Jill handed over her Ecuadorian ID card, and I handed over my "empadronamiento" paper.  The ticket agent typed in Jill's information and then looked at my paper.  "Do you have your passport?" she asked me.  "No.  I have this."  "Do you have some other form of photo ID - a driver's license?"  "No, my driver's license is in Portoviejo.  I just have this."  "I'm going to have to talk to my supervisor.  One moment please."  So, she talks to her supervisor.  Then she has to make a copy of my paper.  She's gone forever for a REALLY LONG time.  When she comes back, she regrets to inform me that her supervisor has declared that my empadronamiento is not an acceptable document for my identification.  Seriously?!  Perhaps I should mention at this point that when I first arrived in the country, I left my passport with the lawyer and flew on this same airline from Quito to Manta with absolutely no difficulty.  "So, you're telling me that I can't fly?"  "Yes."  However, we can reschedule our flight penalty-free.  It's 5:15 on a Friday.  What are the chances I can still get my passport from the lawyer's office?  I grab my phone and call B.  "This has never been a problem before," he tells me.  He's not in the office.  The last person will leave the building at 5:30.  It takes an hour and a half to get there.  Not looking good.  "However," he continues, "I could tell the secretary to leave your passport with the guard at the outside gate for you to pick up."  Okay, we'll do that.  However, we really need to get to Portoviejo tonight.  Maybe we should just take the bus.  We ask the ticket agent, "Can we just cancel the flight and take the bus?"  "Sure."  Okay.  I call B back and say, "Don't worry about the passport.  We're going to just take the bus."  In order to do this, we must go to a different window.  Complication #What are we up to by now?: "Since you bought your tickets through an online travel site, you must cancel your ticket through them.  We can't do it here."  Okay, I guess that makes sense, except that the only reason we bought our tickets through that site was that you wouldn't let us buy our tickets on-line with a credit card.  Not sure how we're supposed to make that work.  Anyway, the man directs us to an internet place downstairs in the airport.  We rush down to try and make the cancellation before the time of the flight.  It turns out, we were too late.  Or something.  Anyway, they wouldn't let us cancel the flight.  Quick!  Call B back and tell him we need my passport after all!  Fortunately, B can still make this happen, and we head back upstairs to reschedule our flight for 7:15 the next morning.  That's the only option.  Yay!  After another re-direct, we manage to get the flight re-booked penalty free.  That's good news.  We take our bags and get in a taxi heading back to Quito.  On the way, we decide to just stay in a hostel for one night since we'll be getting in kind of late and will have to leave by 5:00 the next morning.  We travel an hour and a half to pick up the passport (no problem there) and then a half hour or so to the hostel where we had booked ourselves in for the night.  Our benevolent taxi driver offered to take us back to the airport the following morning, so we arranged for him to pick us up at 5:00 on the dot.  

Here's the good (truly amazing) part of the evening.  Jill knew of a superb pizza place right around the corner from where we were staying.  We were starving and ordered as if we were never going to eat again.  

  

Did I really order all of that just for me?  

Well, I'd better get started.  

I don't know how I missed getting a picture of Jill's pizza (the same size).  Anyway, neither one of us finished our pizza, but we made a pretty good dent in both of them.  The fellow managing the desk at our hostel seemed grateful for the leftovers that we brought him.  If you're ever in the area, I highly recommend Fortunato's.

So, to continue the other part of the saga:

Oh, wait!  The hostel was great too!  It was clean.  Jill and each had our own bed.  The service was exceptional.  The water pressure in the shower plastered you to the wall.  And the water was hot.  What more could a person ask for?  I also recommend La Villa as an accommodation of choice if you ever are in need of such. 

Okay, now to continue the saga:

Our taxi driver arrived before 5:00 on Saturday morning.  Punctual is not a descriptive word that is often used down here.  It could, however, be applied to this taxi driver, for which we were very grateful.  There was, of course, no traffic at that hour, so we zipped right to the airport.  On the way, I decided that if there were different ticket agents at the counter, I would present my empadronamiento paper instead of my passport and see what happened.  Sure enough, no line at the ticket counter, new agents.  I kept my passport safely guarded in my handbag and handed over my empadronamiento.  The lady immediately entered in Jill's information, my information, printed out our boarding passes and sent us merrily on our way.  I never once got out my passport until I unpacked it and stored it away for safe-keeping in our bach in Portoviejo.  Jill and I were both a slight bit perturbed about the whole situation to be quite honest.  We're both big fans of consistency.  However, we did get some really amazing pizza out of the deal and one more hot shower, so perhaps for that we should thank our "law-abiding" Friday ticket agent and her inflexible supervisor.  And that's the way we roll down here.  

If you've made it all the way down here, I congratulate you.  When you come to visit, I'll take you to Fortunato's pizza place and let you stay at La Villa.  Bring your passport!