The Birthday That Didn´t End

Jay turned 25 on May 31. Since we don´t tend to plan ahead and prefer last minute decisions surprising him was a real challenge. I´m out of practice and just not very subtle! Ask Jay he´ll tell you about the sort of obvious things that I did.

My original idea of taking him to a soccer game has become so complicated. The national and league teams here are busy and very popular. Finding tickets is liking panning for gold when you are incompetent in the language and don´t know the system ( you have to wait in lines, there is no such thing as ticket master here.)

We did go white water rafting on the Toachi river (class III, IV for you white water junkies) which is in a cloud forest. It rained most of the day and as it turned out our section of the raft had a pretty major leak in it. It was funny and the waves were super great. It was fun to be on the water.

We rented a very luxurious hotel room a few days later ( after we failed to find the bus station that had relocated 5 months ago but no one changed the local maps.) The suite with a table and the jacuzzi tub were a real step up on the usual accommodations.

The last group of photos that are included are not related at all to Jay´s birthday. Quito is surrounded by mountains and hills. On the west side of town is a volcano, though it is not safe to walk all the way there we did do some hiking after taking the TelefereQo ( cable cars) up to the top. The views were stellar. Hiking at 4100m takes a little practice anyways. Also a few of the photos reflect the delight we had when we got taken to dinner by strangers. The resturant had an excellent view of the city.

Great days around Quito