This was one of my first series of trips to South America. My wife came with me as did my magician friend Mike Michaels. We were to get on an Italian cruise ship going from Equador to Tahiti. We got in to the airport in Guyaquil at midnight after a hard day of travel. We had no currency. No one met us from the ship so we didn't know what to do. The airlines were no help. My bags didn't arrive. We couldn't call anyone because the government-owned phone company didn't allow credit card or collect calls on public phones. To top it all off, Mike had his pocket picked!We finally did manage to get a cab to take us in to town where we checked into a hotel so we could use a credit card to make a call. We got into our room..... my wife started screaming.... a six inch cockroach was crawling up the wall over our bed. Mike came running into the room to tell us that there was a riot going on in the street below.... we looked out and sure enough there were military types with sub-machine guns holding off an angry crowd of 500 people. My wife was more interested in killing the cockroach, so I went back and handled the matter. As it turned out, the crowd was a wedding party at the hotel which had gotten out of had. My bags came in to the airport a few hours later and a representative of the cruise line found us at four in the morning to take us to the ship. |