Rachel Dann - Pieces of My Life

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’.