Easter Monday – 36,000 Feet

What’s worse than having to sit for 9 hours in a cramped economy-class aircraft seat for 9 hours? Answer: discovering that you got your calculations wrong, and it turns out it’s actually 12 and a half hours. What could possibly be worse than that? Answer: spending an extra one and a half hours sitting in said seat after boarding, waiting for the aircraft to actually move. The captain’s voice coming across the intercom to apologise for the delay and to assure us that we’ll be moving within 5 minutes, but then nothing happening and the scenario being repeated every 20 minutes or so, did little to make things any better.

Once we were finally on our way, the underwhelming in-flight entertainment turned out to be a further challenge to endurance levels.

A quick flick through what was on offer in terms of back-of-the-seat entertainment revealed only three films; ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘She’s Not Really Into You’ are both American English-speaking films, but were dubbed into French, with English subtitles. There was also a single, early episode of Game of Thrones and ‘The Lego Movie’, which was the only viewing available without subtitles. There was also nothing to say that the films had been started, so we found ourselves joining The Lego Movie about half-way through. Roughly halfway through the flight, after all the choices had been played about three times, they were turned off completely, leaving us with only an animated map of where we were, how high we were flying and how many more hours of torment were left remaining. The only thing left to rant about is the fact that we ended up with seats right slap-bang in the centre aisle (so no window seat) and blocked in by people both to left and right.

Despite it not being the entertainment-fest of a Virgin Atlantic or British Airways flight (ours was a charter flight run by a company called ‘HiFly’), I have to say that we were at least well fed. Breakfast was particularly impresssive; serving bacon, sausage, egg, beans and mushrooms at 36,000 feet is quite a feat in my book. Lunch was sandwiches, crisps and a KitKat; dinner, which was served with barely an hour left to go, was chicken, rice and vegetables.

Suffice to say that it was 14 hours that couldn’t really be avoided. I dozed as often as I could and filled as much of the abyss as possible by reading and playing on my tablet. A good half-hour was devoted to the filling-in of the necessary Ecuadorian immigration forms, and occasionally entering into conversation with our immediate neighbours.

We landed at Guiyaquil International airport at roughly 15:45 local time, where representatives of Voyages of Discovery guided us to the coaches laid on to take us to the port.

The minute we stepped out of the terminal, the heat hit us. Like opening an oven door to check on the roast, the 39-degrees felt both stifling and exciting in equal measure. Even after only a very short stretch to the waiting coach, its cool air-conditioning was a blessed relief.

The trip to the port took about 40 minutes, during which we were given a glimpse of Ecuador’s largest city, and one described on Trip Advisor as one of the most dangerous places in Ecuador. The fact that every window of every building we passed (even up to three floors of the taller buildings) were sporting substantial iron bars, rather confirmed this.

As we sat relaxing on the deck of the Voyager, within only 30 minutes or so of boarding, enjoying the stillness of the still-warm evening air and a very cold drink or two (the first beer didn’t touch the sides – a real ‘Ice Cold in Alex’ moment, if you know what I mean…), we reflected on our day spent in a tin can in the sky. We marvelled at the technology of it all, and thanked our lucky stars that we’d been on the charter flight, and not any of the other fights that had brought folks to the ship, the timetables of which had been affected by the high winds and all of which required two or more connecting flights. One unlucky bunch (of about 10 or twenty passengers, I think) on a flight from Heathrow, had to stop briefly in Amsterdam, and became separated from their luggage, which went winging its way to a different part of the world.

We didn’t last long; just after lunch, we were pleased to bump into our lecturer friends, Louise and Neil Bonner who are also working on board, but by 9:30pm, I was struggling to string two words together. The tiredness was finally taking a hold… time to sleeeeeeeeep…