Luckily, all the luggage made it to Guayaguil on the next flight, 5 hours later. It really worked out for the best: we were able to get a nice night's sleep, then head to the airport to pick up our bags locked away in American Airlines' security office. Since there were no international flights arriving at that time, the airport was empty. We were whisked right through Customs, and were on our way to Cuenca. The airport staff were very polite, and were excited to hear that we were moving to Ecuador.
Sonny made the flight just fine - thanks in part to my exhausting preparations and his medication! He slept through most of the flight, waking up only to have dinner and water somewhere over Central America. He's been a real trooper!
From Guayaguil, we hired a van and driver to take us into Cuenca. It was about a 3 hour drive up into the Andes Mountains. It was a beautiful (and no rain!) drive through cocoa plantations, coffee plantations, banana plantations, and rice fields.
We are currently in a B&B right across the street from our apartment. We expect to move in by Friday at the latest. We are ready to unpack!
We arrived in Cuenca on Sunday. On Monday night, we attended a big magazine launch party, and got to see a lot of people we've met on previous trips to Cuenca, as well as a lot of people we've "met" via Facebook. The ex-pat community here is very diverse, and we look forward to meeting more of them.
On Tuesday night, we were invited to a cook out at our new friends' condo. There were 6 of us guys there, and we had a lot of fun. After days of stressful travel and 3 hotels, Tom and I really needed the break. Retirement has already changed us - we didn't get home until after 11:30!
Today has been a busy day. We had our cellphones switched over to Ecuadorian telephone numbers. My USA cell phone will no longer exist now. Tom's USA cell phone number will only work when he is back in the US.
An interesting side note: Ecuadorians LOVE $2 bills. They consider them good luck. When we were getting our cell phones switched over, we paid with a $2 bill. The employees got very excited, and wanted to buy every $2 bill we had!
Today, we also went to the big American-style (read: "expensive") grocery store just a couple of blocks from our apartment. We got our "SuperMaxi" customer cards to make shopping easier.
So, with local telephone numbers and SuperMaxi cards, we are starting to feel like things are falling into place.
