Ecuador – July 2015

We enjoyed our stay in Ecuador but changed our minds about retiring there. Beautiful country, but not a good fit for us.

Once again we used VRBO for the accommodations during our stay – an apartment in Cuenca and another in Quito. In case you’re not on to the many benefits of VRBO please have a look into it the next time you travel. Staying in an apartment beats the hell out of staying in a hotel room and the cost is usually much less. You get access to a fridge, stove, living room, bedroom, kitchen, … Just like home. With a hotel you get a bed.

The trip started off on the wrong foot and it unfortunately puts a damper on the trip. Our flight from Halifax to Toronto was cancelled due to strike action at Pearson International so Air Canada re-booked us and we lost two days right off the start. Bad enough as that was they also didn’t do the rebuking right, so we had to fight pretty much every step of the way after that just to get the seats we paid for. To top it off we were asked to pay $2044 for a cancellation fee before COPA Airlines would give us our boarding passes on the return flights. And even those were messed up as COPA insisted we were flying to Toronto even though the passes had Montreal on them.

As anyone who travels will know shit happens, but the buck passing really pissed us off. We had to call Air Canada who wanted us to call the issuing ticket agent who said to call COPA who said to call Air Canada… In the end Krista spoke to a guy from Air Canada who literally had to cancel everything and re-issue our tickets home. Still not sure what happened, but arriving home felt more like going on vacation than the vacation itself.