28/05/2019 – Day 1 in Quito, Ecuador

I woke up to a light knock on the door. I couldn’t tell if it was on our door or not, so fell back to sleep again without checking. 15 minutes later I heard it again. I opened the door to a couple of ladies in their 50s who spoke in Spanish to me, I figured they either had the wrong room or were the cleaners coming to make our room up, and didn’t think too much of it. It was about 10 am as we had let ourselves have a lie in. I got up and went to drop our laundry in the next door laundrette, leaving Josh in bed. As I was leaving the ladies asked where I was going, and I assumed it was to figure out if they had enough time to make the room up. When I returned Josh said he had seen our bedroom door open a little and a hand come up the side of the door. When he made a noise they quickly shut it again. Again, we just put it down to enthusiastic cleaners! We got ourselves up and out to a bakery called Union – recommended by both our hostel hosts and the lonely planet guide. We had a strong coffee, and a very freshly made croissant stuffed with chicken and salad and the like, lovely. Then we walked to the local supermarket ‘Supermaxi’ (sounds like a tampon!) to stock up on some groceries and food to cook for ourselves this evening. We went back home via the bank to get some USD cash out – Josh has never seen USD before so said its like being on a film! We got back to our made up room and Josh took a few pictures of the hostel for the blog post as we had a little pit stop to reset. We left most of the cash and most of our stuff locked in our bags in our locked bedroom. We had read we needed to be careful with our bags when walking around Quito as apparently bag slashing is rife. I had a bit of a headache which I pu down to tiredness/dehydration/altituede – It is 2850m high! We planned to tke today slow anyway, to recover from the travel days and get ready for the Galapagos. Ready for a pamper, we walked to a nearby nail salon I had found online. I had a pedicure and both Josh and I had a manicure, gels don’t you know! Josh went for a bright blue to match the blue footed boobies we were going to see in the Galapagos (a joke I have heard repeated far too many times but nonetheless a crowd pleaser!) I think the nail salon found it quite amusing anyway! We went back to the union bakery and had a little snack before heading back to the hostel, hoping for a quick home made pasta dinner and some tv before an early night. When we got back to the room I flopped on the bed and Josh noticed our cupboard door was ajar and the money belt strap was dangling out of his bag. Feeling as though something wasn’t right he checked and sure enough, all our USD was gone, a good $130 that we had got at the ATM earlier. We went to speak to our hostel host who was as bewildered as us. When we explained the ladies hovering near the room this morning he said they were not cleaners, they were also guests. Josh then went to check his camera in the bag and it, along with two lenses were gone. We checked all our stuff, both mine and Joshs’ rucksacks that we had left padlocked, had been broken – the end of the zips broken open just enough for a hand to fit inside. As it sunk in what had happened, the hostel host said one of the two ladies had come to speak to him at the front of the hostel to distract him whilst the other lady had broken in to our room. We checked all our stuff and thankfully nothing else had been taken. We were taken to the police by our host and filed a report. There isn’t much else that can be done I believe – the ladies had basically booked in for one night using fake ID, broken into our room, taken the camera and money, and done a run for it. I would say the chances of catching them are very slim! The hostel hosts seemed equally as heartbroken and shocked as us, apologising profusely. They even reimbursed the cash as they felt partially responsible for the breach of security. They also contacted bookings.com and have sent a warning to hostels across Ecuador and Colombia describing the two ladies and are going to be tighter on their ID checks in the future. We really don’t believe they were involved (although it did cross or minds when we first realised what had happened.) I cooked us a pasta dinner, and we ended up sharing it with the hostel hosts, all feeling a bit shell shocked. It felt pretty weird going back to our room that had just been broken into, knowing the thief had been stood right there, violating our space and belongings. We watched some tv, spoke to mum and dad on facetime and tried with difficulty to get some sleep.