We woke up like new people after a good solid 15 hours sleep. We tidied up all of the wedding things and carefully put Tabitha back in her box under the bed. Today was going to be Peggys birthday! She was being treated by Elizabeth, David and Alberto to a great big birthday wash down and spruce up. Lucho and Anita came armed with buckets, sponges, a jet hose the hoover and buckets of elbow grease and attacked…hard!
Alex and I got started on the inside. I re-organised drawers and shelves while Alex worked on fixing the leaking sunroof, the foot break cable and the choke. We all worked solidly for 4 hours, everything was double cleaned by Anita as I dont think for a minute she trusted me to do it well enough. She ran around like a mad thing and each time she found a particularly dirty area she would shake her head and show me the cloth…I felt suitably chastised and have dusted more thoroughly ever since! Peggy was so clean she sparkled top to toe. Lucho had washed and dried every single inch to the point of gleaming and as we left to go to E’s apartment we avoided puddles and patches of dirt in fear of getting her splashed!
We had one more stop off to get Peggy back to 100%…at the tyre shop. She had a HUGE nail in her back wheel! It was more of a bolt to be precise but for $5 it was removed, patched up and refitted and she smiled all the way into Quito!
We spent the afternoon in the supermarket and cooking dinner for E and D to say thank you for planning such a unique experience for us and for introducing us to Cristobals awesomeness! We made mushroom soup, steak salad with chimmichurri and banoffee pie with the arequepa we had brought them as a gift from Colombia. We all ate until we could not move as per usual and made grand plans for the next day…which never happened as we were feeling soooo lazy! We blogged a little in the morning and then headed to the mall as someone (not Peggy!) was having a mini birthday party that night and needed a cake!
By the time I had made my selection and we had mooched our way around the mall it was getting late and we still had meatballs and spaghetti sauce to make for the party. Alex, E and I jumped into Peggy, set off back to the apartment and were stopped within 10 seconds by a traffic cop on a moped. He swerved in and out of the traffic waving his arms at us and telling us to pull over. We stopped and he directed us into a side street and Alex got out to speak with the officer. He had pulled us because of Pico-placa which means that if you have a certain number in your number plate you cannot drive into the city on certain days at certain times! Today, number 3 was not allowed on the road between 5 and 7.30….it was 5.20 and we have a number 3!!
Alex tried to talk to the officer and explain that we didnt realise as tourists that PP applied to us. Meanwhile E called D who spoke to the officer on the phone. With a few words back and forth with D, officer AH (you can decide what the initials stand for) handed the phone back to E and almost ran off shouting “STAY THERE, do NOT move” at us! E spoke to D who told us to stay put until he arrived! It was rush hour traffic and he fought his way through from the other side of town to get to us. By the time he arrived it was 7pm and we only had another 30 minutes to go before we could drive again. D had arranged to meet the officer with a bribe to let us go without having Peggy towed. The penalty for driving outside of the pica placa laws is to have your car towed to a compound where you have to go and pay to get it back after 24 hours. The rumours are (and I can quite believe it) that in which time your vehicle is likely to be stripped of anything of value and probably badly damaged.
D arrived and went to meet with officer AH and told us to leave at 7.30 and to wait for him at the apartment…if you knew half of the story of D’s life you would know that to follow his instructions was the best thing to do!
As we waited for the time to tick by, at 7.28pm 2 traffic cops pulled a lady over in front of us also for Pica Placa with only 2 minutes to go. We watched as she tried to argue but eventually gave up, and was escorted away.
We followed instruction and drove back to the apartment at 7.30 exactly and waited there for D. What a nightmare this had turned into.
D had called around and cancelled the dinner party as there was no way we would have meatballs and spaghetti sauce for 6 ready within half an hour and we all trudged up the stairs and flopped on the couch.
After letting the nightmare sink in a little we decided that as there was 4 pounds of mince and a dozen ripe tomatoes sitting on the side waiting to be cooked that we may aswell cook them! We were all so highly strung that it would do us good to ‘cook off’ some energy. We cooked and drank sangria and at 11pm we ate as many meatballs as we could humanly face and even lit my big 3.0 candles and had a slice of the beautiful raspberry tart we had bought for the occasion.
Even after the drama of the day we had a lovely evening celebrating my birthday with good friends and good food.
There is certainly never a dull moment in our lives and it was cool to spend an evening with a couple who have similarly crazy lives! We loved spending time with E, D and Alb and were sad as usual to leave! The hardest part of making great friends is leaving them each time!

PS…a big thank you to E for sending me these pictures! Sadly our camera was stolen and we don’t have any of the pictures we took which we are the most sad about! Bear with us over the next few blogs…we will try pretty them with some pics at least! X

Find out what happens next on our travelling wedding adventure!