It’s a rare warm and sunny weekend
in Quito, the kind of day that refuses to let you sit indoors, especially when
it’s only your fourth in the capital city of one of South America’s most
interesting countries. So I decide to
visit “El Centro,” as the locals call it, “Old Town” to tourists. After a few hours of walking around staring
at churches, monuments, and tiny stores, I figure the time has come to take a
load off for a while so I sit down to rest on a bench at La Plaza de la
Independencia, Quito’s main square.
Being a Sunday, the benches are filled with people, mostly old men
reading the paper or talking, and I’m lucky to find a seat. Before long the man in a slouch hat, glasses,
and a sport coat beside to me leans over to ask me some innocuous question.

Next we’re deep in conversation, a half
English half Spanish discussion about the weather, cars, our favorite fruits,
Ecuador’s new president, Quito, and California.
Soon enough a couple of his friends amble up and join our talk. I help the first man program one of his
bearded friends’ number into his new cell phone and the four of us talk for
about an hour before going our separate ways.

This
hour sitting in a tree lined square in a continent I’d never been to a week
before reminded me of the true greatness of travel – people and the unexpected,
spontaneous moments and connections they entail. Churches, nature, museums, and monuments all
have their place, but it’s the people that truly make traveling amazing
–whether that means being reunited and drunk with old friends in a mysterious
place or making a new friend three times my age in a huge city I know nothing
about but he’s lived in for seventy years.