Coup? What Coup?
When adventure travel runs into real-world events, you may need more than a mini Mag-Lite and a Buzz-Off jacket. Or maybe not.

By Peter Mandel
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, May 15, 2005

¡Resten ustedes tranquilos¡! Stay calm.

Leave your baggage in the overhead bins. Remain in your seats.

Our pilot has a lot of urgent things to say in Spanish. I pick up on the seat part, the calm part. It is late April, and here we are being held up on the tarmac after flying from JFK to an airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador. There are soldiers all over the place. And no sign of this standoff coming to an end.

"The airport is now closed," explains one of the flight attendants in English.

Closed? I ask. How come? I am extra anxious because I'm heading for an adventure cruise in the Galapagos. I am afraid of blowing my connection.

"Are you not aware," says a man with a wide silk tie sitting beside me, "about the president of Ecuador? He has fired the Supreme Court."

I'm embarrassed to say this is the first I've heard of it. And I am petulant. What does that piece of news have to do with all these soldiers? Then it hits me.

Could we have arrived, I ask, in the middle of a coup?

"A coup?" he says. "Of course."

I get a flash of fear. I came here for adventure, sure. But not this kind. Not this real.

Not now.

We are let out of our plane after an hour -- this is a relief -- but then are herded into a terminal waiting room by soldiers, national police, and cool and stylish ground agents.

The man in the silk tie says Ecuador has faced two sudden changes of government in 12 years. And then the news comes over someone's cell phone, crackly but clear. Increasing pressure from crowds unhappy with government policies became impossible to stop. The removal of President Lucio Gutierrez, only minutes before our arrival, makes three.

Airports like the one here and the one in Quito, the capital, are under military guard because Gutierrez is, at this very moment, in his presidential chopper. He is on the run.

A fellow passenger from King of Prussia, Pa., keeps asking when we will get to leave. Nobody can say. Soldiers with guns mill through the terminal. There are rumors: Angry mobs are beating up government workers in Quito. The vice president has been sworn in. The mobs are also in Guayaquil, and may come here.

It occurs to me for the first time that I might not make it to the Galapagos at all. My cruise could be canceled, along with my hotel nights in Quito. I might be sent home.

I find there is a little part of me that doesn't want the adrenaline to end. I imagine the front pages of newspapers in the United States. The coup, which I now feel a part of, might be squeezed in near the Wendy's chili finger story at the bottom of the page, or relegated to the "World in Brief" roundup on Page A42. How unfair, how parochial.

Or, come to think of it, it could be the lead.

I wish the TV here in the airport had CNN on. We might see ourselves.

Hours pass. The airport kiosks run out of sandwiches and bottled water. I roam back and forth, staring at the displays of parrot-shaped key chains and T-shirts with sea turtle motifs.

Word comes: No flights tonight. We are loaded on buses and driven to a Guayaquil motel. It's a brand new Howard Johnson, so new it isn't open to the public. We airline refugees are breaking it in.

Next day, we learn that some of us can catch an hour-long flight to Quito on Tame, a military-owned airline. Do I want to do this? Cruising the Galapagos is starting to seem dull. I book a seat.

I'm still on edge about the chance of gunfire. But I've made a decision: I want to see my coup for myself.

The airport in Quito is just as jammed with soldiers, but I manage to flag a cab. The avenues are eerily empty on the ride to my hotel. Where are the people? I ask the driver. He lets out a quiet laugh. "If you are not afraid," he says, "I will show you."

The area in front of Quito's presidential palace is cordoned off, but my driver gets me as close as he can. I try to blend in along the fringes of a fuming crowd. It's hard to say, but there must be a thousand people in the palace square, maybe more. "¡Fuera todos!" (Out with them all!) is the shout, since there are rumors that the president may still be in Ecuador. The people want him gone. But no one is sure. He may be somewhere in Quito, hiding; he may be in Brazil.

Vendors hawk peanuts and candy and cigarettes. It is like an angry party. I am pushed up near the front, and I can see up close the regiment of soldiers arrayed along the palace balcony. I see the glint of the guns, the riot shields reflecting the sun.

Someone begins the cheer. Stay calm, I think. Stay calm.

I feel a sound in my chest. I hear a rising note. "¡Fuera todos! ¡Fuera todos!"

It is the voice of hundreds. It is my voice.

Long live the coup.

Epilogue

The ouster of Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez on April 20 came after several days of sometimes violent street protests as Ecuadoreans, mostly those based in Quito, reacted to Gutierrez's "unconstitutional" tinkerings with the country's Supreme Court. On the same day, Vice President Alfredo Palacio was sworn in, and after some uncertainty, Gutierrez ended up getting asylum in Brazil. Daily life is back to normal in Quito.

And my adventure cruise to the Galapagos? I sailed as scheduled. Snorkeling with hammerhead sharks wasn't anywhere near as scary as I'd expected.

Peter Mandel, a frequent contributer to the Travel section, last wrote about New York's Chelsea neighborhood.