Andrew Evans always listens to his mom’s advice, but also realizes that sometimes life has a way of bringing wonderful strangers in to help you. We’re taught to fear all strangers from a very young age–after that, the propaganda never really stops. Pick up any guidebook to any country, or worse–read the U.S. State Department travel warnings for any particular place and you’ll suddenly think you’re living in a world full of bad people plotting to do bad things to innocent traveling you. Still, the fact remains that as travelers we find ourselves at the mercy of strangers all the time. When we travel, we leave our comfort zone and enter a place we know nothing about inhabited by people who know it quite well. It behooves us to listen to them. I’ve had my fair share of bad luck on the road, but I also know that the majority of strangers are very nice people. I met three such wonderful strangers in a small Quito bus station–we were forced to share a cab when the bus company announced they weren’t coming to pick us up and that we instead needed to get to another station on the other side of the city. Sitting four to the backseat of a cab in 90ºF heat for an hour of Quito traffic forces you to get to know someone quite well.

Read the original here Bus2Antarctica: The Kindness of Strangers