2023-09-30 17:41:00
(CNN) — Tracy Ferrell looked at the boarded-up hotel in disbelief.
It was definitely closed. Not only that, it looked like it hadn’t been open in months.
“Okay, never mind,” Tracy thought. “Okay, we have a plan B.”
She looked towards her friend Monique, who was standing next to her, backpack in hand, with an unsure expression.
“Okay, let’s try the next one,” Tracy said cheerfully, trying to stay positive.
The two women put their backpacks on their backs and headed down the street. They were in Cuenca, in southern Ecuador, a city full of cobblestone streets and colorful buildings.
When Tracy and Monique arrived at the next hotel, they realized it was also closed. Not only was it locked, but the door was firmly padlocked. There was no sign of anyone inside.
Tracy’s heart sank. She took out the old “Lonely Planet South America” guide from her backpack, flipped through it, and consulted the hotel page once more.
It was definitely the right one. This was the alternative hotel. The one she and Tim had chosen, just in case the first one was closed. And it was also closed.
Tracy knocked on the door, thinking it was worth a try. Nothing.
Oh no, Tracy thought. “I’ll never see him once more.”
A meeting and a lunar eclipse
Tracy and Tim met in Ecuador in 1996. They first crossed paths in Quito and then tried to meet once more in Cuenca. Here they are seen later, in 1996, in the Peruvian town of Ollantaytambo. (Tracy Farrell)
It was September 1996 and Tracy was 26 years old. She had just completed a master’s degree in comparative literature at the University of Colorado, with a concentration in Latin American literature. She had decided to spend a year traveling through South America, testing her language skills.
Tracy’s first stop in Ecuador – before Cuenca – was the capital, Quito. Suddenly she was in the Quito branch of the South American Explorers Club, a now-defunct organization born in the United States and with headquarters in cities throughout South America.
Tracy sat at a table in a quiet back room of the Quito clubhouse and pulled some postcards out of her purse. She spread them out on the table in front of her, ready to write and send them to her family in the United States.
Tracy was distracted trying to figure out how to summarize her trip so far, when she saw a boy across the room, his head buried in a book. Just as Tracy’s gaze landed on him, he looked up.
“Our eyes met across the table,” Tracy tells CNN Travel today. “I thought it was cute.”
Then a dog ran into the room: a German shepherd who lived in the clubhouse.
The boy put his book aside and began to pet the dog enthusiastically.
“I love a guy who likes animals,” Tracy says. “I struck up a conversation.”
It was Tim Zych, a 32-year-old New Zealander who had been teaching in London for the past few years.
When he met Tracy, Tim was enjoying a six-month period of travel, not knowing what would come next.
“I didn’t really have any plans for the future other than traveling when I was relatively young and motivated,” Tim tells CNN Travel today. “I assumed he would eventually return to live in New Zealand.”
Tracy and Tim chatted for a while and both found friendly company, even though Tim says he was “a little intimidated” by Tracy’s “obvious intelligence.”
“I thought Tracy was very attractive and confident,” he says.
“I loved his accent,” Tracy says. “As I remember, I invited him to dinner that night.”
Tim thinks it was the other way around and that he was the one who asked Tracy out. But what is certain is that they were both excited to go out together that night.
Tim and Tracy ate at a local restaurant, sitting outside, talking regarding their travels, families, careers and lives at home (“I don’t think I’ve met anyone from New Zealand before,” Tracy remembers). So “I was very curious regarding New Zealand.” Zeeland and life there”).
“It was magical,” says Tim. “It really felt like something special, even though we obviously had no idea what the future was going to be.”
They were sitting on a busy sidewalk, but they ignored the cars, people, and commotion around them.
“There’s usually a lot going on in big cities,” says Tim. “I just tuned out all that stuff. I just focused on Tracy and the conversation and everything else was like a blur in the background to me.”
“We got along well; we talked for hours,” Tracy says.
After dinner, Tim and Tracy returned to Tracy’s hotel and sat on the roof; They had heard rumors of a total lunar eclipse that night and ended up sitting under the stars, watching the moon turn a striking amber-red color.
“It felt special,” Tim says.
Tracy and Tim had a second date in Ecuador. Here they are photographed in 1996 in the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia.
The possibility of a second date was a fact. The next morning, they took a bus to a place just north of Ecuador, where the Equator Line crosses South America.
“There’s a museum, a monument and a line on the ground where the equator is,” Tracy explains. “We thought it would be fun to check it out.”
As a tourist attraction, it was a bit disappointing. But Tracy and Tim didn’t care.
“We wandered around the museum, but mostly we got to know each other,” Tracy says.
The two ended their second date certain that they wanted to see each other once more, but aware that their paths were regarding to diverge.
“We both already had travel plans and companions for the month,” Tracy says. “And he had already been to the places I planned to go.”
They decided to try to meet later in Cuenca, Ecuador. From there they would go together to Peru.
Before parting ways, Tim and Tracy consulted their copies of the “Lonely Planet South America” guidebook (“Everyone had it,” Tracy says. “We called it ‘The Bible'”).
They chose a hotel in Cuenca to meet. Then, almost as an followingthought, they chose a backup hotel “in case the first one didn’t work out for some reason.”
This was a time when cell phones, the Internet, and email were not widespread, so communication options were limited.
Tim and Tracy’s plan to meet once more following the second date went awry. Here they are both on a beach in Chile in January 1997.
And so it was that, three weeks later, Tracy found herself standing in front of a clearly closed hotel and the same one at the back, wondering what to do.
He kept knocking on the door. Her friend Monique helped her.
Finally, a man arrived. Tracy, who spoke fluent Spanish, told him they were looking for a place to stay.
“Is it open?” he asked. “We need to stay here.”
The owner said he was going out of town and would close the hotel for the weekend. But following some conversation, he agreed to let Tracy and Monique stay at his hotel during his absence, as long as they locked the door whenever they left.
Excited, Tracy and Monique agreed to these conditions. They walked in, dropped off their suitcases, and then went out into the night to explore.
Before leaving, Tracy grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from the hotel front desk and scribbled a note, writing something like: “Tim, this hotel is closed but Monique and I are staying here. If you see this, let me know where you are staying!” you host!”
As she and Monique closed the hotel door, Tracy placed the piece of paper on the door frame. As they walked away, she looked back, hoping that the wind wouldn’t blow him away and that it wouldn’t be long before she was reunited with Tim.
A note on the hotel door
Tracy had the idea to write a note and post it on the hotel door. In the photo, she is in Chile in February 1997.
Unknown to Tracy, Tim had arrived in Cuenca a few days before her. As planned, he headed to the first hotel, then the backup, and realized they were both closed.
Unlike Tracy, Tim didn’t get to stay at hotel number two. Instead, he checked in elsewhere.
He was disappointed, but tried to manage his expectations.
“When you travel, you meet people who come and go, and sometimes you have a bond with them in some way and then you never see them once more,” he says today. “So it wasn’t unusual for that to happen to me as a traveler, especially back then.”
Anyway, Tim mightn’t help but return to the second hotel, just in case he saw Tracy outside.
It was on one of these visits that Tim noticed the note on the door frame. He moved a little closer and saw that it was a message from Tracy. He mightn’t believe it.
She looked in her bag for a pen. Leaning once morest the hotel door, he wrote a reply beneath Tracy’s message, detailing where she was staying.
When Tracy and Monique returned that night and saw Tim’s response, Tracy was amazed.
His note had been “a shot in the dark.” All night she had wondered, “Maybe I’ll see her, maybe I won’t. Maybe she won’t come back. Maybe she’s not even in town anymore.”
I was delighted that it had worked. She took the note from the door, and in the company of Monique, she headed to Tim’s hotel.
“We found him eating at the restaurant,” Tracy remembers thinking.
Tim was very happy to see Tracy once more. Here he is photographed in the Colca Canyon in Peru in late 1996.
Although both Tracy and Tim had tried to accept the idea that they would never see each other once more, they were delighted to be reunited. Suddenly, what they had almost lost seemed even more precious.
Eager not to get lost once more, they decided to leave together the next day for Peru. From there they traveled to Bolivia and Chile. Tracy’s friend Monique joined them at first, then she returned home and Tracy and Tim traveled alone for the next three months.
“We had dozens of adventures, from 45-hour bus trips to mountain climbing and rafting in the Amazon,” Tracy says.
“We fell madly in love,” he adds.
Tim and Tracy loved touring the Cordillera Blanca in Peru. Tracy says this photo, the first one they took together, is one of her favorites.
For Tracy and Tim, one of the most memorable moments of that time was at the beginning, when they hiked through the Cordillera Blanca in Peru, traversing the highlands together.
“That was a point of no return for me,” Tim says of the Cordillera Blanca experience. “The mountains were incredibly beautiful and wild. Being with someone who appreciated that as much as I did and was also very capable in that terrain made Tracy even more attractive to me.”
“It was beautiful. It was just stunning,” Tracy says. “One of my favorite photographs of the two of us was taken at the top of one of the trails. We had set up the camera and were crouching to get in frame.”
In the photo, Tim puts his arm around Tracy. They are both smiling happily. It was their first photo together.
During the three months of travel, Tracy and Tim were rarely alone. She was defiant at times, but the difficult times brought them closer.
Separated by continents
Tracy and Tim stayed in touch while they were apart.
But although Tracy still had a few months left, the end of Tim’s journey was quickly approaching.
February 1997 came and Tim had to return to London and get back to work. Tim and Tracy reluctantly said goodbye, leaving things unfinished between them.
“Since we were both traveling and I had no permanent address, it was regarding a month before I received a letter from him. I thought he had forgotten regarding me,” Tracy says.
Communication became a little easier when Tracy got a job in Costa Rica and settled there for a while. Tim sent letters to the American Express office in San Jose.
“It was difficult: I really missed being with Tracy, but I really wasn’t sure if we would ever see each other once more,” Tim remembers.
They wrote to each other all the time and tried to talk on the phone when they might.
“Due to the time difference, the calls were often in the middle of the night and my roommates would wake me up saying I had a call from my girl in America,” Tim recalls. “I was instantly awake and excited to talk to Tracy.”
In July 1997, Tracy’s year-long trip came to an end and she returned to Boulder, Colorado, where she lived before her trip.
Around this time, Tim was considering returning to New Zealand. He decided to travel home through Colorado and proposed the idea to Tracy over the phone.
She was excited, so Tim bought two plane tickets: one from London to Colorado and one from Colorado to New Zealand.
“I was definitely curious regarding how our relationship was going to progress,” Tim recalls.
He was excited to see Tracy, but once once more tried to lower his expectations.
“I didn’t really know how it was going to happen because it looked like I wouldn’t be able to stay in America for long and I was pretty sure Tracy wouldn’t follow me to New Zealand,” he says.
But when he met Tracy at the gate of Denver International Airport, Tim says it was “like a dream.”
“It was like we had never been apart. She looked as vibrant and beautiful as when we were traveling.”
Tracy agrees. “We hugged each other. It was like we had never been apart,” she says. “We talked non-stop all the way from the airport to the house.”
A spontaneous decision
Over the next few weeks, Tracy enjoyed showing Tim around Boulder. She moved there to study for her master’s degree and loved it. Tim might see why.
“We spent the first few weeks enjoying the summer outdoors around Boulder,” he recalls. “Neither of us had much money and we didn’t have a car, so we walked and biked everywhere. We swam in the creek when it was hot and avoided the followingnoon storms, or we hung out in the hammock at our apartment. Tracy. It was wonderful.”
As the days passed, Tim and Tracy became more and more certain that they belonged in each other’s future. The prospect of Tim returning to New Zealand became less and less attractive. The date of his return flight came and went.
“We tried to think regarding how we might live together in the long term,” Tim says.
They began researching options. The idea of getting married arose.
At first, neither Tracy nor Tim were sure. Neither of them had aspired to marriage. But following talking it through in depth, they decided they might get married on their own terms. They would keep their wedding day low-key.
“We don’t need to plan it,” Tracy suggested. “One day we will go to court and that’s it.”
Tracy and Tim at their wedding in Colorado.
That’s what they did in August 1997. The only person Tracy told was her boss, and only as an anecdote. She asked for the followingnoon off and when she mentioned that she was getting married, her boss insisted that she take the entire day.
Tracy and Tim say their wedding was so special because of its simplicity. Colorado doesn’t require marriage witnesses, so it was just Tracy, Tim, and the judge.
“It was just the two of us. And we didn’t even take pictures,” Tracy says.
After a few weeks, Tracy and Tim told some friends regarding their marriage. They then began researching how to get Tim’s visa and later told his parents.
“My parents were excited, because I had always said I wasn’t going to get married,” Tracy says.
Tim says his parents, thousands of miles away in New Zealand, were “very surprised by the situation, but also very excited.”
Tracy started a PhD and Tim started the visa process. On their first wedding anniversary, the couple hosted a belated celebration for their friends and family in Colorado.
And, aside from a brief stay in Boston, the couple has lived in Colorado ever since.
A “cosmic” coincidence
Tracy and Tim have been happily married for 26 years. In the photo, they celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary in 2017, on Isla Mujeres in Mexico.
More than 26 years of marriage later, Tim and Tracy still live in Colorado. Currently, Tracy is an associate professor in the writing program at the University of Colorado at Boulder, while Tim works as a project manager for Boulder County.
While they are quick to emphasize that “no serious relationship is easy all the time,” Tracy and Tim claim that they are “best friends” and believe that is the secret to their years of happiness.
The couple has a 17-year-old daughter, whom they enjoy telling stories regarding how they fell in love in Quito, almost got lost in Cuenca, and their unexpected reunion.
“We joked with her: ‘If it wasn’t for the note in the hotel that Tim saw, you wouldn’t be here,'” Tracy says, laughing. “A lot of things had to come together for our family to exist. I think that’s really cool. And I hope she thinks that too.”
A recent photo of Tim and Tracy with their 17-year-old daughter.
Tracy and Tim have occasionally talked regarding returning to South America together. But while nostalgia is appealing to them, as avid travelers they prefer to explore new places before revisiting their favorite places.
Plus, there’s something interesting regarding keeping those memories sacred.
“It would be great in a lot of ways, but at the same time, I treasure those memories that we have,” says Tim, who says he sees the moment he met Tracy as a “fork in the road.”
“The chance of us meeting was minuscule,” Tracy says. “And on the night of the lunar eclipse…”
“It’s like what needed to happen happened,” Tim says. “A cosmic coincidence.”
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