The boys might have been to many countries around the world but they have never been to Ecuador, so fans in the country have been campaigning and doing flash mobs in the hope that they can encourage One Direction and their management to visit one day. In one of Liam’s twitcam’s he said, ‘Hi Ecuador! Hello’, which meant a lot to the fans who had stayed up late to watch it live.
Melanie is 17 and from Guayaquil. Melanie didn’t want to have to wait until the boys decided to visit Ecuador before seeing them, so travelled all the way to Fort Lauderdale in Florida to see Harry, Niall, Louis, Liam and Zayn in concert. The flight alone took four hours. Melanie and her family arrived a few days early, so Melanie tried to find out where the boys were staying. She thought they would be staying at the W hotel and figured out how long it would take them to drive from their concert in Orlando to the hotel. ‘At around 9pm I went for a drive with my parents around the city in case we could see their tour van,’ she says. ‘We were on our way back to our hotel at around 1.30am so I asked my dad if he could drive to the W hotel just to find out if they were arriving there or not.
‘Around 2.10am we arrived and there was not any sign of them being there. I was very disappointed but on our way back to our hotel my dad spotted their tour vans outside another hotel. We parked up and went inside the hotel but then we were told the boys were still outside. My dad tried to step into their tour bus but security kicked him out. No other fans were there so I felt really blessed.
‘I met Zayn and his best friend Danny and then I said, “Hola, Niall,” because I knew Niall speaks a little bit of Spanish. He turned around, smiled at me and said, “Hi.” I then told him that I had come all the way from Ecuador just for their concert and he made, like, a surprised face and said, “See you tomorrow then.”’
The boys were really tired and had to go to bed but Melanie didn’t mind. She enjoyed chatting to their security guard Paul and even had a photo taken with him. She was so thrilled that, even when she went back to her hotel room, she couldn’t sleep until 5am.
Paula is 17 and is also from Guayaquil. She met the boys when they were in New York to promote Up All Night, as she was there on holiday at the time. She knew the boys were staying in Manhattan and managed to convince her mum to help her track them down. She had heard a rumour about which hotel they were staying in, so together they went to 54th Street and, sure enough, found the hotel with 20 or so fans waiting outside. After waiting for nearly two hours, Harry came out and jumped in a waiting car. Paula’s mum wanted to go shopping so Paula had to leave but they came back later that night.
Paula says, ‘The second time, there were more girls and it was freezing cold. I overheard a girl say that the boys were coming out soon, so decided to follow her behind the hotel. Seconds later a car appeared out of the garage and the five boys were all in there. Me and the other girls start running behind the car like maniacs, and that’s when the car hit a red light. I knew it was my chance, so I tapped on the window and waved at Louis who was looking straight at me. He smiled and put his hand on the car’s window and I put mine on it too so it looked like we were touching hands. I saw Zayn was laughing in the background, but then the lights changed and the car took off. I wasn’t fast enough to catch up with it again.’
Paula didn’t think she’d see them again but her mum agreed that they could go back the next day, as the boys would be leaving for Dallas really early. Paula managed to see her favourite member of the band, Harry. ‘I waved at him and he waved back with his cheeky smile,’ she remembers. ‘I start screaming in my head as my celebrity crush had just waved back to me. I was there for about five minutes with security trying to block my view of Harry but I managed to still film him. He rolled his window down and waved to some fans beside me; he’s, like, the sweetest boy ever.’
Paula wishes the boys would come to Ecuador one day but, until they do, she will make more trips to the USA when they are there. She loved seeing them perform their Take Me Home concert in June in Miami. It was the best concert she had ever seen.