ecuador, you're killin' me

So now the story of the grand adventure that was Thursday and Friday. I must start with this -- it had already been quite an experience getting our tickets for Thursday night. They were sold out from the office in La Mariscal, so I had to take a taxi about 30 minutes outside of Quito to buy them from another terminal. After figuring out rafting details, leaving to go rafting at 6:30AM, rafting for 3 hours, getting stuck in traffic on the way back to Quito, and rushing to pack, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when we finally sat down on the bus to Canoa at 11:00PM on Thursday. Little did I know...

2:30AM. I wake up to a silent bus. It's dark, and everyone else seems to be sleeping. The bus is off. At first, I thought we were being hijacked, so I put my little backpack purse under my rain jacket and zipped up. Then, the bus driver came back on the bus, and people started talking. I thought the bus had maybe broken down because the driver still hadn't turned it back on. After bajaring from the bus for a little bit and seeing lots of other stopped buses around us, we realized something else was up. So, we asked and found out that there had been a landslide up ahead and that we couldn't pass. We would wait until morning to see what it looked like and if we could pass. So we slept.


6:30AM. We wake up to a ton of talking. It's finally light out, and apparently everyone's walking to see the landslide. So, Alice Ann & I decide to walk to see it, and this is what we find:

...at which point Alice Ann & I looked at each other and said, "There is no way we are getting through." We headed back to the bus where everyone was arguing and no one was making a decision on what to do. Classic Ecuador.

7:45AM. The bus driver finally makes a decision to turn back around, pass by Quito, and take a different way to the coast.

10:30AM. We pass by Quito (almost 12 hours after we originally left it).

12:30PM. We stop for lunch and almost die of heatstroke waiting for everyone to get back on the bus. We ask around to see how much longer to Canoa. The answers we get range everywhere from 30 minutes to 5 hours. Classic Ecuador.

3:45PM. We make our last stop before Canoa, and the bus driver spends 20 minutes deciding if he wants to take us the next 30 minutes to Canoa. Another Ecuadorian classic.

4:30PM. We arrive in Canoa and literally run off the bus with excitement.