out of ecuador, with a rumbla, part 1

the land of ecuador is in love with us, and it never wants us to leave - i have proof. first time we left, it had a temper tantrum and volcan tunguragua erupted violently, causing much distress to many people (kindly reference out of ecuador, with a bang). second time we left, ecuador sent an untrustworthy dog our way, while we were on the precipice-y lake quilatoa path, and the dog led us astray and damn near into lake quilatoa itself, where we would have remained for quite awhile if we hadn't met a belgian who led us to safety (ref. high and scary) this time, ecuador must have known that we were leaving for good, because it threw one hell of a shit fit and almost caused us to not be able to leave at all....

our plan for getting here (to argentina (lake district of patagonia at the moment)) was not flawless, but it was pretty good. flights from ecuador to buenos aires are $859720771 each, but from lima they are only $250. so we, in our grand tradition of making decisions to take interminably unbearable bus rides, decided to take the bus from guayquil to lima. 27 hours. subsequently, we made the decision to leave ecuador for good and take all our stuff with us on our way to argentina. prior to this, however, we had made the decision to stay in ecuador until we went home, and therefore had sent for a labtop and 5 jars of peanut butter, and 767 tubes of sensodyne, all of which we cannot live without. obviously, our decisions are not to be trusted, as they are usually not very well thought out. but, this is all background.

so, in order to catch the bus to lima, we needed to be in guayaquil by 1030 am. no matter, we thought, we will stay up on our last night in cuenca, take a 3am bus to guayaquil, get there by 7am, 730 latest, go have breakfast near the malecon, and hop on our bus at 1030. none of that ever happened.

on our last night, we packed frantically, realized we had so much stuff that neither of us could effectively move while wearing our backpacks, threw them down, and set off to our favorite cuencan restaurant - moliendo's. (yum. i miss moliendos.) after moliendos we went to our favorite cuencan bar, where we were joined by some friends from cedei for a farewell drink. after they left and we finished the last of the canelazo, we decided, feeling sleepy and hungover from our despedida the night before, to go home to take a nap afterall. so we did not stay up all night.

we slept and then awoke at 2am with that yucky feeling you get from taking a nap in the middle of the night and then waking up to move to argentina for an undefined amount of time. i felt very sad as i kissed and patted fatfat and schmeeberq, and i could barely manage to say goodbye to them around the huge lump in my throat. so i threw them out the window onto the patio, closed the window, strapped on my 10ton backpack, staggered backwards for a few steps, regained my footing, and left. we got to the bus station, no problem. we boarded our stinky bus, no problem. we fell asleep within minutes, no problem. all was going well, and we were on our way, our long way, to argentina.

but...

at 5am i woke up because the bus had stopped. i stretched and went back to sleep. i woke up again at 6am. we were still stopped in the same spot and i thought, *good thing we took such an early bus*. however, i did wonder why we were still stopped. only mildly curious. i heard someone mention something about a rumbla, but i didnt know what the hell that meant, because i cant speak spanish. i watched a batty old lady run to the front of the bus and slam the door which seperates the bus driver & assistant from the passengers, screaming something crazy about all of the mosquitos that were biting all of us. there were no mosquitos at all. i went back to sleep.

i woke up at 7am. we were still there, except the bus driver wasnt. it turned out that the door locked when it closed, and none of us could get off the bus. i watched with very mild interest as a male passenger opened one of the windows, jumped out, landed on his back, stood up and went rumming, screaming something about going for help. everyone nodded briefly and glared at the batty old lady. peoples cell phones rang.

at 9am it became clear that we werent going anywhere. the bad news was that we were going to miss our bus to lima, which left at 1130 from guayaquil, from which we were still 2 hours away. the good news was that we had improved our spanish vocabulary slightly, by learning the definition of rumbla -- landslide...