out of ecuador, with a little help from our heavily armed friends and the entire town of puerto inca (seemingly)

so, as we crossed the rocks fell all around. like, the second we stepped forward rocks fell in the exact spot in which we had just been. at one point in the crossing, we had to jump off of a newly made ledge into an abyss of red mud (all of this must be very hard to picture. its hard to explain - i really wish i had taken pictures, but at that precise moment in time, the act surely would have been life threatening and percieved as insane. plus i never post pictures on this blog, because blogger is such a bitch about it). wearing and holding all of my luggage, i was certain i would break both knees. somehow i didnt, and we made it across. but by this point i was feeling that things, in general, were very uncool. i began to whine. anthony was pretty symapthetic and understanding. he is used to seeing me utterly freak out and regress when in life threatening natural disaster type situations. but he was nice, and we had made it to the other side, and all we had left to do was beg a ride, somehow, to puerto inca. it turned out there were none of the entrepeneurs our nice friend had promised us (refer to part 2). we went running, bags and all, up to a police car that had started its way down the mountain to puerto inca and asked for a ride. they told us to ask this elderly couple with a pickup truck filled to the brim with steel rods. we asked them and they said no, then changed their minds and said yes. so we hopped in, or i should say on, on top of the steel rods and clung to the sides of the pickup as it careened down the mountain. the fog, at this point, was blinding, and we could hear little landslides all around us, and we were so precariously perched atop the steel rods, not really inside the truck at all, and the road was bumpy and slippery...it was really one of those dont-know-if-ill-make-it-out-alive situations that are becoming all too familiar. but at one point, 3 minutes into the ride, we began to laugh. i dont know why, but we laughed and laughed the whole long way down. it made the ride fun, and by the time we got down to sea level puerto inca, the weather had turned hot and humid, we were inappropriately dressed in layers of muddy fleece, and we were still laughing.

we hopped off the truck and tried to give the couple $10, which they refused to take, which was really nice. anthony got them to take $5 of it, and then we stood on the only street in the town, asking a million people a million questions about the ormeño bus that supposedly passed through the town on its way to lima. we gathered that if we went to the piaje, tollbooth, there was a chance we could flag it down as it passed. we had 2 hours to spare though, so we sat down and drank 17 cokes each. something about jumping over landslides and almost dying makes you want to drink coke. i dont know why. mr. coca cola should really consider this for his next advertising campaign.

then, wearing our layers of sweaters n fleece, we carried our bag to the piaje, which was not too far but not near either. as we approached the booths a few heavily armed guards looked at us curiously. we explained that we needed to flag down the ormeño when it passed. they looked at our muddy clothes and sweaty faces and nodded knowingly. i dont know what they knew and how they could possibly have known it, but they were nice. they offered us some pepsi but we declined, having just drunk many cokes. we threw our bags down and sat on the side of the highway, across from the tollbooth. the bus was late.

have you ever hung out at a tollbooth for a few hours?? if not, i wouldnt necessarily recommend it. especially not when its horribly hot out. or after a landslide. its just not that entertaining, not nearly as much as you think it would be. but there was a man with a suitcase full of sandwiches who was oddly hanging out there too. we talked to him for a bit, and then he jumped onto a moving bus headed for huaquillas. nice man. we also met a watermelon seller, who sold us delicious watermelon and later became an integral factor in getting us here to argentina.

finally, after 46 years, the ormeño bus pulled up. as practiced, we jumped to our feet and started waving our tickets around, jumping up and down like lunatics. the lady at the ticket booth might or might not have mumbled something to the driver about picking us up. the guard stood up. but: the bus didnt stop. luckily, our new guard friends sprung to action, running towards the bus, waving their machine guns. it stopped. the bus drivers assistant got out irritably, and motioned for us to move quickly if we wanted to get on the bus. anthony grabbed his bag and went running ahead. i tried to do the same, but my bag felt like leaden bricks, and my left hand was holding a huge chunk of watermelon. i struggled with it, trying to run, tripping over it and getting nowhere, growing desperate. suddenly my i felt one end of my bag rise, and i turned around, and there was the watermelon seller. he had easily picked up my bag and was running towards the bus with it. he got it on the bus and i barely had time to thank him as the bus began to move again. i just waved my watermelon and hoped he understood.

we sat down in our seats, crossed the border, spent the night in lima, and caught our smooth flight to buenos aires just in time. and that is how we got to argentina.