out of ecuador, with a rumbla (2)

so, yeah, we were pretty stuck. the landslide, from the bus, looked like it had formed a small hill in of red earth in the middle of the road. we couldnt tell if there were any machines working to clear it, but it looked like not. so that sucked. plus we were still stuck on the crowded, stinky bus, and im clausterphobic. not great. the man who had jumped out the window was nowhere to be found, not that we could have looked for him. we waited and fretted.

finally, the bus driver wandered back to the bus for a pee. we made some noise and he attempted to open the door. after a few minutes he got it open and, liberated, we ran towards the landslide to see what the deal was. never wise. by this point it had grown extremely foggy, and the landslide had created yet another precarious precipice. so, though we got close, we couldnt tell what was going on. we joined a mass of spectators on a small hill on the side of the road. we stayed there for awhile, and though we couldnt see much we felt relatively safe, just screwed. we passed the time by talking to a very drunk tour guide, who told us continually that there was no way we would catch our bus. we fretted a bit. after some time, a cheer went up through the crowd, and we squinted and could just barely make out the yellow of a road clearing machine (or whatever). this was progress, but it was 10.00.

then, from somewhere in the foggy nothingness, we heard a terrible sound. rocks tumbling slowly and then very quickly, alarmingly quickly. we were on a hillside and therefore, for the moment, relatively safe. but it seemed to me that the entire road would eventually be covered with boulders, and i began to feel as though we should do whatever possible to get away. many, many people seemed to have the same thought at the same time. after the second landslide, we began to see people being transported via yellow machine to the other side of the landslide. we asked around and learned that a few entrepenurial people had come from the nearest town on the other side of the landslide to pick people up. there was hope, but we would have to cross the landslide with our bags, which were:
a) locked in the bus
b) too heavy to carry to begin with, let alone to jump off of steep embankments of mud into more mud with, which is what crossing would entail.
but we met people who located our bus driver and told him we needed our bags. on the way we learned that our bus to lima passed by, but not in, the nearest town, approximately 1.5 hours after it left guyaquil. it was still possible to catch it! so we grabbed the bags and started off to cross the landslide, with the help of a possibly drunk man we met, who was very kind but made a general announcement to the spectators on the hill that "he was off to marry the gringa", meaning me, which made my cheeks burn.

but: as we started to cross the rocks began to fall near us, and it soon became obvious they were going to fall onto where we were standing. anthony began to run back towards the bus, screaming at me to run also. "i cant" i screamed, "the bags are too heavy!!"
"you. have. no. choice. RUN!!"
so, somehow i ran, bags n all. im no athelete, but i guess the boulders dropping around me were motivation enough to shape up.

we got back to the bus and stood there a while, waiting to see if it was safe to cross over the (now many) lanslides. it wasnt, but the rocks were falling all around us. so we crossed, jumping over piles, falling on our knees, and all that fun stuff...

more later....