Come on, how bad could it possibly be?

In the last several months I’ve had more than a handful of people warn me that I was being too lackadaisical, that I wasn’t being careful enough. I’d generally just wave those warnings away saying “well I’ve been doing the same thing for the last 6 months and nothing bad has happened yet.” Every time I said that I’d cringe a little bit inside. I’m not a superstitious person, but even I felt that I shouldn’t be laughing in the face of fate quite so openly.

Our alarm went of at 4:15 in the AM which and things kinda went downhill from there. Asma’s flight was leaving super early and I was going to the airport to see her off. It was fun having her around for 3 weeks. I don’t think we really got on each others nerves, which is pretty surprising knowing how annoying I am.

But it was cool seeing some things through her eyes. I heard a lot of “well I’ve never done that before” and it was a good feeling being able to show her some things I thought were cool and have her think they were cool too. Before she left we went over some of our adventures, hitching a ride for us and our bikes in the back of that families pickup outside of Banos, the little 10 year old girl whose mother happily let her go off with two crazy gringos she met 5 minutes earlier to cross rivers and dodge snakes on the way to that spectacular waterfall in their backyard, having our tour guide insist we hop the fence and take pictures with those 4000 year old relics.

But she was heading back to the US and I was going towards Cali for a couple of days before heading to Medellin. When I got to the bus terminal I found out most of the busses towards Tulcan, the border town on the Ecuadorean side were cancelled. Apparently there was a strike going on for some reason or another. I was told my best bet was to head to Ibarra and hope I could catch a bus from there. So off I went.

Getting to Ibarra was no problem but most of the busses from there to Tulcan were cancelled as well and the few that were still running were packed to the point that there was no chance that I was getting on their with my two loaded backpacks. After waiting on the side of the road for two hours I did what I do from time to time, I decided to throw money at the problem and make it go away. That meant turning a $2.50 bus ride into a $40 cab ride. I met a Colombian, an Ecuadorean and a baby that were also heading to Cali who were willing to help out with the cab ride.

The two hours in the cab went by fast, much better than those busses that stop ever 5 minutes for some reason or another. But as we got to Tulcan we realized what the fuss was all about. It turns out the transportation workers of Tulcan were trying to unionize and coordinate the fares to the city. And they were going about doing this by shutting down motorized traffic in and out of the city. That meant we were carrying our bags by hand around their blockade and then taking a camioneta to the next blockade where we would take a taxi to the border. This was no small task given all the luggage and the baby my two traveling mates had with them.

Everything went find until the last taxi ride. Somewhere between getting the exit stamp out of Ecuador and the entry stamp into Colombia my brand new backpack with all my clothes got lost, stolen or misplaced. My new friends were wonderful and jumped through all the various hoops to enlist the help of the Colombian DAS, the Ecuadorean border guard and the local police of Tulcan, who were all equally nice but unfortunately couldn´t really do much at this point. After four hours my bag was no where to be found.

It was cold and raining, the baby and somehow managed to stay calm through the whole ordeal but was starting to get a little cranky and we were already hours behind schedule with no hope of getting to Cali until early the next morning. Yohana, the Colombian, asked me what I wanted to do. Let´s go to Cali, I said, I can buy new clothes there.

As I sat in the bus trying to ignore the guy pitching ginseng I tried to make sense of what just happened and figure out what to do next. I was left with nothing but my electronics gear, my snorkeling equipment, 3 books and the clothes on my back. But I knew things were going to be ok. I always said that as long as I had my passport and my wallet I could get myself out of any trouble I found myself in, and now I was going to put that theory to the test.

Yohana told me recline the seat in the bus back into her lap and try to get some sleep. She gave me the blanket she had been using to keep her 8 month daughter dry. Before we pulled into Cali she gave me her brother’s phone number and told me to use it to get a hold of her if I needed anything.

I suppose if I had been more careful this wouldn´t have happened. If I had planned a little more thoroughly or thought things out more fully or been more aware of the crazy senile taxi driver tying my bag to the back of his car. But that hadn´t happened and I doubt they will happen in the future either. 28 hours after my alarm went off I got off the bus in Cali. Things had not gone at all according to plan, but my heart was not heavy. It was light and it was free. I have nothing but love and affection for all the people I´ve traveled with.