change of plans... but not too much!

so, again for those of you who are counting - you will be interested to know that not one aspect of the trip laid out in my previous entry went as planned. some aspects for teh better, some for the worse. well, none really for that much worse because i am here in buenos aires which is an amazing city, and im unharmed.
first of all, i would like ot announce the fact that the road that goes from cuenca to guayaquil shouldnt exist. what happened, in a short version, is that our bus had to stop at 5 in the morning because there was a landslide. we waited on the bus and around the bus for 5 hours. the plow came to help about 3 hours into this, and then at about 10, there was another landslide. this one happend so that anna and i had to actually run away from falling rocks. this was scary, but also an adrenaline rush in teh sense that we next had to run through the landslide at a moment when it was calm so that we could cross to the other side and not get trapped. once we got to the other side, we found a pickup truck that was also waiting to cross from the other direction, paid them to take us to the nearest town, and then waited. this is why we never got to guayaquil so that we could eat the breakfast we had talked about. instead, near the little town, there was a tollbooth that we waited at until our bus passed. we were quite dirty at this point and we had to wait for the bus for 3 hours in teh sun so that by the time we did get on the bus we were more sweaty and more tired. we flagged the bus down and got on and it was a comfortable bs where the seats go back kind of like beds, but there were a couple of crying babies and i couldnt get comfortable enough to sleep because i was still sweating and had a layer of grime and mud that blocked my true access to the chair. a woman remarked that my feet smelled. rather than shoving my sock in her mouth as i should have, i just noted that she was an unhappy person and tried to sleep and ignore the babies.
so, we got to lima and then decided not to spend the night in the airport, saving money though it would have, but instead to go to a hotel and shower. this was a good decision. the water rolled off me black like coal. we also decided to eat at chilis which is something i have never done before. but, since we had recently escaped a natural disaster, and narrowly (i cant stress enough the closeness of the huge rocks that were falling around us - and it was foggy so we couldnt really see where we were going. im serious!), we figured that to spend a bit of money on some baby back ribs wouldnt kill us.
so, we got up at 4 to go to the airport and did. no problem there. then, we checked in and everything and went to go eat a good mcdonalds breakfast (again: natural disaster, us, reward...), and while we were eating, the lan agent came running to us and told us that there was a flight leaving at the same time our flight was scheduled to leave, but going direct to buenos aires. this was better than having a layover - cool as it might have been to go to chile for a moment. so, since they were begging us to take a flight that was better than the one we had planned to take, we figured they didnt need to bump us and so therefore didnt ask. we got the exit seats which had as much leg room as first class and personalized tvs, on which i watched the garfield movie which was quite bad considering how funny garfield usually is. oh well. therefore, every aspect of our plans changed except for the fact that we are here in buenos aires...