Teresa posted the following to Facebook. Today’s adventure. “We slept in planning on going to the equator today knowing it wasn’t very far from our hotel . We left the hotel around 10:30 thinking we’ll be at the equator by noon. Taxi ride to the bus station about 20 minutes. Get to bus station and the bus for La Mitad Del Mundo ( the equator ) leaves in 20 minutes it’s our lucky day! On the bus feeling GREAT all is as planned.
TILL WE MISSED OUR STOP YEAP WEWENT RIGHT ON BY. Ended up going 2 hours out of our way up into the Cloud Forest in the Amazon Jungle. I thought it was a beautiful drive but Candy was not quite as excited about the ride as I was. Destiny I believe puts u where ur suppose to be when ur suppose to be there and our destiny today was apparently to see the Cloud Forest before we saw the Equator. We did make it to the equator have pics to prove it but there not downloaded yet -pics coming hopefully soon. Over all it was a good day AND LIFE IS GOOD !”
Let me preface the upcoming comment by the fact that I DO believe in destiny…..however today DESTINY is SHIT! We ended up spending about 4 hours on the bus when it should have been about 20 minutes! I’m happy that Teresa enjoyed seeing the cloud forest but I just wasn’t into it today. We’ve seen the cloud forest and seeing it again through a bus window was not my idea of a fun day….so I slept!! Yep, 4 more hours of intermittent sleep on a bus. Not a super comfy way to sleep but the inside of my eyelids seemed much more interesting than the cloud forest through dingy and dirty bus windows.
Don’t get me wrong…If you haven’t seen it before, the cloud forest is breath-taking. Even through the dingy windows. But I’ve seen it. Been there…done that!! Today, I wanted to stand on the Equator. And I did. But before I go there…let me explain what went wrong.
PISS POOR PLANNING….
Yes, I said it. I’m the ultimate planner, researcher, list-maker and I didn’t plan. No one little iota. I asked the lady at the Tourist Information office how to get to the Equator when we were there a couple of days ago. She circled the bus station, wrote the name of the bus line down for me and told me that it would take an hour and a half. I didn’t do any additional research. If I had, maybe I would have known.
As Teresa stated above, everything was going according to plan…then we missed our stop. I saw the monument from the bus window and looked at Teresa and told her that I thought that was it and we needed to get off. We both contemplated it. Teresa stated something about Lonely Planet saying it was an hour and half and we ended up staying on the bus….I had a gut feeling that this was a mistake. I was certain that the monument I saw was where we wanted to be….but on we went.
I attempted to ask the guy on the bus if that was our stop but we couldn’t communicate well and he did not seem to want to help…so on we went.
About an hour later, the guy on the bus walked back to me and mumbled something un-intelligible and I pointed behind me and he nodded yes. He indicated that we could catch another bus further ahead and turn around and go back the other way. I nodded and on we went.
A short while later, he waved me to the front of the bus as it was slowing down. Teresa and I hastily made our way to the front of the bus ready to disembark. We were shuffled off the bus quickly and he pointed across the road. I asked how long and he responded ‘5 minutes’ as the bus was already pulling away.
This ‘bus stop’ is surrounded by the cloud forest with no town in sight…..hmmmmmm. We looked at each other hoping that the next bus would really be here in ‘5 minutes’.
We had just enough time to snap a couple of pictures and were able to flag a bus down to pick us up. And on we went…..
Another hour and half of cloud forest….
I spotted the monument again out the window and Teresa and I requested the bus to stop. The driver and assistant looked at us quite oddly, stopped the bus and shuffled us off. We spent the next 30 minutes trying to figure out how to actually get TO the monument, and another half hour to grab a bite to eat…we were famished! After some dried out pulled pork, with some yummy potatoes, a desert of some fried doughy goodness…
We finally made it!!
After spending most of the day in the NORTHERN HEMISPHERE exploring the cloud forest from the dirty grimy bus windows; we were able to finally have a foot in both hemispheres!
And…for the first time since February 12th, Teresa and I were separated: Her in the Southern Hemisphere and me in the Northern Hemisphere (just in case I hadn’t had enough of it already).
