A Near Disaster

On Wednesday, Dec. 16, Laura, Alaina and I took the bus from Quito to Portoviejo - a trip of a little over eight hours (by bus, on that particular day).  The trip was mainly uneventful, and we arrived in Portoviejo somewhere around 3:30 in the afternoon.  The bus that we were on was traveling on to Manta, so I understood that it would not be entering the terminal in Portoviejo.  Thus, when the bus stopped at a round-about inside the city and the bus began to empty of passengers, I was under the impression that this would be the last stop before Manta.  "Let's go, girls," and we hopped off the bus.  We had checked our bags in Quito - five of them.  The official had tied two of the bags together, so we only had four tickets for the five bags.  No problem.  Two of them come together.  Now, at our stop, I present the tickets to the official.  He takes the remaining bags out of the storage compartment, and the bus takes off.  After a few seconds, Laura glances around and announces, "I think we got the wrong bag."  She's pointing at my backpack.  "No, that's mine," I tell her.  The problem, I quickly discover is that Laura's backpack is NOT amongst our things on the side of the road.  I presented four tickets, and we got four bags, and everything that Laura has for the next three weeks is on a bus bound for Manta.  AND we have supper plans and gospel meeting in just a couple of hours!  Our main concern at this point was that we hadn't actually seen the bag in the compartment when the fellow took out all the other bags.  Had it been taken off the bus at some previous stop???  We grabbed a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the office of the bus company that we had used to travel that day.  Our hope was that they could call the office in Manta and have the bag held safely for us while we made the trip there to get it (and cancel our supper and meeting plans!).  We arrived at the terminal and found the office for Reina del Camino.  While I was explaining to the man in the office our dilemma, our bus pulled into the terminal!  We ran out to greet it and once again explained our problem.  The official opened the compartment underneath the bus again, and there, way at the back and up on a shelf was Laura's backpack, safe and sound.  What a relief!  So, all's well that ends well.  We headed to the bach to repack our things and then took another bus to El Rodeo to have supper, a gospel meeting and spend the night.  And that's material for another entry on another day.