Schedules and such

It's always fun trying to get a bus from Ibarra to Tulcán when we return to Ipiales on Saturdays.  

This is the schedule posted on the window of the Expreso Tulcán office at the bus terminal in Ibarra.

The hours that they give you verbally are 7:00, 8:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, etc.  

The reality is that the buses tend to leave whenever they want.

On August 5, we arrived at the terminal between 10:00 and 10:15 to find that the bus had already left.  There is only one bus company that leaves from the terminal with destination Tulcán, so we just sat around and waited for the 11:something bus.  

The following Saturday, we saw that we were not going to make it to the terminal before 11:00, so we  asked the taxi driver to take us to the bus stop on the edge of town where all the buses from Quito pass by on their way to Tulcán.  There are more options here than at the terminal, but there are also typically fewer seats available, so it's a bit of a gamble.  Since we were somewhat in a hurry that day, we decided to risk it.  And what good fortune we had thought we had.  Not thirty seconds after we got out of our taxi at the bus stop, a Tulcán-bound bus with plenty of free seats pulled up.  We got on and after a short while, away we went!  Before we even got out of Ibarra, however, our driver pulled into a gas station and just sat there.  We weren't filling up with gas, but phone calls were being made, and it just caused a person to wonder what was going on.  However, after about ten minutes or so, we pulled back onto the road and continued on toward our destination.  Not ten minutes more and we were pulled over to the side of the road with no hope of going any farther on that bus.  So now all of us passengers are standing at the side of the road waiting for another bus with available seats to come by.  Nothing.  We waited and waited and not one bus going to Tulcán passed by.  Finally, the driver consulted with the powers that be and agreed to take us back to the bus stop where he had picked us up in Ibarra.  By this time, there was a good crowd of people waiting at said stop, and with all the passengers of our bus added to the group, Ookyoung and I decided to just take a taxi back to the terminal to get a bus from there, guaranteeing us a seat.  

So because we weren't sure whether or not we could make the 11:something bus that day, we ended up on the 1:something bus.  Oh well.  You win some; you lose some.  It's just hard to predict how your luck will go when you're dealing with Ecuadorian buses!  And we did eventually make it to our destination, so the story ends happily.  

And had everything gone smoothly (as we would have preferred), there would have been no story to tell!  So, every cloud really does have a silver lining.  :-)