tercer dia -- cien mil disculpas

estoy mala, yo lo sé
i haven't written and for this i know everyone is worried...but les voy a contar todo and then you'll understand! ((i've returned to the land of spanglish so hopefully me entienden))

so the flight was for early monday, 12:30am, aka, sunday night. i flew to LA, hung out with sivan and her family, then we were off to the airport. it was a treacherous 2 hours in line just to check in. had something to do with a pack of missionaries having too much luggage and another pack of gringo-hunter types who wanted to check in a dozen HUGE coolers that i can only imagine were packed with bear carcasses and the remains of ex-girlfriends. creepy.
anyways so we said or goodbyes to sivan's family and passsed security to wait at the gate, in our exhausted/delirious state that always follows days of preparation and heavy farewells before a big trip. the plane was delayed, til 1:30, no big deal until 1:30 came and we found out the plane had arrived too late from panamá ((they were going to fly from panamá to LAX then return right away? no tengo ni idea)) so it couldn't go through immigration, resulting in...flight cancellation. hurrah.
all that mental preparation, line-wating, farewells, todo. down the drain.

what followed was a several hour game of survival of the fittest. yes they were going to put us up in a hotel, but they didn't tell us anymore than that. they just told us to return to the ticket counter and await further instruction. how would you intend to handle a plane full of tired frustrated nasty passengers? i don't think they had any idea either. they told us to wait in line unitl they helped all the families with kids and the "elite" passengers. that lasted about 10 minutes. soon some stubborn fresa women, all decked out in platform shoes, blonde highlights and attitude, snagged one of the pobrecito copa attendants and began to argue their way into getting out of line and into a hotel. another group of five guys whom to me resembled the pack of pirates from the life aquatic surrounded the counter like pirahnas and proceeded to work the attendants with their pirate skills. after that, the line lost its authority and people began to storm the counter, demanding information and hotel rooms.

at first sivan and i were peeved. these people with no patience and no respect for line etiquette. then i realized, this was a darwinian experiment at its finest, that the polite were obviously going to be the last ones waiting, so i too deserted the line. i followed the lead of the the pack of panamanian women cooing at the young attendant at the counter and snapping at any female attendants who tried to regulate. within ten minutes we had a room at the radisson and were waiting at the curb for the shuttle. when i looked back at the line, the only people who remained were a group of very-confused looking americans, awaiting instruction. i think sivan advised them to desert the line as well.

on the shuttle we met all sorts of people, from spain, panama, guayaquil, and the pack of pirates, who, to my amazement, actually turned out to be pirates. well, close at least -- merchant marines from the phillipines. they were going back to guayaquil, "for the women," they said. the hotel was full of us copa passengers, all stuck in the hotel for the day with a fistful of meal vouchers and no luggage. we wandered around the lobby, obviously out of place in this very business-chique locale, a mish-mashed bunch of foreigners in no-mans land. sivan and i slept until 1pm, ate at the bar downstairs and managed to find a bus that could take us to santa monica for the day, a strange state of purgatory between the US and Chile. at the radisson. in LA.

our flight left at 11:30 pm monday night. an odd deja vu in which i wasn't entirely sure we were really going anywhere. i had this strange feeling we'd be back at the radisson again that night and then return home on tuesday. despite my doubts, we boarded the plane and set out for panamá.