3rd times a charm?

First attempt at boarding a plane to Ecuador was unsuccessful. We went home for the night, I got a little beach time in, waited to hear anything, had a fun night with some friends. The next day we found out that the whole group was meeting at the airport at 6 pm to hopefully board an 11:55 pm flight. We got to the airport so early so that we could go over all introductions and logistics and scheduling so that we could hit the ground running. Around 11:00 we found out our flight had been cancelled and there was no way we were going to be able to go down before Wednesday or Thursday. Dissapointed? Terribly. There was no way we could accept going down Wednesday or Thursday, it virtually cancelled our trip to Salinas where we would be working in the hospital. The terrible thing was that it no longer had to do with the volcano holding us up, it was the airline. Backed up since the day before, we started begging people to give up their seats so that we could go down there to perform surgeries that these people would otherwise not have. Through simple good will about 25 people were willing to give up their seats. However the airline made it impossible with cancellatioin fees and rebooking fees, we were told there was nothing more we could do and my dad, sister and I reluctantly made our way back to long term parking and made the 2 hour drive back home.

The next day we found out that about 20 people ended up staying later at the airport, and through another airline, managed to get down to Ecuador! We were so hurt and upset that if we had only stayed a little longer, we could be down there also. However, our next mission was to try to find another way to get down to Ecuador in order to make our trip to the Galapagos that we would have to leave from Guayaquil on Thursday for. My dad spent hours back and forth between different people and travel agents and airlines and managed to find us a flight leaving tonight at 1 am for Guayaquil. I was so happy that at least I'd still be able to have a little adventure and get to see the islands I've so desperately been wanting to go to. Plus, the icing on the cake, my dad called about an hour ago and said that we would make it in time to put in at least one day's work at the hospital. I'm so happy and excited and just hoping that when we drive into JFK tonight, we are able to get on a plane and leave New York.