Breakdown of Estábamos por cancelar la ruta de senderismo, pero dejó de llover y salimos igual.
Questions & Answers about Estábamos por cancelar la ruta de senderismo, pero dejó de llover y salimos igual.
Estábamos por cancelar literally means we were about to cancel or we were on the verge of canceling.
- Estar por + infinitive often implies:
- you are very close to doing something,
- you’re leaning toward that action, or
- it’s almost decided.
In contrast, Íbamos a cancelar (we were going to cancel) talks more about a plan or intention in the near future, without focusing so much on being on the verge of doing it at that moment.
In many contexts, you could say Íbamos a cancelar la ruta de senderismo, but Estábamos por cancelar emphasizes that you were just about to pull the plug when something (the rain stopping) changed the situation.
The imperfect estábamos is used because it describes a background situation or ongoing mental state in the past:
- You were in the process of deciding / about to cancel.
- That state was interrupted by another event: dejó de llover (it stopped raining).
Using estuvimos por cancelar would sound more like you’re summarizing the whole situation as a completed fact (“At some point, we almost canceled”), rather than describing the ongoing situation in which another event occurred.
So in a narrative like this, imperfect (estábamos) for the ongoing situation + preterite (dejó) for the interrupting event is the natural pattern.
In estar por + infinitive, por is part of a fixed construction and doesn’t keep its usual “for / because of” meaning.
- Estar por + infinitive ≈ to be about to / to be on the point of doing something.
So you shouldn’t translate por separately here; think of estar por cancelar as one chunk meaning to be about to cancel.
Ruta de senderismo literally means hiking route / hiking trail.
- ruta = route, path, itinerary
- senderismo = hiking (the activity of walking on trails, usually in nature)
In Latin America, this is understandable and correct, but you’ll also hear other natural options depending on the country, like:
- la caminata or la caminata de montaña (the hike / mountain hike)
- la excursión (the outing / trip, sometimes a hike)
- el sendero (the trail, path)
So instead of cancelar la ruta de senderismo, people might say cancelar la caminata or cancelar la excursión, but ruta de senderismo is clear and good Spanish.
Spanish doesn’t use an explicit “it” for weather the way English does.
- Dejó de llover = It stopped raining, but grammatically:
- dejó is just the 3rd person singular of dejar.
- There is no expressed subject pronoun; Spanish simply doesn’t need it here.
So the idea of “it” (the weather) is built into the verb, similar to Llueve (It’s raining), Está nevando (It’s snowing), etc., which also have no explicit “it” in Spanish.
Dejar de + infinitive means to stop doing something / to quit doing something.
Structure:
- dejar de + [infinitive]
- dejó de llover = it stopped raining
- dejé de fumar = I stopped smoking
- dejaron de hablar = they stopped talking
Here, dejó de llover uses the preterite (dejó) because the stopping is a completed event at a specific time in the past: at that moment, the rain stopped.
Salimos (preterite) refers to a completed action in the past: we went out / we set out.
- salimos: a single, finished event — you actually left.
If you said salíamos igual, it would sound like an ongoing or habitual action (we were going out anyway or we used to go out anyway), which doesn’t fit as well with this specific, one-time decision to go on the hike.
So:
- Estábamos por cancelar (ongoing state)
- pero dejó de llover y salimos igual (two completed actions that follow: the rain stopped, and you went out).
In this context, igual is an adverb meaning anyway / all the same / regardless.
- salimos igual ≈ we went out anyway.
Other examples with this meaning:
- Estaba cansado, pero fui igual. = I was tired, but I went anyway.
- Aunque llueva, salimos igual. = Even if it rains, we go out anyway.
So here, igual does not mean equal; it’s a common colloquial use meaning even so / anyway.
You can say both salimos igual and igual salimos, and the basic meaning (we went out anyway) stays the same.
- salimos igual: slightly more neutral word order.
- igual salimos: puts igual earlier, giving it a bit more emphasis, like: even so, we went out.
Both are natural in Latin American Spanish; the difference is more about rhythm and emphasis than about meaning.
- Paró de llover is understood and used in many places, though some speakers find parar de + infinitive a bit less formal than dejar de + infinitive.
- Paró la lluvia (the rain stopped) is also grammatical and clear.
In everyday Latin American Spanish, all of these are heard:
- Dejó de llover.
- Paró de llover.
- Paró la lluvia.
Dejó de llover is very common and sounds completely natural.
Spanish normally omits subject pronouns (like yo, tú, él, nosotros) when the verb ending already shows who the subject is.
- estábamos → clearly nosotros (we)
- salimos → also clearly nosotros (we), from context
Adding nosotros (Nosotros estábamos por cancelar) is possible but usually only done for emphasis or contrast (We were about to cancel, not them). In neutral sentences like this, it’s more natural to leave it out.