The first of three posts about our trip to Costa Rica.
We arrived on May 1 after a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad journey.
We left on Saturday morning. We got to the airport on time, checked our bags, and sat at the the gate for about two hours because our plane was delayed.
When we finally got on, we taxied out to the runway. “I’m terribly sorry,” our pilot came on the intercom to announce, “but weather in Dallas has caused a small delay. We’ll be sitting here for at least an hour.” Fantastic, I thought. I twiddled away our hour of delay on my GameBoy. Then the pilot came back online to talk to us again.
“OK, folks, well … the news isn’t good.” We went back to the terminal, and I deplaned and bought some food. Then, after another unneccessary delay, we got back on. And we actually took off!
But it wasn’t a win. We stopped 500 miles from Dallas and started circling in a holding pattern. Three hours into that, the pilot came online to address us again. “Hello, folks! I know I haven’t been the belayer of great news lately, and this is no exception. We’re going to have to land in Armadillo for more fuel.” Oh, great. I LOVE Armadillo. It’s fabulous and picturesque. Quaint. NOT.
“… AND … you’re going to have to remain seated, because Armadillo doesn’t have a jetway large enough to accomodate our plane.” What? We were NOT on a big plane — just six seats across. Armadillo must have a *small* airport. “AND we’re going to accept some more passengers.” I could hear a little grumble from my fellow fliers. It was now about six o’clock. Everybody was hungry, tired, stiff from sitting on this plane for half an eon, and sick and tired of these delays.
But we took off again an hour later. We got back up to 34,000 feet and began turning circles once again. The dreaded voice of our pilot once again came over the intercom. “I’m sorry, folks,” he began, “but Dallas is once again on a weather hold. We’ll be up here until they reopen the airport.” Ugh. I was restless. My GameBoy had lost its appeal. I didn’t want to read my book anymore. I just wanted OFF this stupid airplane.
Three hours later, we finally got the OK to land. Ben tried to pacify me by saying, “We’re almost there! Calm down!”
“Yeah right. We’ll probably have ground delays and be stuck in Dallas ’till we’re fifty-eight.” I shouldn’t have spoken so soon, because as soon as we touched down in Dallas, a torrential downpour enveloped our plane and lightning lit up the sky around us. Ben was, at this point, online and watching the weather report. He showed me the radar; everything surrounding us was red. I groaned. “I’m sick and tired of this plane,” I told him. “I’m probably going to develop deep vein thromboses and die because they haven’t let me stand up in five hours. I want OFF.” Sorry for being such a party-pooper, Ben! It’s a good thing he’s so good-natured.
Two hours later, we finally docked and were allowed off the plane. It was now eleven o’clock. It had taken 10 hours to reach Dallas. We could’ve driven it faster than that! “Run,” commanded Ben. “Our flight to Costa Rica hasn’t taken off yet. We might be able to make it.” We took off at breakneck speed for the train that shuttled between concourses. However, once ON the train, Ben looked at his phone and announced that our flight had been cancelled.
“At least we didn’t have to wait at the gate for eight and a half hours,” I said, looking on the bright side. Then, as I thought about it for a minute, I added, “I’m starving.”
We walked past the formerly-Costa Rica gate; it had a line of about 250 people snaking out from behind the counter to the walkway. “I’m not waiting in that line,” Ben said disgustedly. “Let’s try to find a better place to ask for rebooking.” We walked by several gates, but with no one at the counter. Finally, we came to the Admiral’s Club. “Let’s try this,” Ben suggested. “We’re not members but maybe they can let us in anyway.” No complaints from me, and none from the man standing at the desk in the front, either. We went upstairs and found a five-person line moving at the breakneck speed of zero people/hour. “I’ll wait here; you go get some food,” Ben offered kindly. I didn’t think twice; I was outta there and off to find a restaurant in under a second.
There wasn’t much open, but I did find a newsstand that sold pretzels, cashews, Soft Batch cookies, and apple juice. Sold! I sauntered back to the Admiral’s Club. The door was locked! No problem, I thought, and had a seat on a neighboring bench. I opened the cookies first, had a couple, then turned to the pretzels and AJ, had a few bits and swigs, and then opened the cashews. It wasn’t tasting as good as it had looked in the store. Then, I noticed a man standing behind the counter directly in front of me. I sauntered over to him, listened to the problems the two men in front of me were having getting San Jose, and then inquired what *I* might do to get there myself. “Let me check,” he said. “Oh! We’ve already got you booked to Miami on a eight o’clock flight tomorrow morning, and a flight to San Jose the day after that.” I frowned. Why did we have to fly American, again? United wouldn’t have done this to us! (Ben’s a frequent flier on United, so he gets a lot of perks. He also knows all the codes that allow him to GET stuff like free hotel rooms.)
“Uh, thanks,” I muttered and walked away. I called Ben with the last bit of juice my phone had.
“Hi, sweetie, I wanted to let you know that we’re booked on a flight to Miami at EIGHT O’CLOCK tomorrow morning and we’ll arrive in San Jose the following day.”
“Thanks. I’m working with them on that now. Talk to you later.” Geez louise! I decided to see what I could do about finding him. I went into the Admiral’s Club, told the guy at the desk my husband was upstairs, and it worked! He let me in!
I got upstairs and inquired where the “short bald guy” was and someone escorted me to a back room. Ben was just finishing up. “We’re rebooked on a morning flight to Liberia,” he reported. Liberia is a city a two hours’ drive south of Nosara; we’d've booked our flights there if they hadn’t been so darn expensive. (San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, is a six-hour drive from Nosara.) I smiled. Ben got a hotel voucher from the man and we were off!
Me, at about 1:30am, in the Dallas airport. What a zoo!
MickeyD’s was the only place open for dinner at DWI when Ben finished, so we stopped there at 1:30am. “This looks pretty fitting,” Ben commented when he saw the trash barrels.
The hotel we stayed in was a hoot. VERY Texan. It was huge! Like, enormously, gigantically, huge! Unfortunately, I can’t find the pictures I took of it, but take my word for it — it was big. We spent a total of six hours there. When I woke up in the morning, I was very tired and, unfortunately, pretty darn sick.
I don’t know if I wrote about it on my blog or merely on Facebook, but I caught Ben’s “Cold of Death” a couple days before leaving for Costa Rica. The symptoms were strange — a bit of soreness the first day, some soreness and a sniffly nose the second day, and by the third day, I had The Cough That Would Not Stop. It was miserable. So I made an appointment with Dr. Rosenthal and went in for a flu test, which, of course, came out negative — but now I had a letter proving it.
So, armed with cough drops and kleenex, we hop on our flight to Liberia. Not ten minutes into the flight, a flight attendant approaches me with a box of tissues in hand. “Good morning, Miss,” she greeted me (and I groaned), “How are you feeling?”
“OK,” I mumbled, trying my best not to bust out in another coughing fit.
“Some of our passengers are worried about possible flu transmission. Have you been tested?”
“Yes, I have a letter ascerting that it’s not the flu. Would you like to see it? It’s in here somewhere …” I began digging through my backpack.
“No, thanks, I’m just checking. It’s my job.” She smiled at me apologetically, then handed me the box of kleenex. “I hope you feel better!” I was mortified. I didn’t want to be coughing! Not at all! But I was going to enjoy this vacation, gosh darnit. I’d been looking forward to this since CHRISTMAS, when Ben proposed that we actually go, our finances be damned. So if you were on that flight with me, I’m sorry for potentially infecting you with my cold, but … this trip meant so much to me. I’ll spare you the sob story of my strokes (which would probably freak you out even more), unemployment, and subsequent depression, but please understand that I could not, would not abandon this week-long repreive.
Fast forward a half hour. I was coughing uncontrollably. So much so that I threw up. It was then that I noticed the lady in the seat in front of us glaring at me.
“I’ve got a letter from my doctor. Would you like to see it?” I rifled through my bag again, then looked up to see her ‘tsk, tsking’ at me. She didn’t want to see the letter. She just wanted to be obnoxious. And she was doing a pretty good job of it!
I coughed until I threw up again. When we reached Liberia a couple of hours later, Ben told me to “Stop coughing while we go through immigration.”
“Easier said than done,” I told him through continuous coughing. However, once we got in line, my coughing subsided. Until we got to the immigration desk, that is.
“Passports, please?” the inspector requested. Ben rifled through his pockets and pulled out his passport but not mine.
“Uh-oh,” he said nervously. “I swear I had my wife’s passport a minute ago. It must be on the plane.”
I’ve heard that nervousness can cause you to start coughing, and in my case, it did. My obnoxious lady, the one who was sitting in front of me on the plane, happened to be standing in the line next to me. “You should be ASHAMED of yourself,” she exclaimed. If I wasn’t red already, I turned scarlet instantly. I wanted to say so many things to her: ‘I have a note from my doctor attesting that this ISN’T the flu,” “I bothered to get checked before I got on the plane, and I think that’s worth something,” “I don’t think this is swine flu — Oink, oink,” and “Screw you!” but I just remained quiet and buried my head on Ben’s chest, tears welling up in my eyes. He put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head, his unspoken message — “It’s OK” — instantly comforting me.
Ten minutes later, somebody appeared with my passport. The only obstacle left was clearing the doctor. Ben had helped me fill out the form declaring any symptoms I had. (I was too tired to write anything.) I checked “cough”, which was really the only thing bothering me anymore. A man clad in solid white, with a mask around his face, approached me. “Have these symptoms persisted for more than a week?” No, I told him. “Could it be the flu?” No, I was checked for that, would you care to see the letter from my doctor? “Thank you,” he said, and let us through.
“That was easy!” I mumured.
“Would you sit here?” Ben asked. “I’ll go get our luggage.” I nodded. For the next forty-five minutes, I sucked on cough drops, trying not to ruin the success I’d had with immigration. Finally, Ben came back to tell me that he couldn’t find our luggage.
“Oh, I know,” I said. “I expected that.”
“Give me another half-hour.” So I sat there again, sucking on cough drops at a rate that exceeded the recommended maximum dosage, until I was one cough drop away from finishing the bag. FINALLY, Ben approached yet again. We were free to go! I popped the last cough drop in my mouth and we proceeded through customs and into the jungle.
