Well, it has been much longer than I had anticipated before I would be able to update, and it has been quite an adventure! It is now day three, and I have succesfully experienced much more than I expected...in both a negative and bad way.
In the past few days I have reminisced greatly on previous travel....especially in terms of the aweful challenges of plane travel and the much more wonderful experiences I shared with Cela...I will start with the bad, and then in the next blog share the exceptionally beautiful memories. Also, I wish I could share some photos, but alas the hostel has locked the computers up...maybe later!
Anywho, so getting here to Costa Rica was an adventure in itself. All I could pray for the entire time was to make it both safely and without complications. Any of you who have ever heard the stories of my traveling would know that I, alongside fellow travelers, have a slew of terrible stories to tell about our travels going wrong. An outline of such events reveals the following:
-2006: Tiffany rejected by airline for (too much) expired passport on the way to Jamaica (to be clear, this was before every country required a passport, and the TSA website said expired passport, not a passport that had expired no greater than a year ago...mine was one year and four months expired)
-2007: Joshua (brother) literally receives his passport five minutes before takeoff to Costa Rica via Delta Dash in the airport...me and Cela constantly wondering will we depart alone...until alas he runs through the terminal with seconds to spare.
-2009: Jillian (sister) looses luggage on flight to Honduras, and despite many phone calls and visits to aiport, is told that the luggage is missing, until finally on the day she is leaving two weeks later, the bag is hanging out in the security office---was it there the whole time?
-2009: Jimi and Tiffany, despite planning to leave the island (Utila, Honduras) two days early, find that the ferry is not working, resulting in our arriving at the airport the day of departure 5 minutes before take-off and missing our flight...thus resulting in a necessary five hour bus ride to San Pedro Sula (kind of sketchy), and spending 24 hours in the airport...no food and certainly no adequate sleeping area...I will try to post a photo later of me on the flight when we finally negotiated with the airline company...looking like death to say the least.
-2010: on the way to Jamaica, Jimi and Tiffany are faced with a difficult deicion when Spirit Air announces that they have overbooked the flight and will give a free roundtrip ticket to anyone who will wait for the next flight tomorrow...Did we accept? No, because we decided we would need at least two roundtirp tickets to loose our reservations for hotel and transportation that day....but then wait, they offer two free roundtrip tickets to anywhere they fly...a steal? No, no, now we have to wait until they offer 3 roundtrip tickets...Jimi is adamant that we do not loose our reservations...but then Tiffany is starting to get ancy...three roundtrip tickets? Okay, if they offer anymore, we are definitely stayin a night in Ft. Lauderdale and taking the tickets...but all of a sudden, a woman goes up and says "Hey, I will get off with my three kids if each of us gets five free roundtrip tickets," and thus the deal is made....I still can not believe we passed that up, but hey Jimi had a plan that could not be compromised....proposal for marriage
and then there was 2010 part B: when on the way back from Jamaica, we are sitting on the plane and it is announced that there would be a delay due to maintenance issues...thirty minutes later, waiting on paperwork...another thirty minutes..."Okay, we are sorry fo the inconvenience, but one of our computers is down...you know how Windows is..." uhhh Windows? What? No...why are you saying things like this...I do not want to take this flight even if you do get it fixed!"...but they offer no comfort. They only tell us it will be another fifteen minutes so they can finish the paperwork on the new computer installation...am I freaking out? Yes, very much so...alas forty five minutes later, they announce that we have been sitting on the plane for too long, and we must get off the plane until they are ready to fly...we get off and another hour passes before they happily invite us back on. Still, another announcement thirty minutes after having reboarded reveals that not only has one computer crashed, but two of the Windows computers have crashed, and we will need to disembark the plane one more time while they try to clear inspection. Okay, that is it I decide...there is NO WAY I am getting back on that plane...but how will I afford to stay in Ft. Lauderdale for another 24 hours, when I have just blown all my cash in Jamaica? Fortunatley, at 4am they announce they have canceled the flight, and will put us up at the Holiday Inn Ft. Lauderdale no charge...whew!
Anyhow, you can see how travel anxiety develops after these sorts of experiences. Am I a nervous flier...I would say more of a nervous airport travler...and certainly this time was no exception. We were making it through the whole airport process with fairly good luck, minus an in-depth security check of my brother, Garret (who seems to attract security as he has been checked three for three each of his times traveling via plane). Of course something had to go wrong though...we made it to Ft. Lauderdale and even boarded the plane to fly to San Jose, when after thirty minutes we were told that the weather was too bad to fly...we would have to wait. Long story short, this message was relayed to us about twice an hour, until finally at 3 am (once we had all settled for sleeping on the airport floor) we were finally cleared for take off. In the meantime, I wondered if we would lose our hotel room or if we would be left at the airport with no transportation waiting on us.
Not as adventerous as the rest of the stories, but certainly reconfirmation that I HATE FLYING! I wish that just once I could just board a plane, take off, and land with absolutely no problem whatsoever...I am waiting....but hey we are here, and it has quicly become a realization that we are not "Amazing Race" material...stay tuned
No comments:
Post a Comment