My Curse of Flying Continues

I seem to always have bad luck when it come to flying, there've been mechanical problems, planes struck by lightning, cancellations, fuses blown and delays, delays, delays. Always there are delays. I thought maybe this time would be different, but it wasn't. The fog was coming in so thick in Costa Rica that we couldn't land. After two aborted attempts at landing, the pilots gave up and flew down to Panama City because we were running out of fuel. On the way there one of the passengers was having a medical emergency and the flight attendants had to call for a doctor over the intercom. It was a little chaotic with people milling around in the isles, and people craning their necks to see what was going on. I never did get a clear answer on what exactly the medical emergency was. I heard gallstones from one, and a panic attack from another. However, the sick passenger was able to deplane and see a doctor in Panama City while we were refueling and was feeling better to re board the plan with us and head back to Costa Rica.

I think it's safe to say that everyone aboard the plane was tired and cranky. What was supposed to be a 3.5 hour flight turned into 8 hours on the airplane. Lucky for us, we were seated next to a local "tico" (he was born and raised in Costa Rica), but he had moved to London 12 years ago. His English was spoken with a perfect British accent. He was about our age and fun to talk to. Also, right behind us was this really pretty woman, and a sleaze ball guy. I say he is a sleaze ball, because he was laying it on pretty thick with this girl sitting behind me. She was married and had kids, but he was pulling out all the stops with his stupid one liners. You know the type. Shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, gold chain, thinning hairline, drunken swagger. They were getting free drinks the whole night on account of my cat. They would complain to the flight attendant, but be sweet to me and maggie. It was a good system for them, but they were pretty tossed. I think the woman that was sitting next to me may have been a stripper or a porn star or something because she was waaaay done up. Lots of makeup, lots of hair, lots of skin, perfect big boobs, and fake eyebrows and lashes. I mean, who wears fake eyelashes on an airplane? She told us that she lived in Scottsdale, AZ but flew down to Costa Rica all the time because she had a house in Jaco. I was really surprised that she had a home in both places, so I asked her what she did for a living her exact response was "do I have to say?". PORNSTAR.....popped into my head again. I said "no, you don't have to say if you don't want to." That's when she told all of us that she was an "Executive Director at a Hospital". Um, okay. She looked like she was about 35. She told us that she was almost 44, and had 3 kids, one of which was 23. I guess it could all be true.

Anyway, when we finally landed in Costa Rica, and made it through immigration and customs it was about 11pm. We got a taxi and headed on over to Belin Suites. We really lucked out with Belen Suites. Last time when we were in Costa Rica, it took us much longer to drive from Montezuma to San Jose than expected and when we returned the car at the rental place, we asked them to call us a taxi to take us to a hotel. We had no idea where the taxi was taking us and the hotel was a little off the beaten path, but only about 10 minutes away from the airport. To our surprise it was a cute little hotel called Belen Suites. We loved it so much in June when we were here last, that we decided to come back and stay there again. The rooms are huge, very clean and modern. I was very happy that each room had a brand spanking new air conditioning unit.

I called my mom at midnight to let her know that I had made it to Costa Rica safe and sound. We left Santa Cruz at 6:15 am PST, and finally went to sleep at 12:00 CST. That's 14 hours of traveling. My poor cat and her tiny bladder. She must hate me.

No pictures today, sorry mom, we didn't think to take any pictures of ourselves on the airplane.