Up at 4 AM, showered and down to breakfast, suitcases out by 4:45 AM, lucky we got something to hurriedly eat before the bus left at 5:15 AM for the airport. Orlando, Wilbert and Fabio the faithful driver took us right to the door of the airport, before saying goodbye.
Total chaos reigned there at the airport, it was a freaking disaster, and I'm surprised the tour guide Shirley didn't have a heart attack it was so confused there. Apparently all the flights depart in the morning from C.R. so it was lined up everywhere, and not clear how to check in for your flight, check your bags through screening in another lineup entirely, and then go outside once again, to lineup once again, to re enter the building through yet another line, and go through security screening to get on to the flight. Pandemonium, and you could easily stand in the wrong line, and miss your flight. Creepy to say the least. Security was somewhat low tech, they said my glasses had set off the detector, but then later I realized I had my lipstick still in my pocket.
Yet another reason not to fly in to San Jose when visiting C.R. There are many other cities you can fly into and out of in Costa Rica, missing the capital city completely. San Jose is really not worth a visit in our opinion.
While on the flight from C.R. Di sat with a man from the US, he had been in C.R. for a month, and was thinking seriously of returning to live there, a friend of his produces movies and documentary films there in C.R., he's also American, but has lived in C.R. for 18 years, and has more than enough work himself, and wants help from this other man.
The man Di talked to lives in Oregon, but is bilingual in Spanish, and has a wife from Chile, so they seem an ideal couple to make the move to C.R., and also find gainful employment once there. He had been hurt seriously in his back when he was only 20, and hadn't been able to work much since then, he's also had to have 5 different back operations, so it might be a wonderful opportunity for him to change careers.
He thought he might rent out his own home in Oregon just to make sure the C.R. idea worked for him, though he said he'd be heartbroken to leave his young grandson behind in Oregon. They are very good buddies. He had met up with somebody willing to rent a house to him in C.R. already.
Once through the circus activity of all that arrival activity in San Jose airport, we boarded, and then were told that the plane had to land for fuel in Mazatlan, and we likely wouldn't make our connection, or it would be extremely close in Phoenix, as we didn't have much time to move from International to National and the connecting flight when we arrived there.
Fueling went smoothly in Mazatlan, but we did in fact all miss our connections in Phoenix, except for the 90 year old in our party, who got a ride with the airport toodle car people movers, and caught the flight. So that put him alone into L.A. and the rest of us had a 3.5 hour wait there in Phoenix airport, with the guide still hysterically trying to organize us all. Bill the 90 year old also had a lonely, chilly wait in L.A. for the rest of us to arrive, he had to wait because we would go as a group in the limo back to our campground in D.H.S., a 2 hour journey.
Shirley got us $5 vouchers each toward a meal in the airport, but due to her antics in the arrival hall of Phoenix, trying to get the troupe given preferential treatment ahead of other folks who had had the same thing happen to them, she wasn't very popular with the rest of the Phoenix travellers. One lady came up to Di and said she was glad that our tour leader hadn't made the connecting flight!!!!! We all got rebooked on the 5:15 PM flight to L.A., so sat down to wait.
We had a longish wait, luckily there were shops, bars and restaurants, so we kept ourselves busy, though indeed starting to sag a bit due to the early departure time from our hotel in Costa Rica.
When we all arrived in L.A. we found Bill the 90 year old, then found our hotel limo driver for the 2 hour ride back to the campsite in Desert Hot Springs. We arrived in L.A. around 7 PM, it was only about 62 degrees there, and foggy, brrrrrr, the limo arrived around 7:30, and we all arrived back in Desert Hot Springs right at the door of the campsite around 9:30 PM or so.
The driver of the limo had driven very fast, mostly in the extreme left side lane, guess he was able to use the HOV lane for clear access, even at that hour the freeways were busy with cars. It luckily wasn't bumper to bumper traffic at that hour, but each lane had its own lane of red tail lights racing down the freeway beside us. He used his GPS to find D.H.S.
Blowing a gale of wind when we got here, and chilly when we got home, we brought the suitcases up to the trailer, and then popped over to visit Jen and Sue in the park model rental unit here.
They seemed very cozy, sleepy, and surprised that the rental hadn't had any blankets, sheets, towels or anything. All the linens came from our trailer, this year they had realized that we had supplied everything they used, pretty well. They had hauled it over themselves from our trailer this year, last year they had walked in to the rental unit, and presumed that all the stuff they used came from the campground. NOT!! Unfortunately their pull out sofa bed wouldn't pull out, and they didn't go down and complain at the office their whole week here. So one of them slept on the sofa cushions on the floor every night here in the rental unit.
We sorted out a few things in the trailer, and then dropped into bed, exhausted. Wonderful trip overall, and thanks to the tour being organized, we managed to see and do a lot in our one week voyage there in C.R.
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