Friday, November 11, 2022

A long travel day.....


 Today began our couples trip to Costa Rica!  Gary brought us all in to the SL Airport and we arrived around 10:30.  We found out on our way to the airport that our flight to Dallas was delayed by twenty minutes.  Our connection in Dallas was supposed to be about an hour and 15 minutes originally, so that was a little concerning for us.  When we got our tickets we found out that NONE of us were going to sit together AND we all had middle seats on a completely booked flight.

That was fine (not comfortable, but fine) and the flight went well once we got off the ground.  When we arrived to Dallas, our gate still had a plane sitting at it so we had nowhere to pull in.  The captain guesstimated that it would be a twenty minute wait to get into our spot.  That twenty minutes turned into more like thirty minutes which REALLY made us nervous about that connecting flight.  We had only about fifteen minutes to get from the C gates to the A gates and get on our plane.  I was sitting at the back of the plane and couldn't get off very quickly.  As soon as I did we booked it over to the A gates.  It was now five in the afternoon and Rick and I had only had breakfast but we did not have time to stop to get anything to eat. 😑

We boarded our plane with almost no time to spare.  Our seats were in the VERY BACK of the plane.  You know, the kind that don't recline?  A few minutes later the captain of this plane comes on the intercom and says that the toilets were not working properly so he was going to call technicians to come and fix them.  FIFTY FIVE minutes later we were able to take off with working pottys!  It would have been pretty miserable to have to travel for hours without a bathroom break!

Our flight to San Jose' was going fairly well until the captain came on the intercom and said that San Jose' was having a lot of fog and that we would have to land in Liberia if the fog didn't lift over San Jose'.  He said we had enough fuel to stay in a holding pattern for a while to see if the fog would lift.  So we circled over Liberia for a half an hour with the thought that we might be landing there.

Luckily, the fog cleared briefly, and we were able to get into San Jose'.  Surely all of our prayers to that end had helped.  Everyone clapped for the captain when he touched ground because it was still pretty foggy outside.  We were grateful to safely be at our final destination.  We then went through customs (the very last ones since we were the last ones to deboard the plane) without any trouble and then....

No luggage.  Well, let me rephrase that.  Kendra got her bag but FIVE of our bags did not make it on the plane.  They are all still sitting (as I write this at midnight) back at the Dallas airport.  Anyhoo....they will arrive tomorrow at 12:30...fingers crossed.  We have to change our plans of attending the San Jose' Temple tomorrow morning because we don't have any clothes to change into.  We were planning to do sealings but 11:30 in their last session.  So I guess we will hang around the hotel until the time to pick up our bags and then come back and get ready for the day.  Thankfully, we are allowed a late check out tomorrow:)

Sometimes you just gotta go with the flow when things don't turn out the way you hope!   All is well that ends well, though, and we are happy that we got here safely.  We are ready for a good night's rest and then plan on having an adventurous week here in Costa Rica!

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