Costa Rica: Day One

We're in Costa Rica! Yes, again. We're super spoiled. Tommy has already been here twice and he's not even a year and a half old yet! So here's what happened the first day...

We had gone to Kansas City the night before our flight so we wouldn't have to leave our house at 3am. Tommy decided he didn't want to sleep from 12:30-2:30 in the morning, so none of us got very much sleep. Yikes.

We left for the airport around 5 (ugh), and everything went smoothly all the way to Houston, TX. We got some lunch and caught our next flight just in time for Tommy's nap. Perfect. He slept for 2 hours, which was wonderful, because it was just about half the flight. If he had been awake the whole time, we all (like, the whole plane) would have been miserable.

Tommy was actually pretty cheerful for the rest of the flight. He seemed to understand that we couldn't really go anywhere or do anything, so he contented himself by climbing in and out of our laps over and over and over again. At least he wasn't fussy or crying.

As we neared our arrival time, Nate noticed that we were circling the same spot of land over and over again. We were in a holding pattern for some reason. Finally they announced that there was a storm in San Jose, and we were being diverted to Liberia.

Although it's only another 20 minutes away by plane, Liberia is about a 3-hour drive to San Jose. We groaned and wondered how in the world we were going to get to San Jose from there, and how we would get in touch with Nate's family. We figured we'd be stuck on a bus for 3+ hours, and that would have been a major bummer. Especially since we needed to get some real food for Tommy.

Luckily they told us we would just stay aboard the plane until the weather passed and then we'd fly back to San Jose. We weren't very excited about being stuck on the plane, but at least we would end up in the right city!

We sat in Liberia for about an hour before we took off again and headed back to San Jose. By the time we landed, we had been on that plane for almost 6 hours and were arriving 2 hours late. Yikes! Tommy was a trooper the whole time and hardly fussed at all. He's such a good traveler!

...But there's always a limit.

Other planes had been diverted to wait out the storm as well, and they had all come back around the same time as us, so the line for customs was super long.  Like Disneyland on steroids. So we were even more bummed (read: annoyed, angry, frustrated, tired) that we would be stuck in that stupid line for at least an hour, with a quickly-getting-cranky toddler who we couldn't put down because he wanted to wander.

Tommy lasted almost an hour. And then he lost it. A lady behind me joked that maybe if he cried loud enough, they would let us go to the front, and almost before she finished saying it an airline employee was making his way over to get us. I was SO relieved. Tommy was so exhausted and hungry (he had little baby snacks, but those have zero substance) and I was exhausted and hungry. Then, trying to be helpful, the man who checked our passports and customs forms said, "there's a shorter line over there just for families." (waaaay the heck down at the end of the room) Um. Well. I guess that's nice to know if we ever come back again, or when traveling elsewhere we can look for such a line, but it just made me more frustrated. Because an employee had directed us into the other line without saying a thing about one for families. Seriously? Did you not see my small child? Gah!

Anyway, the guy was really nice and we got our bags, went through one last security point, and finally got to Nate's mom and the car. It was storming again, so there was lots of traffic, but Tommy was back to his usually-happy self and we finally made it home.

It has been so nice to just relax and enjoy the beautiful weather. I'll try to keep this updated so anyone who's interested can hear about our trip, but for a few days we'll be in a house on the beach (darn) and I don't think there will be Internet. Adios!