Limbo to Home

 The Cancun airport offers almost no seating for people waiting for flights, and certainly none of the very limited seats had room to lie down.  So we found ourselves sitting upright at the 24/7 "Guacamole" restaurant in Departures. Every few hours we would order something, but the staff were very used to people hanging out for long periods, and they did not try to chivy us along. The only exception seemed to be that you could not be asleep. Periodically they would try waking those that had slumped in place. It did seem that your posture while slumped was important. If you could lean straight forward, maybe onto your scrunched up jacket, in the manner of a drunk doing a faceplant, then you were ok. Slumping sideways, though, seemed to cross a line.

When I realized that 17 hours sitting in that chair was not really possible, I started to search for nearby hotels. Only thing, I started this about 11 p.m., and almost none had reception desks that were open. I did reach one, but they had no vacancy. So there we sat!

The only saving grace was that we were by an electrical outlet, giving the possibility of internet entertainment. In this, an error I had made turned into an asset. Since we already had a Mexican Telcel SIM, I had recharged the account, hoping it would roam cheaply to Costa Rica. I was wrong about that, and so we had to buy a Costa Rica local SIM, from their Claro telcom. But now here we were in Mexico, and fortunately with a fully charged local Telcel account.  All this was particularly needed because the "free" airport wifi never really worked, and anyway was limited to 30 minutes.

Somehow we did survive the trial by restaurant, and by mid day got boarding passes from Westjet for the 5 p.m. flight. Dodie as usual asked at the gate for early boarding, pretending with her cane to be an invalid. Only thing, as time goes by, she is not really pretending. This time in the corridor leading to the plane, she somehow dropped either her cane, or passports, or both, and had to scramble to retrieve them from the floor. An impatient lady came from behind and demanded that the way be cleared, so she could barge by. I told her "Take it easy lady, I absolutely assure you that we will all reach Vancouver at the same time". This did not affect her, and she continued to mouth off. 

I was horrified to soon find that this lady was my seatmate. I was in the center and she was on the aisle, while Dodie was on the aisle one row back. Dodie asked the lady if she would switch, so we could sit together. "This is my seat and I paid for it!" snapped the lady. Ok, fine, lady. At this point a tall young man arrived for the window seat by me. As I began to shift to give him access, he said "That's my seat, let me in!" I could see this was not going to be a really great flight! 

Fortunately Dodie noted that the aisle seat across the aisle from my seat was vacant, so I moved across to there. I noted that the two "my seat" people quite hit it off during the flight. They deserved each other.

The improvement in my seat position still did not compensate for the fact that this Westjet plane had no entertainment system. You could watch some movies, though, on your little smart phone, assuming you had the Westjet app. It also took some time to find a hidden electrical outlet under the seats. So if you had a charger and cable, your phone could stay alive for the six hour flight duration. And in another passenger unfriendly move, Westjet offered no meal or snack. I did get a water and an orange juice, though. It was ok, since we had already eaten so much at the Guacamole!

Once finally at Victoria, we were able to remember where we had put the car key, parking ticket, car location, local SIM, and such, from and audio note we had put in  the phone. It's amazing how one can forget these things over just a couple of weeks. At the time we had parked the car at the airport and put the key "away", it seemed very clear about where that was. But an intense vacation experience can wipe such memories very thoroughly.

Somehow I stayed awake, driving us through the dark and rain for the 70 km to home. Our friend Sandra had made up the fire for us, so at least home was not freezing. Needless to say, we were soon unconscious, in our own bed.

Our next moves include using our new found knowledge of "eBird" to enter all our past birds plus the dozens we had just discovered. This needs to happen quite fast, because soon we need to return to the world of airlines, to see how we will get back to Valencia, and pick up with our former cycling lives. But meanwhile, we got an email from Costa Rica Focus, promoting a birding tour to begin at Arenal Volcano Observatory. We responded, because it seemed interesting. We had said that this Costa Rica experience just ended was going to be a once in a lifetime. But now we are not so sure!

Stay tuned to this blog for a summary of what the total cost this time out has been, and some words on what we thought of the trip and was it worth it.