After spending last night packing frantically, we woke early and not super well rested. I fried us up some leftover potatoes and scrambled our remaining eggs to give us some energy for the morning. After that it was time to do the required last-minute prep (read: prep the cat stuff, bring out bins etc.), before jumping in a Taxi to the airport. We made it with plenty of time to spare, but then spent over 1.5 hours waiting to drop off out bag. Why? Because the conveyer belts at Tegel were having some issues. They worked right up to the point where we were next inline.
Somehow the plane still managed to leave with very little delay, and we had a nice relaxed flight to Amsterdam. Once at Amsterdam, though, we had a pretty tight connection to make. Once all the super slow other passengers had gotten out of the way we sprinted from one end of the airport to the other, only to get stuck in passport controls. We asked an attendant if we should be using an express queue and they moved us across. Ironically the express queue is not automated, so it was actually a LOT slower than just waiting our turn in the bot-lane. Ah well, live and learn…
A few more minutes of sprinting later, we got to our gate which had a big sign on it saying “Los Angeles”. WTF?!? Did we just miss out flight, or had it moved?
I was about to ask the lady at the counter when a fellow passenger explained it to Manja: Yes we were in the right queue, KLM just had a few computer issues so could not list the correct flight on the monitors! Phew! Another 25 minutes later and we were on the plane, ready to go.
The flight was fine, and Manja managed to get some really good happy-snaps out the window. Some 10 hours later we were in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Now we just had to get our rental car. We were a bit worried because of horror stories regarding rentals and extra charges in Costa Rica….
But it seemed really well organised – We even managed to figure it out although we did not speak a single word of Spanish!
Once we had our bags, we were greeted by a rental car agent just before the exit, who wrote our names on some stickers and put them on us. He then pointed us to a group of shuttle buses. We headed over and a driver immediately took us into his bus, and a few minutes later we were on our way to the rental place with another 4-5 people.
When we got there it only took a few minutes and we were on our way without paying anything extra. It pays to use a global rental company I think! Not even a 10 minute drive later we were at the hotel checking in, before grabbing a shot bite to eat at the hard-rock cafe at the corner. When we got back we just fell into bed.
Love your story telling and laughed at your first wildlife encounter (swans) picture 😀