i woke up early and went to the internet. around 9AM, dee anxiously reminded me that we had to pack our stuff and take a shower. i know my way around hurrying for the airport. i do it a lot for my job. dee hates hurrying so i have to be reminded to not stress her out.

the taxi arrived ontime and we headed to the airport. when we arrived, we went to the departure tax booth. thankful we had enough money to pay for the tax. john had said they accepted credit cards, but they only accepted visa. all mine were mastercard. we were left with seven dollars in cash. we had printed our boarding passes but that provided to be useless. for some reason the person at the counter had to reprint them.
we went through security with no problems. i love security in foreign countries. it is so easy compared to the states. we found the gate and had an hour and a half to kill. as we looked in the stores, dee made the comment that this was where you went to buy souvenirs. it was true. the city doesn’t have great souvenirs. the airport had some great stuff. i had already bought my shot glass, so we didn’t need anything. we bought some chocolate covered coffee beans to bring back.

we sat in the food court eating some sandwiches and pizza. john told us via email that he almost missed his connecting flight in miami due to customs. you had to wait for your luggage to arrive before proceeding to customs. if he had checked his bag, he would have missed it. the time we had in houston before our next flight was an hour and a half. so, we were nervous that we wouldn’t be able to make it if there were long lines at the airport.

so, we nervously checked with the flight attendant several times to make sure the plane was boarding ontime. it did board on time, but we sat on the tarmac for 20 minutes. san jose is a high altitude city and the airport won’t allow planes to take off with a tail wind. so, we had to wait for a break in the traffic before we could take off. they must have done something, like go faster, to have made it in houston on time. we sat on the tarmac in houston while we waited for another plane to push away from our gate.

ugh, all this waiting was causing us anxiety. we constantly looked at our watch and started strategizing about how we were going to go through security quicker. the last time we were at houston from mexico, dee had to go to a small room where they verified something. there was a flag on her file. so, she told me to go ahead and not wait for her. yea, right. i’m not leaving her.
when we got to passport check, they didn’t motion for anyone to escort her to the little room and allowed us to pass. that was a sigh of relief, but not as great as the sigh of relief i had when i finally was able to go to the restroom. i didn’t want to go and risk any time spent with passports so i was holding it until i knew it was safe.

we didn’t check anything, so we breezed through the luggage carousels. i pitied the people standing there waiting. the only real hold up was the line to go through the metal detectors. once we made it through, we had to go directly to our gate. the plane was boarding in a few minutes.

we boarded and sat down. any other hold ups or problems would not bother me. after everyone boarded, the pilot came on and said they had to take on more fuel cause of a route diversion around some bad weather. no prob. the wait to take off, no prob. the wait in newark, no prob. however, the plane ride had some severe turbulence. the flight attendants cancelled beverage service due to the bad turbulence. a little nerve racking but no prob.

we made it back to our apt around 1AM. when we entered, the apt was hot and humid. hey, at least we were used to it. shiloh was jumping up and down and whining to be picked up. dee was so happy and excited. she smothered the dog with love. we stayed up until 4AM to hang out with the dog and just decompress from all the traveling. we had finally made it home and for some odd reason happy to be sitting on our couch. costa rica was an amazing trip and we had a blast, but it was nice to be back home.