Costa Rica. Finally.

It wasn’t without effort, but we finally ended up in Costa Rica. Originally we were supposed to leave yesterday, but when we were at the final check-in before boarding the plane, I was refused boarding because my passport expired too soon. Something totally unanticipated to us. I knew my passport expired on 2/14/2012, but we were going to be back in the USA by then so I didn’t think anything of it. But Costa Rica requires 90 days beyond the arrival? departure? date. And, while the ticketing process required us to enter our passport numbers and expiration, nothing was flagged there. The boarding agent explained that there were too many countries for US Airways to monitor. So why bother asking I wonder? (One of these days we will learn to read up on the country’s requirements at the State Department’s site!)

The boarding agent gave us the phone # for the Western Passport Agency in Tucson and said if we could get there first thing in the morning, we could likely make the Friday afternoon flight. So I called the passport agency, made an appointment for 9am Friday morning, then we rebooked for the Friday 1:14pm flight.

Back to Tempe.

We got up early Friday morning for the 112 mile drive, made it there by 8:40am, and were processed in by 9am (why the appointment? – it was first come first serve). I was approved for a while-you-wait Passport and got it around 10:10am. Back to Sky Harbor – driving a bit above the speed limit. Into long term parking, on the shuttle, and to the ticket line at ~12:25. Boarding starts at 12:44. Got the attention of an agent, showed her our ticket and got expedited. Whew! Then to security where we took the first class line and were through to the gate just before boarding started. Whew again! At last we could relax.

No problem getting through Costa Rican immigration/security but it took over an hour to get our rental car. No real reason for the delay, just extraordinary slowness on the part of the agent. We didn’t get out of Budget until 9pm. And were almost without GPS. Ken had bought a Costa Rica map, but I couldn’t get the unit to link up to the satellites. Until I thought of a previous hand-held GPS I once had and manually set the time. The satellites were immediately located. Whew yet again! We are on our way.

For about about 1.5 miles. Only to find out the main highway east was closed. So we get into a long line of traffic trying to get on I-CI-1 east while the GPS is squawking at us all the time. The freeway is closed at the next entry, too. Back to the side streets again. It took us over an hour to finally get past San Jose. And another hour over winding mountain roads to Turrialba and our hotel.

But, hey, we made it. We are in Costa Rica and will go rafting on the Pacuare tomorrow.