Bridgetown, Barbados to Halifax, Nova Scotia - The Long Journey Home

I timed the shuttle to pick me up at Angler with enough time to get to the airport, check-in, go through security and have a minimal wait to board. But, of course, as often happens when dealing with air travel, it didn’t quite work out that way. At check-in, the agent advised me that my flight was several hours behind schedule. So I tried my best to make use of the extra time I had and found a little café where I bought a slice of pizza and a coffee.

I tried to kill some time by accessing the elusive airport WiFi which was still being quite elusive to me. Everyone around me seemed to be tinkering away on Facebook and checking emails but I was still unable to connect. I killed about an hour in the coffee shop…and killed the rest of the time browsing the duty-free shops. I found myself a couple of keychains, a nice beachbag for only ten dollars and a couple of pieces of stylish handmade beach jewelry. Sometimes I think this is why flights are delayed; people who would not normally shop in the airport resort to shopping in airports when they have nothing else to do while waiting for a delayed flight.

I wasn’t too upset by this surprise delay. After all, my trip home was to take more than 24 hours. 6.5-hour flight from Barbados to Toronto with a 10-hour layover at Pearson followed by another 2-hour flight to Halifax, a 3-hour wait there and a 5-hour shuttle drive to Cape Breton. An extra few hours wasn’t going to make much a difference.

It was close to ten o’clock when I arrived at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. Unfortunately, because my flight wasn’t departing until the next day, I had to retrieve my luggage and lug around with me all night and recheck it in the morning. I know that doesn’t really sound like a big deal but consider the fact that since waiting passengers are to keep their eyes on their luggage at all times (or risk having them confiscated by security) that means my luggage has to go everywhere with me. Everywhere. Have you ever tried maneuvering a suitcase around those small washroom stalls? Now that’s a challenge! Or how about trying to lug it through a narrow lineup to get your morning coffee at an airport café? At least as long as my luggage was with me, I knew it was safe…at least for the time being!

I was famished after that long flight so once I had my luggage in hand, I looked for something to eat. After spending 7 days on vacation, I was pretty near broke so I couldn’t really settle for more than a bagel and a cookie at Tim Horton’s. I skipped the coffee out of fear the caffeine would keep me awake and it was hard enough trying to get some rest in a busy airport.

I wandered around for a bit trying to kill some time and tire myself out (I am usually wound up after a long flight for some reason) before actively seeking out a somewhat quiet area to set up camp for the night. I found a decent spot in a corner near some windows. I unfolded my travel blanket and refolded it in two so that I was lying on one half of it and the rest was covering me. With myself, my travel pillow, my cell phone (for an alarm) and my wallet (to prevent being robbed while I slept) securely inside the blanket, I positioned myself facing my luggage which I had strategically placed with the zippers facing me. I always feel a little unsecure when sleeping in the main area of any airport. Inside a gate, everyone has already been through security but in the main area, anyone can walk in off the street and that’s a little unnerving especially in these tense times. It gives me a very vulnerable feeling.

Within seconds of my head hitting the pillow, the airport suddenly seemed louder. Vacuum cleaners were going, shops were closing, people were coming and going, a man sleeping a few feet away from me was snoring loudly and car doors were being slammed just outside that window. But amidst all that racket, I managed to pick out one sound that finally drowned out all the rest and that’s the sound that rocked me to sleep….almost quite literally. Someone was tuning a guitar. It sounded faint at first and than it got louder. I took my head out from the warmth and darkness of my blanket and looked around. Across the hall, seated in another waiting area was a young man strumming a guitar. I tried not to let him see me so he wouldn’t think he was being too loud and stop. I just lay my head back down on my pillow and listened and in the midst of all the hustle and bustle that is Pearson International Airport, I fell asleep to the beautiful sounds of a guitar being strummed.

I awoke a few hours later to my cell phone vibrating and proceeded to check-in for my flight. This time, my flight was on time and I made it to Halifax long before the next shuttle to Cape Breton. I grabbed a Starbucks latte and took a seat in the long corridor between the check-in area and baggage pickup and patiently waited for my ride. By the time the shuttle arrived, I was exhausted…and disappointed to see that there was quite the crowd already onboard. But I was lucky this time because there were no seats in the back so I got to sit in the front and much to the disappointment of my friendly and chatty driver who wanted to hear more about my trip down south, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until Antigonish. It wasn’t until we reached the Canso Causeway that that dreadful after-vacation feeling set in. Every time I make that drive from the Halifax Airport to Cape Breton, that same feeling hits me at that exact same place in the trip. The Causeway always signifies home even though my house is still another 2 hours away. That feeling I am talking about? The one where the realization hits that the vacation is over and it’s time to re-enter the real world. No more palm trees and sand. Just sub-zero temperatures and snow.

My Journey Through Costa Rica - Getting There was Half the Battle

I’m back now from an incredible trip in Costa Rica…Well, actually, I’ve been back from the trip for a while but I was unable to blog about this travel until recently. 

So, to start...where is Costa Rica?  Costa Rica is in Central America between the countries of Nicaragua and Panama.  When researching Costa Rica travel, the pictures and descriptions of wild beaches and rainforests intriqued me enough to look into it some more.

Being the savvy trip planner that I am, I learned as much as I could about the country and the more I read and the more I learned, I realized that Costa Rica must be a very special place because I couldn't find any bad Trip advisor reviews or any bad press.  Now having been to Costa Rica, I realize that those reviews were inaccurate....my journey through this beautiful country was more than I could ever have expected.....and yes I mean that in a very, very good way!

First of all, I need to say that there were hardly any hitches and hardly anything went wrong during this trip. I have to brag about that so all the people who thought I was putting myself in danger for traveling alone can see that I've returned from my trip in one piece.  I was sunburned, bruised (from surfing) and covered in bug bites but otherwise fine. 

The only negative experiences I had during this trip were getting to Costa Rica and getting back home but that is to be expected when dealing with airports and flights. I arrived in Halifax via the one shittle service that could get me to Halifax in time to catch my flight without having to sleep in the airport overnight. 

My issues began in Halifax and continued onward through Toronto, Houston and onto San Jose. Things got off to a bad start during check-in in Halifax when I had the unfortunate experience of dealing with a very rude ticket agent. Of course, my tongue acted quicker than my brain and well, lets just say I was convinced my luggage would end up in China instead of its intended destination. Toronto Pearson International or Hell as I like to call it was my next stop. I’ve never had a good experience at this airport and this time was no exception. 

As usual, Pearson International failed to live up to the standards one would expect from such a large, international airport and again made me feel a little embarrassed to be from Canada knowing that most people traveling from other countries to Canada have to go through that disgrace of an airport. Let’s see, where do I begin? I needed help finding my connecting flight and, as anyone who has been through this airport knows, signage is very poor to non-existent. Almost everyone I tried to get directions from couldn’t speak English and the few people who could either had no idea where to send me or sent me in the wrong direction. 

 I finally made it to my gate after running through two terminals only to discover that my gate had been changed and I was sent running again and just made it in time for boarding. Now onto George Bush Intercontinental in Houston and a long 11-hour layover in an airport almost as bad as Pearson. 

When I first booked my flight, I thought “hey, I’ve never been to Houston, TX before so maybe I can hire a taxi driver to give me the grand tour while I wait for the next leg of my journey”. This was not to be. In the past, I was able to get tours of various cities by taxi but none were willing to do so in Houston, which meant one long, boring night of people-watching and counting ceiling tiles. I couldn’t even grab a Starbucks latte because everything was closed by the time I went through immigration and baggage claim, which was around 9pm. I was hoping to at least have something to eat when I arrived but everything was closed so early which meant my long, boring night was also marred by hunger and thirst. 

On the plus side, my luggage made it that far and was not “accidentally” put on a plane to China. I’d like to say I was able to sleep during my 11 hours in Houston Airport but all I did was wander around aimlessly looking for a comfortable place to rest, which was not to be found. The most comfortable place to sleep in the whole airport was the couch behind Starbucks in Terminal A and every time someone got up from that couch, someone was right there to take their place. I didn’t have the energy to even try to be one of those lucky people who had comfortable-looking naps on that couch before catching their next flight.

I was in no mood to deal with any delays or airport mishaps the next morning when it was time to find and board my plane. But, of course, air travel would not be true air travel if it didn’t come with its issues. Once again, I found myself in a state of confusion. I was told by an airport employee that my next flight would be departing terminal A so that is where I remained for most of the night. 

When it came close to check-in time, I looked at the screens to see if my flight was on time and couldn’t find it and, of course, panicked. After asking several dozen airport employees why my flight was not listed, one finally gave me the answer “ma’am, I think you are supposed to be in terminal D and you need to take the train to get there”. With time running out to clear security and get to my gate, “I think” had to suffice. And off I went, running again to catch a train and a flight. 

I didn’t realize how big Houston airport was until I was forced to make the journey from Terminal A to Terminal D. Fortunately it was the right terminal and I boarded my plane with only a few minutes to spare. No need to go into detail about the next 3.5 hours of my life I will never get back, you know the drill; cramped seats, broken TV’s, screaming babies, ignorant seat-mates taking up both armrests, horrible food and inconsiderate passengers with oversized carry-ons resulting in my small carry-on being stowed 20 rows behind me. You would think that for the amount of money you pay for an airline ticket these days, you would be reimbursed for lack of service but instead they gouge flyers in every which way they can. I paid 900 dollars for my return flight but in order to even watch a movie or have a glass of juice, they wanted me to swipe my credit card and pay even more money!

I’d like to say I was relieved to finally land at my final destination but I had to endure more airport nuisances before I could finally get to my hotel and some much needed sleep. After a long line-up at immigration, requests to fill out customer satisfaction surveys (which I did because I’m a sucker for those things) and another long wait for my luggage, I finally made it outdoors into a large crowd of waiting taxi drivers yelling “taxi, lady”. I was still dressed in a sweater and jeans when the sweltering heat of tropical San Jose hit me and I had to move away from the aggressive crowd of taxi drivers vying for my business and take a seat somewhere to the side where I could try to remember which cabs I was told were the most reliable – the red ones or the orange ones? Or was it yellow? I couldn’t remember but the heat and lack of sleep was getting to me so I just jumped into the next cab that came along. Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at the Wyndham Herradura and, of course, my room was not ready and wouldn’t be ready for another two hours. When I was finally able to enter my room, I immediately went to bed in order to be rested up for the beginning of my Costa Rica adventure the next morning.

On all of my other international trips, my cell phone always, upon arrival, updated to the current local time. Before I went to sleep my first night in San Jose, Costa Rica, I set my alarm for 6am so I would have enough time to shower and grab some breakfast before hitting the road. I was awake, showered, fed and ready to catch my bus before I realized I had woken up an hour earlier than intended. My cell only registered a two hour time difference instead of the three hour time difference from home. A really small and insignificant thing considering the rest of my time in the country went without incident. Everything was perfect. The Weather Network was predicting rain for more than a week straight for the Nicoya Peninsula; The sun was splitting rocks the entire time I was there! The food, the people, the shopping, the accommodations, the scenery…everything was better than I imagined it would be. And so began my two week journey through Costa Rica and a journey I will not soon forget.