We flew out across the Atlantic, nearly to Newfoundland, and then down the Eastern coast of the States. Jenny spotted the Florida Keys. She could see the motorway that runs the length of the islands to Key West.
Jenny had the window seat, Sarah had the middle seat, I had the aisle seat. This was supposed to be good, except I had a stretch-out man in front of me. Mr.Horizontal. How is it possible to sleep so long when the flight left at 11.00 am? Pretending? But then Jenny somehow managed to curl up in her seat, lean against the window and sleep for a few hours.
We’d had an early start at 5:00 am, intending to catch the 6.21 train, but ThamesLink had cancelled that. Of course they had. Fortunately, the Brighton train was delayed, so we were back on our Gatwick train, back on schedule.
Sarah switched seats with me so I could escape laid-back man. Sarah did crochet, which helped ingratiate herself with a stewardess who thought it looked like a quaint thing to do. Sarah was producing granny squares that looked like irregular hexagons.
I watched two films, read four chapters, ate two meals, drank one G&T and two glasses of wine, and played a game of Trivial Pursuit against the computer. How does that work? What was it doing, randomly getting answers wrong? What is the point of that? Anyway, I beat it.
We flew west to avoid Cuba, touched land over Cancun, crossed the sea again, finally reaching Central America over Honduras, flying the western side of Nicaragua and finally, finally entering Costa Rican airspace with 30 minutes flying time left. By this time, the most exciting thing on the flight entertainment was the map.
We landed. It was all over. That’s the amazing thing about time—it passes. You don’t have to do anything except sit there. Time happens, the plane flies, and before you know it, you are somewhere else.
No trouble in passport control. No problem with bags – they scanned them all on exiting the airport – an intimidating method of enforcing “Nothing to Declare”.
We did the car hire pickup. Of course, we couldn’t remember what we’d prepaid (it was only a deposit, apparently), so now we had to pay in full and pay a new deposit of $750 to cover the insurance, but that was good because that was the maximum we would need to pay if there was an accident. Anyway, we had a car: a Mitsubishi, a supposedly rugged ASX compact SUV with 4WD looking more like an oversized hatchback.
It was now 6.00 pm local time, just right for the tail end of the San Jose rush hour. To me, it was midnight, after being up for 18 hours. I was driving on the wrong side of the road, in the dark, on the wrong side of the car, with strange road signs and people doing odd things. We soon reached the highway, just a short stretch to our destination. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise I was on the exit lane until too late and headed back into town. Fortunately, the sat-nav found an alternative route, though it was clogged with traffic jams.
It was a short distance to our first night’s accommodation, so we were there in less than an hour. Some people collecting their car at the same time as us still had a four-hour drive to go. I couldn’t have handled that.
We had a warm welcome from Margarita who ran Villa Margarita. It was a lovely place; a bit of a shame we were only staying one night.
