Farewell Central America
Trip Start
Sep 28, 2007
1
33
Trip End
Ongoing
Panama,
Panama
Thursday, December 6, 2007
We left Panama early the next morning, as in 5.45 with a 3.45 am check-in, so we headed straight to the airport, naively thinking that we could have a nice browse around the shops, identify some birds in a book shop, get some emails off, have a relaxed dinner and chill out. It seemed preferable to spending the evening in the hotel and then getting out to the terminal in the middle of the night.
But of course, there are effectively no shops before you check in, and we couldn't check in that evening because there was no one at the Taca desk. There were no couches in the departure 'area' (obviously not a 'lounge') so we slept on the floor, finally getting a chance to use our sleeping mats, who had had a nice tour without having to earn their keep so far. We had the consolation of not being the only ones to make this mistake, and at least the airport is clean, well lit, open all night, and safe.
Although neither of us heard our alarm, we did wake up in term to catch our flight, which got us into San Jose at 5.48 am, for our 10.30 flight to Venezuela. This itinerary didn't look so bad at home, but we were having second thoughts, especially when the girl on the desk rattled incomprehensible Spanish at us, which had something to do with flying 'tomorrow'. We were alarmed, but no we could fly today if we wanted to. We don't really know what it was all about, but we figure that they were overbooked and needed to get rid of passengers. We remain ignorant of the fabulous inducements we might have got.
It was also a good introduction to our new independent journey!
Despite our fears, San Jose has a nice transit lounge so it was actually quite a pleasant wait.
Very soon after take-off we passed over the green-water crater of some volano, and then passed peacefully into Maquetia international in Caracas...
To be continued in my new log "Venezuela".
