San Jose to Cancun via Miami...and still in Miami, again

We were up at 4:30 this morning and ready to go just before 5:00, our taxi was supposed to arrive to bring us and about 6 others to the airport. When the taxi finally showed up about 20 minutes late, I knew our day was not up to the best start. After strapping all of our luggage and surf boards on top of the van, we were finally off about 35 minutes late. We had to stop about 5 times en route to secure the surfboards that kept threatening to fall off the roof. In the end we finally just crammed it inside with us. We got to the airport just after 6:00...we had planned on arriving around 5:20 since our flight was scheduled to leave at 7:18. But when we finally arrived, we saw that our flight was delayed until around 1:00...so I guess it wasn´t a problem that we had to wait in the line to check-in that stretched from the counters, across the airport, outside and all the way down the sidewalk. It took us about 3 hours to finally get checked into our flight. Pretty ridiculous.

With nothing left to do until we departed, we took full advantage of the free samples of chocolate-coated coffee beans and Costa Rican coffee liqueur set up in the little shops. And the best bit was that nearly every shop had them, so we went around from place to place, getting our coffee fix and drinking up that free alcohol, since we and were able to get our very very last gallo pinto for breakfast...at Burger King! We had the ´BK Pinto´ which was cheap and good. We spent the rest of the morning wandering the shops, reading magazines in the newsagencies, and chatting with a cute young couple from San Luis Obispo. We then had some lunch before our flight took off. It turns out that our flight was delayed because yesterday the plane couldn´t land in Costa Rica due to weather (fog???) and ended up landing in Panama for the night. We had to wait for it to get clearance into Costa Rica to come get us.

Once in Miami, we were sure we´d miss our (new) connecting flight to Cancun. When we arrived, we immediately checked the TV monitors and saw that our flight had been cancelled all together. We went through immigration, past the luggage collection and straight to the AA counter-ticketing area. Here we were directed to a very slow, long line of people. Unfortunately, it was the right place. We were in line along with people from a delayed flight from Orlando as well as a delayed flight from LA. Why their flights were delayed too, we don´t know. All I know is that it took us about 2 hours to reach the front of that line, where we got vouchers for a hotel and 2 meals. De ja vou. We weren´t at the Sheraton this time but at the equally nice Sofitel. And it was only 8:00. We had every intention of fully enjoying the hotel amenities once again, courtesy of American Airlines. We got to the hotel, checked into our room (no Pantene, but huge comfy bed and big TV again) and headed down to the restaurant to use our dinner voucher. We ordered some burgers at the bar, since that was as far as the $20 voucher would take us (and even then we were going to have to pay a few extra dollars), but the waiter came back and informed us that our voucher clearly stating ¨Attention vendor: American Airlines will pay up to the amount of $20.00¨ etc. was really only worth $16 and some odd cents since the hotel had to account for taxes and gratuity. We were quite mad about this for several reasons. One being that there was no way we´d get a meal for $16, and another reason being that who cares about gratuity when we haven´t eaten in 15 hours? And still another reason being that this voucher issue wasn´t a problem 4 weeks ago when we stayed at the Sheraton. Since we didn´t want to have to pay for dinner, the only other option we had was to head back to the airport for cheaper food (where our voucher was good as well). Unfortunately, we missed the 9:00 pm shuttle by about 30 seconds and had to wait until the 9:30 shuttle, which actually left at about 9:45. We headed to one of the only cheap places open in the airport: Burger King. And of course we wanted to use up all $20 to make American Airlines pay every cent for screwing with us (by only giving us $20, then sending us to a hotel where the cheapest meal is about $20). Needless to say we ate ourselves sick.

It was about 11:00 pm by the time we had eaten and taken the shuttle back to the hotel. So much for enjoying the hotel! Instead of going for a swim that we had planned, we both had a long shower, made phone calls to family (thanks for ringing us back guys!) and watched TV until the wee hours of the morning (really, it couldn´t have been later than 1:00).