Wednesday morning arrived and it was time to pack up our little black backpacks, climb down from our treehouse with the oceanview, and begin our 2,000 mile journey home. Speaking of those little back packs…I still could have left half of what I brought at home. Life is so simple and carefree here, not much is needed.
Our flight was not scheduled to leave till 1:00 am Thursday, but we had to have the car back to the airport by 6pm. Wed.
We had just planned to spend the day driving around the country sightseeing. With no real agenda planned. I logged onto Trip Advisor and found the oldest church ruins in the country. It was located within an hour of the airport so we decided to check it out. I just did a few screenshots of the maps and directions and thought we would figure it out as we got closer. First mistake.
We did not want to incur huge roaming and data fees on our phones so we have just connected to WiFi wherever available. The drive from Dominical to San Jose is about three hours. Then about another hour to the church ruins site.
According to our incomplete and unlabeled maps, two hours into our trip we realize we had just missed a turn from the main highway. No worries we’ll just go through the next town and keep pointing onto the right direction. Second mistake. Actually, it really wasn’t that bad. We saw several parts of the country we had not seen before, traveling a bit off the beaten path. We drove through the mountains and lush green coffee plantations. The day was gorgeous and perfect for having the windows down and inhaling fresh air. Several hours later we narrowed in to our destination, and followed every turn and direction as stated on our make shift map. But to no avail, discouragement set in and we were never able to locate the place we were looking for. We were starving and found a little BBQ restaurant called cerdo loco (the Crazy Pig) after eating delicious roasted pork, we had just enough time to get back to the airport. Well… so we thought.
We made our way through the city of Alajuela mostly from memory from walking through the city last year. Passing the center park, the cathedral, restaurants that we have eaten at and bars we have visited in the past. But this time we missed a turn, an important one. Instead of the road that takes us to the airport, we ended up in some shady neighborhoods in San Jose. The sun had gone down, it was getting very dark, we had no map to even get a sense of where we were, and we were already twenty minutes late for our rental car return meeting. We were both getting stressed, but just kept trying different routes to get pointed in the right direction. Most of Costa Rica names their streets on maps, but fail to ever have signs posted saying what they are. There are signs everywhere, especially in the city. But they are advertisements, not directional signs to tell you where anything important is…like the freaking airport. We kept watching the skies for airplane activity, but did not see any aircrafts anywhere. After an hour of circling, looping and retracing our tracks, we finally saw some familiar buildings and within minutes we were in the airport parking lot. Just over an hour late for our meeting time. A quick log into email and Sean was typing an apology to the rental company. They instructed us to lock the keys inside the car and they would retrieve it in the morning.
When exiting Costa Rica, you are required to pay an exit tax of $29 a person. This needs to be paid at the airport. Some airlines now include this tax with their airfares, but with Spirit it is paid separately. We went ahead and took care of this since there were no lines. Now we had about five hours to kill before we had to be at our gate. We took a taxi for $5 back into Alajuela and asked the driver to take us to a bar so we could have a beer and relax after a long day on the road (and stressful last few hours). Ironically he dropped us off at the same exact bar we sat at last year waiting for our airport departure. Sean was now able to relax and as he usually does, had me cracking up in no time. We listened to really bad Costa Rican karaoke for about an hour, then just hung out on the park benches like homeless people. The crazy convoluted getting lost ordeal inspired a stand up comedy routine that we should all encourage Sean to perform one night at Sandbar open mic. (Hint, hint, nudge nudge)
By ten o’clock, I was exhausted and could barely keep my eyes open. We took a cab back to the airport and proceeded to wait, for what seemed like forever, in a meat locker. The temperature was set at about 58 degrees. Hundreds of travelers huddled together to keep warm.
Instructed to line up in the gangway we looked like extras in a zombie apocalypse movie, only to wait for an hour then be told to return to the gate due to mechanical problems. No matter how inconvenient that is, I never want to complain but I just want them to fix the damn plane correctly. We finally were seated and took off at 2:30am.
When traveling Spirit airlines, there are a few things you should know…NOTHING other than the seat you paid for is included, and, I might add, that seat does not recline like it does on other airlines. Any carryon luggage beyond the small bags we took is an additional $25 per leg of the flight. So just a regular sized backpack would be an additional $100 for the trip. If you want food beyond a $4 bag of pretzels, then bring your own. But if you want a drink you will have to buy it on the plane, as they won’t allow you to bring a drink on-board (even if purchased after security check)
Since it is truly bare bones ticket fares, this is how they are able to keep them so cheap. How cheap, you ask? The two of us flew round trip from Orlando to San Jose for $380.
However, the flight from Ft Lauderdale to San Jose is only 2 ½ hours, so for the hundreds of dollars were saving, we can just suck it up and sit there without reclining to be able to travel to our Costa Rican paradise on a small budget.
Since our flight was so delayed from the mechanical issues, we missed our connecting flight to Orlando. The next available flight out would have been almost 48 hours later. That of course would not have worked for anyone. Spirit offered to give us food vouchers of $14 each and put us on a shuttle van to the Orlando airport. This was a doable solution for us. There were four of us passengers in a twelve passenger van, so we had plenty of leg room and space to recline for the three hour drive. Our driver was gracious and professional. He said he tries to make his part of our journey painless, since most passengers have been really screwed over by the time they meet him. So all in all, you do have to put up with some inconveniences with Spirit, but then you have to do that many times with any air travel. In the end, Spirit took care of us and got us to our final destination. If you do travel Spirit, I advise you to stay flexible and don’t have any important places to be within 24 hours of your flights.