Up and Back Again
The captain is babbling on in Spanish and I can't understand a word he's saying. He's really going on a long time. Thank God he's stopped. I should have been home curled up in my jammies by now but instead I'm on my second flight tonight from Panama to Costa Rica. The first one didn't work out so well.
I was poking fun at my flying companion, as she's a little bit scared of flying. I was asking her why the mountains were so close to the plane as we were approaching San Jose. Then we hit some clouds in low, and the mountains really did appear kinda close. Then there was nothing but the half-staccato flashing reflection off the clouds from the wing light taking up all my attention—then the pilot floored it and we began to climb pdq.
The official reason was something about too much rain, which, I guess is believable because it's the rainy season. I even saw some today in Panama. But I mean, who hasn't had a harrowing landing coming into San Francisco or pick your poison airport? Anyhow, instead of picking out some other landing strip in Costa Rica they flew us back to Panama, then they told us that if we weren't citizens we couldn't get back into the country.
But if you saw that movie with that Tom Hanks guy you know that airports are their own country or something so, being that it was late I got off the plane for a surreptitious smoke while wandering the halls. It seems that the smoking police have made slightly more inroads in Panama than in Costa Rica,
nonetheless with a few junior high school tricks I was able to keep the official looking folks fooled long enough for a nice relaxing Marlboro.
Somebody must have been thinking really hard about things because basically they only just gassed up the old jet and pointed her north again, which on my way there I'm writing this with the intention of posting as soon as I get the home wireless signal at the casa. Oops. More later.
