We made it but it was close.

(I haven't slept in almost 36 hours so forgive any typos or irrational ideas or crazy turns of phrase)

I woke up on time yesterday, the first time in three trips that I didn't sleep in.  That boded well. I did some stuff around the house, eat some breakfast, final pack and then I braced myself of another round of online check-in roulette.  Amazingly, I was able to snag the last two seats together for the Houston to San Jose.  Again, good omens.

I picked  up Alisma at  9:15.  She was going to drive the car back from the ferry and keep it while I am away.  Then we picked up Val.  She had packed the tiniest backpack ever.  It is basically a book bag for a middle schooler.   She had mentioned that she couldn't figure out why everything didn't fit this time (as compared to Ecuador).  Umm, this was a completely different bag, about half the size of the last time.  She also had/has a small MEC daypack.

We made it to the ferry by 10am.  11 o'clock ferry, on time. Lots of room on the Bus on the ferry, no traffic problems despite the snowy slushy conditions we discovered as we left the ferry.   We got to the airport and made it through security no problem.  We were happy to discover that we could do American customs in Vancouver.   We had a satisfactory lunch at the Canucks Grill. We found our gate and killed a few hours.

Canuck Grill

Val's wee backpack

Then the flight next to ours was delayed by two hours.  hmm,  ours still showed on time so we didn't worry too much.  But the snow was really coming down, and sticking.  We watched convoys of snow plows clearing the runways.  Then our flight crew arrived and started with the good news, the plane is at the airport.  But as everyone knows, good news is always followed by bad.  There was a very short, super short, so short it will only be like a 10 minutes, delay to get the plane towed to our gate.  That 10 minutes stretched to 50 minutes.

Buddy at the microphone just kept making it sound like we were the luckiest people in the airport to even get to leave.  He didn't say that but his chipper enthusiasm in the face of each delay was somehow heartening.  We finally made it onto the plane.  Mr. Chipper then let us know that we were God's chosen people because we were going to get to go through the de-icer.  It would only take a few minutes to drive there.  Then 30 minutes to de-ice.  Then the joyous wait in line to take off.

Cold

The view from my airplane seat

All told, we left over two hours late.  And we only had a 2.5 hour layover in San Francisco.  I was trying to stay zen about the whole thing but we were a bit worried.  We got to San Fran a bit early and Val and I jumped in with some people who had close connections so we could all scurry off the plane ahead of the crowd.  What we didn't know was that our flight had been moved from 12:05 to 12:30 and that one we cleared Canadian security and American customs in Vancouver, we never had to go through any check again.

After that it was pretty smooth sailing.  No issues with Super Bowl Sunday or protesters at either American airport, at least none that we saw.   Air Canada gave us free movies but not United.  That made for a long overnight haul.

We arrived.  No problems with immigration or customs.  We hopped on the $1 city bus to town, found out hotel, the Posada Trianon.  This place is definitely on the 'dive' side of the michellin star system.  Shared bathroom.  This sign:

our room

The sketchy outside at night

you know it is classy when they
 don't allow prostitutes.  Doubly so if that is
announced in a handwritten note on the door

Edwin the dog who lives in our hotel.

It is 7:45.  We vowed to stay awake until 8 so we don't mess up our sleep cycles to bad.  Val is researching how to best get to Tortuguera.  I'll keep you posted.