It's hard to sleep when you're terrified, but it's a little less hard when you've also been traveling for nearly 24 hours, so after finding non-translated into funny-voiced Spanish reruns of Friends on El WB, we managed to fall asleep.
I guess exhaustion only beat back terror for a couple hours, because we woke up at 6-ish the next morning. The funny thing about Costa Rica, is that while it's culturally very, very different from the US, it's not a backwards country in the least. The majority of cars are low emission Toyotas and Hondas, and while the houses in the countryside were smaller than the majority of American homes, nearly all of them had satellites mounted to their roofs. As such, El Motel Seis had wifi.
After we grabbed codes from the front desk, we stationed ourselves at our laptops (bring a laptop if you can, don't be one of those people who thinks they're too cool for technology. No one is cool when they are stranded. Remember Tom Hanks in Castaway? Friends with a volleyball. Not cool.) and set to the task of how to get the hell out of there.
After some research, we settled on potential hotel in the nearest beach town to the airport (just in case that went to hell too, at least then we could probably just sprint back to catch our flight) and Rosie called them and set up our reservation, as well as a shuttle to drive us the two hours back through the jungle.
We arrived at our new hotel, settled in and, aside from an inconvenient baconing incident at lunch, things calmed down for a bit. There were a few other suggestions that cosmically, CR still didn't want us there: our rainforest tour was cancelled and I was prompted to develop a new term called "terror farts" which I can explain at a later date, but on the whole it was a nice couple of days.
Then we had to come home. Customs at the CR airport was easy, then we boarded one of the new Boeing 737s that those stupid ads they make you watch before the safety videos on planes keep talking about. We landed in Miami, grabbed our checked bag and made it through the second part of customs. When I got to my agent, I couldn't understand what he was saying and accidentally gave conflicting answers, leading to a mildly embarrassing scene in which he yelled across the customs line to Rosie to confirm my identity so he didn't have to throw me out into the Atlantic Ocean, or something.
The final frontier of re-entering the country turns out to be hand swabbing. They take a little test strip, run it across your palms and feed it into a machine. The machine makes happy beeps and they send you on your way. Or at least that's what happened for Rosie.
When I stepped up to the swabbing plate, they wiped my palms, fed the strip into the machine but in place of happy beeps, I got angry, vengeful beeps. Obviously I had wronged these beeps in some way, but since the security lady didn't say anything, just gestured at me with an open palm as if to say "keep it moving" I said to Rosie "I guess we can go?", turned to pick up my bags and was told in a very loud voice to "STOP RIGHT THERE" and put my bags on the table for inspection. They opened my bags, asked me about their contents then another woman led me to the corner of the room (not a separate room, nor a curtained area, just a corner of the room) and explained to me in great detail the style in which she was about to frisk me.
"I will use a gloved, flat, open palm against all of your general areas. When I approach your personal areas I will turn my hand over and use the back of my hand. Do you understand what I'm about to do?" I nod that I do, and she begins her frisking, narrating as she goes. "Open palm, open palm, open palm" she says as I wonder what happens next, is it a detention room? Do they throw out my only long pants and only jacket that I'd brought on the tropical vacation so that I return to Chicago in shorts and a dirty t shirt? Do they just throw me in the ocean? Is this another Tom Hanks situation (you know, that one where he lives in the airport because his home country stops existing for a while or something)? I'm working pretty hard at not freaking out as she continues "open palm, open palm, back of hand, back of hand, back of hand".
After she finishes narrating her boob touching, another security agent comes along, swabs her gloves and feeds the test strip into the machine. Keep in mind that no one has told me anything at this point about why they are testing me or what might happen next. Unbeknownst to me, during my public pat down, another security agent calmly explained to Rosie that I had tested positive for explosive residue, my bags were fine and that this sort of thing happens from time to time and isn't that big a deal. That all seems like info that I could have used, but whatever, making people think you're going to throw them out of their country into the sea or perhaps back to a country that, let's face it, didn't seem to like them all that much seems totally reasonable.
Finally, from my frisking spot I finally hear a faint set of happy beeps and I'm told without any positive intonation whatsoever that I could go. At that point, I was really kind of hoping for a "Sorry we thought you were a terrorist" sticker or something, but maybe they were out.
We finally made it to the ticketing area, waited for at least a half an hour to learn that our flight wasn't happening and that we'd have to wait in the airport until 9:30 the next morning for the next flight. Irritated but not defeated, we grabbed a bite to eat, checked in at one of those little kiosks and prepared to check our bags and I mentally prepared for the possibility of another frisking, since we'd have to go through security one more time.
Interesting thing about flying the next day but being stuck in the airport over night: you can't actually check your bag until 4am the morning of your flight. So, instead of sitting in actual seats near the gate, we spent the next 7 hours seated on the floor by the entrance you would use if you had taken the train to the airport. It was surprisingly chilly, given that it was Miami.
The rest of the night/next morning is pretty hazy. I know that Rosie and I each bought a day's worth of wifi access for $7.95, which is a very reasonable amount of money to ensure that neither person murders the other while sitting on a cold, uncomfortable floor. I remember a dude complaining to us about the price of airport food and I remember yelling at an American Airlines employee when I went to reprint our boarding passes because he was trying to help me...or something. Other than that, I'm not sure. I don't think I was frisked again, but maybe I was and I'd finally gotten used to it. Anyway, eventually we landed in St. Louis, then we picked up our dogs from my dad's house and we drove home.
And that's how I spent my Thanksgiving break, thank you.
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