Day in Transit

I love airports! (but only when I'm going somewhere) They aren't as much fun when you have to head home.

Today was one continuous day of travel--us in transit. We scored a really good deal on our flight from Expedia, but our return trip itinerary was where we paid for it.

We left San Jose, Costa Rica mid afternoon. We hailed a taxi, and after some confusion about which bus station, we ended up going directly to the airport using up the last of our Costa Rican currency to pay the driver and the airport departure tax. Airport security was relatively hassle free, not like the mess it was in LAX.


When we landed in Mexico City after our connecting flight from Guatemala City, we headed straight for customs. It still didn't make sense to us why we had to go through customs when we were just passing through in transit, but this time around, we knew the drill. We followed the labyrinth of people-movers and elevators, got through customs, and proceeded to find a comfortable place to crash for the night, but no such luck. Within minutes we were confronted by airport security, who asked to see our itineraries.

"Your flight is tomorrow," he told us in Spanish.

Como se dice really long layover en espanol?

We tried to play the dumb tourist card, and I feigned not understanding Spanish so that maybe he would give up and leave us alone. And at that late at night, it didn't require a lot of acting on my part because my brain could barely function in English, forget Spanish. Eventually we gave up, thanked the nice security guard, who was geniunely trying to help us language barrier and all. We grabbed our packs and kept trucking in the direction he was pointing. From what I gathered, he told us we could wait in gate 25, and something about the airport closing at 12 (my translation skills don't work as well when I'm sleep deprived).

We tried to sleep, unsuccessfully, at gate 25, but then when the last flight took off we were again told that we couldn't sleep there and we had to leave. This trend continued throughout the night--us being ushered from place to place, everyone demanding to see our itinerary.

We discovered that Mexico City clears the airport at 12 (no overnight stays allowed) and they reopen at 4 am. We didn't really want to leave, but had very little choice. It was cold, and we were tired. We hunted around for somewhere to lay our packs down and sleep. The only place that was open was 7-Eleven, but we didn't forsee the owner being cool with us crashing out in his store front so we looked elsewhere. We found this really weird open, indoor-outdoor art and cultural history museum. People were laid out on the sides on the edges of the museum, sleeping, or trying too. We figured it was our best bet and made camp on the hard wooden floor of the art museum.

By 4am, we were cold, tired, and weary--but happy to leave the hard wooden floors. We reentered the airport (went through airport security again), warmed up with some hot, tasteless coffee, and tried once again, to sleep on those uncomfortable airport seats.