Our Flight Back

Saturday November 19

 

Well, on our trip back we took a flight from Lima to Toronto that connected through San Jose, Costa Rica. It had a one and a half hour stopover, which we thought was lots of time. When we checked our bags in Lima, we assumed that they would automatically be transferred to our flight to Toronto, but no, we were told that we would have to get them ourselves and recheck them. Now all of a sudden one and a half hours was not looking like so much time, esp with immigration and security to go through. Then our plane was over half an hour late taking off, so we thought we were cooked. As we were landing, Anton's watch said 2:30, and our next flight left at 3:00. That was an awful feeling. Then we thought to ask a flight attendant if there was a time change, and he said the time was back one hour. Yippee! We now had an hour and a half again. But still lots to do. So we ran to immigration, and were promptly denied entry because we had not brought our yellow fever immunization records. Yes, we have the stupid shot from going to Kenya last year. But no one told us we would need the records for a stopover where we didn't even leave the airport. They made us sit in the corner and went to get an Air Canada rep, who told us that we would not be allowed past immigration, but should proceed back to the gates. At this point we had no luggage and no boarding passes. He said he would take care of that for us. We had no idea how he would find which luggage was ours, or even if he would remember about us. So we sat at the gate waiting while we watched people boarding our flight, and just a few minutes before it took off, he showed up with boarding passes for us and told us that he had taken care of our luggage. Well, at this point we were just glad to be on the flight and there was nothing we could do about our luggage, so we got on the flight hoping for the best. And lo and behold, when we arrived in Toronto, our luggage was waiting for us safe and sound. Amazing. I think I'll let them do all the work for me every time, from now on.