You know you have to change your plans when ....

it takes you 33 hours to travel what should have taken 7 hours!!!!

Here is our story - we arrived at Toronto airport at 6AM Saturday and arrived at Colours Resort in Costa Rica at 3PM Sunday (local time), 4PM your time. It seems that 10 snowflakes on the ground in Toronto can cause 3 hours of waiting on the runway - including time to refuel as we were running our of gas waiting!!!

We finally left 3 hrs later and arrived in San Salvador, El Salvador to change planes - we thought!!! However... due to our significant delay, we were advised that all flights to Costa Rica (CR) were full - so we would need to stay the night in El Salvador. Here is where the "Amazing Race" begins.

Quickly we run to the phones to change our reservations in San Jose (already paid for mind you..) Then, we need to figure out how will we get to Mawamba Lodge if they are picking us us at 6AM Sunday when we are still in San Salvador? Dilemma!!!! So - to the internet batman.... to find a regional flight - but alas, they only fly to our destination at 6AM - when we will STILL be in San Salvador. Finally, we get our "first night" in San Jose re-arranged - but what to do about Mawamba Lodge???

We are finally told by the TACA agent that we will be staying (for free) at the Sheraton Presidente in downtown San Salvador for the night - yippee - no sleeping in the airport!!

After an hours drive to the hotel - all is fine - great food and drink - nice beds and linens - time to rest and ready for day 2!!

Here we get picked up at 7AM and go to the airport for a flight to San Jose (you think) - however FIRST we must fly NORTH (for you geographically challenged, CR is south of El Salvador). So off to Guatemala we go!! (another "Amazing Race" moment as we are all RUNNING to the gate as the plane was leaving in 10 minutes!! Luckily the flight is only 40 minues long. We arrive and pray our luggage comes off the plane to go to the next plane, scheduled to leave in 3 hrs for CR.

Lunch in the airport and chatting with new friends from TO, we finally board for our flight to CR - 1.25 hrs. but only after wathing everyone pull out their binoculars to see if their luggage was being placed on the plane (Michael included) - quite a sight!!

We land in CR, get our luggage, after a brief panic attack as it as nowhere to be found (we did find it) and then a taxi to Colours resort - where we are now!!

So, we lost one night at Mawamba Lodge have to pay extra for our night in Colurs, but the will get picked up on Monday at 6:40AM for Mawamba and all should be back on track - cross your fingers!!!

Stay tuned..............