Oct 4 - Oct 5

Mom, Dad and I drove to San Francisco to have dinner at the Stinking Rose, but we got there super early so we parked and hiked to the top of Coit Tower. We've been to SF, and in the Bay, forever, but we've never been to the top. It drizzled a little bit, but overall the timing was great: there were few tourists, and there was no fight for the view at the windows. It was amazing to see the Bay all laid out beneath us. After Coit Tower, we walked to the restaurant and sat at the bar until Nana, Jim, Deanne and Steph joined us. Dinner was delicious and garlicky! We realized about half way through that garlic was perhaps not the nicest thing for me to eat before getting on a plane. But it was worth it, even the garlic ice cream.

Flight from SFO to Atlanta was uneventful. I had trouble sleeping, but the guy next to me didn't. His mouth was hanging open the whole time, from the moment we took off.

Atlanta is where things kind of unraveled, for a while. I picked up my backpack, then used the hotel phones to call the Baymont Hotel where Grant was sleeping. I asked them to send the free shuttle to pick me up. The phone was very quiet and it was noisy in the airport even though it was only 6am. The lady explained where to go, I followed the signs to the shuttle pick up area outside, and I waited 30min. The hotel is only a mile outside of the airport, and when I got tired of waiting I called to ask where the shuttle was. The lady said they had to come back to the hotel for some reason (again, the volume on the phones was turned waaaay down) and she said they would come get me. Thirty minutes later, it was already light and I had waited an hour. I was sick of waiting, so I walked over to the taxi area and had some guy drive me there. It cost me $14, but it was my first time in a taxi. When I got to the reception area, the lady at the front desk not only had an extremely heavy accent, she also said there was no one there named Grant. Close to tears, I insisted there had to be. Eventually I spelled out his name, she found him in the computer and let me go upstairs. A shower and a nap later, and I was in a much better mood. Grant had apparently had better luck the night before with the shuttle; it was the driver's last run, and so he stopped at the liquor store on the way to the hotel! At checkout time, we called the shuttle and headed back to the airport 7 hours before our flight. Originally, we had wanted to explore Atlanta a little, but we both had 50 pound backpacks so this wasn't practical. We spent about 3-4 hours sitting in the airport near a dinosaur skeleton statue, eating Grant's leftover pizza from the night before and the muffin and pastry from the continental breakfast supplied by the hotel.

Around 2pm we checked in for our flight to San Jose, Grant still on the standby list. There were 59 seats available, but no one could give him a definitive answer or an actual boarding pass. We waited at the gate for a while, and checked with the overly curt gate agent there. She claimed that he may not get a seat due to the amount of freight they could be carrying, which made no sense. She made us wait an hour (me terrified he wouldn't get on our flight and I would have to go to San Jose alone) until she called him over to get his boarding pass. Our plane was delayed though, due to some kind of water flow problem in the first class bathrooms. We ended up on a different plane at a gate a few over, and the pilot made up the 30 minute delay en route. we arrived in San Jose only 5 minutes behind schedule.

After arriving, we picked up our bags (mine was one o the last one off the carousel, which really made me freak out a little). Customs was simple, as was immigration. Outside the airport it was raining, but we found the man from Gaudy's Hostel quickly. He gathered up an older German man as well, and piled us in the shuttle. We traveled about 20 minutes, and it cost $24. We paid for our rooms when we arrived, plus Oct 14 and 15 when we get back to the city. We had a private room with a bathroom, which we probably didn't need. We could easily have shared the bathroom. The showers were hot. There are no screens on the window, but there didn't seem to be many bugs. It was humid, but not unbearable. We spent a bit re-packing our backpacks since the plane to Puerto Jimenez had a weight limit of 15 pounds for checked bags for our ticket price. we planed to leave our large bags in the luggage storage at the Hostel. we had so much stuff to sort through, the whole bed was covered in things.

Here is Grant, ready to board the Small plane to Puerto Jimenez, decked out in the heaviest clothes he has. Es ridiculoso