Do you know the way...?

Greetings everyone from San Jose, Costa Rica. After a death defying taxi ride we made it to the Hotel Don Carlos in one piece. We almost killed a motorcyclist and rode with two very old grumpy Texans, one of whom uttered "good thing I didn't bring a gun, I woulda shot someone by now." The sums up for us the land of freedom, the good ol' US of A. Our hotel in Florida was nice and we loved the roof-top hot tub and pool but geez the States gets on my nerves.

We arrived in Montreal just minutes before the big storm. Within twenty minutes of getting to the hotel, the snowflakes were the size of cotton balls and fell vigorously. Within a few hours, it was an all out assault, with winds gusting near 100km/h and the hotel across the road was barely visible. We decided to simmer in the jacuzzi tub because, by divine intervention, someone must have screwed up and given us the the "Honeymoon Suite." Boo hoo.

The next morning it was bedlam. We got up at 4:55 am and hustled downstairs to take the shuttle to the airport and met a mob in the lobby. The shuttle hadn't been there for thirty minutes and we knew were weren't going to make the next one either. Our flight left at 7:45 am and it was showing "on time." At 6:45 we finally pushed onto the shuttle and to our surprise, it took 5 minutes to get the airport. Hmmm. It took one hour for the shuttle to return, yet it only took five minutes one way. Are we to believe it takes 55 minutes to get back to the hotel?

Whatever, we got to the airport and it was pregnant with travelers, or rather, traveler wannabees. People were sleeping everywhere, on the carpet, on baggage belts and in chairs. The line for Air Cubana looked like it was 500 people long, but we found the lone WestJet counter and were second in line. No problemo. But when we arrived at our gate, the flight was delayed because they couldn't get fuel to the aircraft. Moments later we saw a snow plough at our gate so another problem was solved. But we continued to wait.

We struck up a conversation with the man sitting next to us: Roy was his name, and what started as idle chit-chat eventually merged into a full blown debate on movies, authors, Wal-Mart, the United States, Iraq War then back to movies. Roy remined me of Woody Allen, a manic dynamo of run-on sentences and self depricating humor. He would say: "What's your favourite movie... mine's Apolocolypse Now, the story in that movie, wow, and Silence of the Lambs, that first scene, you know, where they say Hannibal is a Monster, the screenplay, out of this world, and to think it had an 11 million budget, wow, that's puny by today's standards, so what's you favourite movie...? Roy sat in front of Julia on the plane, and as everyone was seated on a full plane, turned to Julia and said loudly: "So, how's that skin rash?". Roy sold paper for the Irving Family, but was also a screenwriter. He had a big screenplay in the works, a mystery called "Final Draft" about famous mystery authors disappearing in the grizzly manner of their best sellers. An interesting concept indeed, but I could imagine a movie mogel seeing another thick pile of paper and grunting "goddamn, Roy, not another one." We wished Roy well in Fort Lauderdale as he had 15 minutes to get from the Airport to his cruise. We got our bags and he was still waiting.

All was good, we got to Fort Lauderdale three hours late, checked in and headed to the bar for a drink and lunch. We struck up a conversation with another man at the bar. He was interested by us being from Canada and wanted our opinion on the United States election and the Iraq War. We were happy to oblige. There's so much news about the primaries down here, but none of it really makes sense, and this guy, Dave, said he really didn't understand it either. This begs the question. If you don't understand your system, how is it democracy? I won't bore you with the whole of the conversation, because Roy was far more interesting, but he said Iraq was a U.S. military base now and would be forever more because the United States could never stand for $300 dollar per barrel of gas. I could not have summed it up better myself.

Again, what's the deal with this county? The taxi driver wouldn't accept credit cards and Fort Lauderdale Airport was abuze with the blinketty-blinks and buzzes of laptop computers and the lonely conversations of people on cell phones and Blackberries. Airport have become a dumping ground of the electronically disposesed. How can you wait for an airplane and NOT do something with a battery powered box? We'd had enough, the people at the airport were grumpy as Hell's janitors and we did not look forward to another plane ride.

But here I sit writing an email from the Hotel Don Carlos and thinking about bedtime. We're up at 4:15 am to travel to Esquinas lodge and I'm ready to really get away from everyone. As long as there's no scorpions, we'll be fine.