Day 16 / 17

A (quiet) breakfast was served at 3 am. Dirk would not join us to the airport and had given us directions on where to go and what to do on the airport and I had reassured him that I would take care of that as assistant guide (we’re not talking rocket science here). So when Chavo was back again to pick us up and take us to the airport at 3.30, we said goodbye to Dirk and he told me to take his seat in the front of the bus (Chavo’s knife stayed where-ever it usually was, so I assumed he had forgiven me for the events earlier that week). I helped Chavo navigate the city as I had seen Dirk do: “libre aqui”. It was a pretty easy job, as despite the size of the city, traffic was about as dense as traffic in Uppsala at 3 am. When we approached the airport, I could not get the microphone to work, so I used my natural talents to communicate to the group that my style of guiding was mostly based on own responsibility.
We left San José about 45 minutes late, as there was something wrong with the air-conditioning, but since we had 5 hours transfer time in Houston I was not too worried. When we arrived in Houston, we went through customs, transfer-checking, and multiple security checks with the group. At one of those checks, there was this officer that took a gospel-inspired approach to his job, asking (almost singing) who the shepherd was of our group and I decided I could take that role as well. The whole procedure was quite simple; we were all allowed to pass and he showed me what direction to go next (perhaps this job is worth considering). As by that time, 9 hours had passed since breakfast, I was hungry as a horse. To my big surprise it was hard to find a place with burgers and when we found it, something went wrong with my order, so I had to wait an even longer time for food. Luckily, I already had my medium sized coke (forgot how medium ‘medium’ is in the US). When I finally got my order, I ate my burger and fries facing chocolate muffins and since I realized I had not eaten any chocolate at all for over 2 weeks, I had one of those as well.
In the plane to Amsterdam I was the only one sitting in a row of 3 seats. I shamelessly settled in two of the seats for a movie and when I wanted to get some sleep after that, I figure I could just as shamelessly use all 3 seats, 3 pillows, and 2 blankets to be a bit more comfortable than usual. It did not help much to get some proper sleep, but it did prevent the spasms that I tend to get when curling myself in an upright-no-leg-space-sleep position.
At the airport in Amsterdam, they just started to announce that if your luggage from Houston was not on the belt, you should go to the ‘luggage-recovery-desk’, when I saw my backpack. I was very relieved that my bag had made it, as I realized about 15 minutes too late in San José that I had forgotten to take out my keys to put them in my hand luggage, and for some reason in the US we did not have to transfer our luggage ourselves, so I could not get them there either. I figured however that more than 4 hours would be enough transfer time to get all our bags on the plane anyway, but Tineke’s bag had not made it, so I really did get lucky there. Since I don’t like doing things half-heartedly, I decided to properly finish my job as assistant guide and go with Tineke to assist one last time.
When we were waiting for our luggage, Tineke and Tonnie had already given me a thank you card, for all the help I had provided during the trip and they asked me not to leave without them. When Tineke and I finally made it to the arrivals hall, her husband, and a daughter and grand-daughter of Tonnie were waiting there with flowers for me. Her husband told Tineke that here flowers were still in the car and she gave him a secretive nod that that was okay, so I got the feeling the flowers where re-purposed shortly before we stepped out. Nevertheless, I have to say that I did not see that much gratitude coming and I felt a bit shy about it, but I did enjoy the final colorful reminder of this vacation for 2 more weeks.