Note: many photos have not been scanned in yet. I did not have a digital camera back in 97/98 so I'll have to scan those in the future. Some photos from the 99/2000 trip might appear here.

  February 15th, 1997 - Saturday Morning (Washington D.C., USA)

Well, I landed at the Washington/Dulles airport without any problem. The flight was OK, a little bumpy toward the end because of the high winds. At least I didn't miss my plane this time (I missed my first flight down to the Amazon last year). I got to my terminal at Newark with plenty of time to spare. I then got on this little propeller plane with only 3 seats per row.

As the plane taxied out, the right propeller was not on and this caused some of the passengers to grumble. The flight attendant, a young blond lady with huge bug-eyes stared at the passengers and assured that it will be turned on before take-off. She joked that she usually tells the passenger that they use both propellers on the way up (from DC), but only one on the way down. Needless to say, I was not amused.

While reading USA-Today during the flight, I was surprised that the average salary for the American Airline pilots is $120K. I wouldn't become a pilot for any amount of money though. Once landed, to travel between the terminals, they have these huge-ass shuttles that take passengers from one terminal to another. They reminded me of the Spice harvesters from the movie Dune. That's all for now.

  February 15th, 1997 - Saturday Night (Mexico City, Mexico)

The jet that took us from DC to Mexico City is akin to a 737 and fairly new. Above the passengers, every three rows, are LCD TV panels which fold down. I got seated next to an elderly couple and they were pleasant and quiet during the whole trip. They showed "First Wives' Club" as the in-flight movie and a mixture of other shows from NBC, Discovery, and The Golf Channel.

Another elderly couple seated behind me was driving me crazy. The reminded me of George Castanza's parents from Seinfeld where the mother has a high pitched annoying voice and the father is stupid. The woman talked throughout the movie with her high-pitched voice trying to explain the movie to her hubby. Of course they both have their headphones on so she was louder than ever. The flight attendant had to tell the guy to lower his voice because when she asked him what he wanted to drink, he shouted at her - not realizing that he's shouting because he had his stupid headphones on. It was actually a bit amusing.

We landed in Mexico City at 11:00PM EST, and dropped off about 30 passengers. The plane then restocked for about 30 minutes and more passengers came on. It's a plane with mostly American/European passengers now. By the time we took off again, I was already feeling a little sick from the flight, closed space, my lingering cold, and some of the medication I was taking. By the time we landed in Costa Rica, I was ready to be anywhere with a solid ground and a bed. I never felt this bad before, not even previous flights that were longer.

I made the mistake again of reading the newspaper. The paper had an article about a 737 that crashed in a Brazilian Amazon Jungle town while trying to land - hit some treetops but only the copilot got killed. It reminded me of coming back from the Amazon where my tripmates teased me incessantly about planes crashing while flying back from Peru to Miami, and then me picking up the paper in Miami and reading about the TWA 800 crash.

Anyway, the plane landed safely and I went through immigration and customs without any problem, but I found out that when I gave my car keys to my sister, who dropped me off at the airport, I also gave her my luggage key. Now I only have 3 days worth of clothes. My life jacket, clothes, and toiletry bag are all in the big luggage. This is turning out to be the worst trip yet. I didn't get out to the parking lot until probably 1:30CST.