SJC - LAX - SJO

First leg is a small hop from San Jose to Los Angeles. There's a little snag:

"Your plane is 58 minutes out. As soon as it gets here, we'll try to get you to L.A. as quickly as possible."

-- Friendly Gate Attendant

The flight is currently 45 minutes delayed. Oh well, it doesn't really matter whether we sit at the gate at SJC or LAX.

The delayed plane arrived as expected.

And just before departure, we get a notification that the connecting flight at LAX is delayed as well. Air traffic control held us on the ground at SJC for another 20 minutes because of congestion at LAX.

An hour after we took off eventually, we arrived at gate 37 at LAX.

The outbound flight leaves from gate 35, so the walk to the rest rooms was longer than getting to our connection. The inbound delayed aircraft from Minneapolis arrived eventually.

We finally departed Los Angeles at 1:15am.

6 hours later we were on approach to San Jose International Airport, Costa Rica. The mountains and forests are greeting us from below.

Arrival procedures and immigration was easy and efficient. I read many horror stories about SJO, how overcrowded the airport is, but for us, traveling off-peak season, it was a very nice experience.

Outside the airport doors we were picked up by a representative of AdobeCar and got a ride to the rental car location. Let the adventure begin.