A fine day in Costa Rica
Golf Notes is coming to you on this fine day of May 1st from Carbone Uno Talamanca Costa Rica. My wife, Jan, and I arrived here on April 26th. It was an adventure. A week before our scheduled departure I realized my passport had expired. Honestly. I thought I had renewed it last year. Alas, I hadn’t. Navigating the normal channels it takes eight to ten weeks to renew a passport. For an additional fee, you can expedite the process down to three weeks. We didn’t have three weeks. We have informed a call to Washington DC at 5 AM can net you an emergency appointment with the San Francisco Passport Agency if you have the necessary documents which include proof of an impending flight. We rebooked our flight for the following week and got our emergency passport appointment for the day before we flew.
On the day before our flight, we arrived at the passport agency in plenty of time for my 12:30 appointment. I navigated the security barrier, much like at an airport, emptying pockets into a bin…belt, shoes, pistols, knives, wallet… then went through an xray machine. Clean. Off to the 3rd floor where I waited my turn, had the right documents, and was informed that if I came back at 3: PM I could receive my updated passport.
We passed time in San Francisco, eating, looking, then went back to the agency where I stood in line behind fifty folks and finally got my renewed passport. Yea!! We flew out at 1:45 am and seven hours later found ourselves circling the airport in San Jose Costa Rica unable to land because of the weather. We ended up bumping our way onto a smaller airport in Liberia northern Costa Rica. There we sat in the airplane for three hours waiting for the weather to improve. It did. Because we landed so late we had to cancel our hotel reservation and a shuttle ride to Puerto Viejo.
We spent the night in a nice little neighborhood hotel in San Jose, got the 5: am shuttle to the Caribbean side, and here we are in the Carbone Uno jungle. The howler monkeys are howling, the birds twittering and us recouping.
The golfing community will dearly miss you Brooks Sheifer.