Traveling to Costa Rica

Here's a tip for travelers. When packing to your weight maximum, don't use a bathroom scale to confirm weights! We arrived at Portland International Airport at 4:00am to check eight bags. Each was weighed to be just under the 50 pounds limit for no additional charge. As we checked the bags, each was just over 50 pounds. Thank the Lord for a helpful check-in woman who helped us sort the bags to create seven bags under 50 pounds and one under 80 so we only paid overweight charges for one bag...and they didn't notice our Rubbermaid Actionpackers exceeded their maximum dimensions by 1.5 inches.

Although we didn't want to, the only way we could make the baggage work was to include my guitar as checked baggage. Because of a misunderstanding we took it to the gate and they accepted it as an additional carry on at no extra charge. Perfect!

We took advantage of every opportunity to bring luggage by bringing two carry-on bags plus a "purse" for each of the four of us. Unfortunately, since two of us were six years old or younger, that meant one of the adults managed the kids with a couple bags and the other was the mule.

Tanner and Laura did great during the travel from Portland to Atlanta playing with presents received at Laura's birthday party just two days before.

Tanner loved the train at Atlanta International Airport and we spent some of our four hour layover commuting between terminals.

Costa Rica welcomed us warmly. Families get preferential treatment here so we were sent directly to the front of the Customs line and assisted through baggage. As we got to the exit of the airport at about 9:00pm local time John Lindquist met us and drove us about half an hour to Atenas, where the eMi office is located.

Tim