Took the first flight of my trip today with American Airlines. It’s the first long-haul airline I’ve flown with where they don’t give you free alcohol! What a rip off! And the TV in the seat wasn’t “on demand” – you had to wait for the show to start, or you had to start watching the show in the middle of it.

I arrived at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas at 6.30pm local time. It’s a lot greener here than I expected, I expected it to be more desert like Las Vegas. Got a taxi ride to the place where I’m staying for one night, but the taxi driver had no idea where it was. We went round and round in circles, on the freeway, off the freeway, back on, off, u turns here and there, but we eventually found it, and he didn’t charge me for all the driving around in circles.

The confusion was because my confirmation said “Walnut Hill Drive”, but it was actually “Walnut Hill Lane”, and the driver says that the receptionist was giving poor directions. But when I checked in, I met the most eccentric hotel receptionist ever. She was raving to me about some confectionery called a “Chick-O-Stick” (it’s “Crunchy Peanut Butter and Toasted Coconut Candy”), and when I said I’d never heard of it, she gave me one of hers. And then I said I’d never heard of the other thing she was raving about, a “Skor” bar, and she gave me one of those too and told me to put it in the freezer. Plus she gave me free internet and a free room upgrade, she was awesome.

Then I went to buy some Bumbleebee Tuna from the pharmacy for 49 cents, but it had sold out. Which is fine, because I don’t like tuna, I just like the name! (remember Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura When Nature Calls?)

I’ll be flying out at 10am tomorrow to Costa Rica. My time zones are a bit messed up, it’s 3am Sunday in London, so it must be 2pm Sunday in New Zealand and it’s 9pm here in Texas. Almost every TV channel seems to be taken up by a tornado in Yazoo City, Mississippi.

CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS.

PS I haven’t seen George Bush yet but I hope to.

I don’t want to jinx it… but looks like I might be flying out on Saturday to Costa Rica!

On Tuesday night they suddenly announced that all UK airports will be opening again effective immediately. Quite a shock announcement. I almost wasn’t going to post this because I didn’t want to jinx it, but I don’t see any reason now why on Saturday I won’t be flying.

My flights to LA and Vegas were cancelled twice along with those of my sister because of the volcanic ash cloud. So, instead I went with my sister and spent a week up in the North-east of England with a day trip to the Lake District. It’s not quite Vegas, but we got to stay with family which was really nice. CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THAT TRIP.

So, my sister’s Vegas trip is now going to be the first week in July instead. A bit sad for her really as I think she wanted to go this week, but at least it will be happening sometime… hopefully.

A bit sad for me too, because everything’s a bit more expensive in July. But this ash cloud has cost me a fair bit of money already, so I’m kinda getting used to it. Here’s what I’ve had to pay so far:

• £209 on a lost hotel booking in Los Angeles
• £200 or so to rebook everything in July – everything’s just a bit more expensive in the summer
• £73 to change my plane ticket
• £60 worth of phone calls

It feels like I’ve been on the phone forever – to American Airlines, the hire car company, ebookers, hotels, rail companies, bus companies… I just don’t want to be on the phone anymore! I hope the small town in Costa Rica where I’m going has no phone reception.

On a side note:

• American Airlines – really helpful every time I called them.
• Ebookers – never answered the phone – was on hold for over half an hour, and with access to only a mobile phone, it was excruciating knowing how much it was costing to be on hold. Tried to do things through their website, and kept getting “we have encountered an error”. GAH!
• Carhire3000.com – they’re good for USA bookings from the UK because they cover all necessary insurance, etc. But I’m annoyed with them because it says in big letters on their homepage “No Cancellation Fees”, however when I tried to cancel my rental car, they wanted to charge me a £109 fee. Go figure! Another example of blatant false advertising.

This whole debarcle could have cost me a ton more – because it looked so unlikely that the airports were going to reopen, I was going to book a 17-hour bus ride from London to Madrid, and book a one-way flight from Madrid to Costa Rica at a cost of £1,100, and then carry on with my original flight itinerary as planned. Then, I learned that if you miss the first leg of your flight itinerary, you’re not allowed to travel on any of the remaining legs, even though you’ve paid for them and have confirmed seats! What a crock!

In addition, the bus to Madrid from London required me changing buses in Paris with a 75 minute layover, and in Spain with a 45 minute layover. If I did something wrong, or the bus was late, that would have been VERY costly. In addition, I tried to get through on the phone to buy rail tickets through Europe instead of the bus. I tried over five hours over two days. It was engaged every single time. Boy there must be a lot of stranded people out there.

The rail company being engaged turned out to be a blessing in disguise. And also, to make up for having to postpone our Vegas holiday, we’re now making it two days longer. It’s always important to look at things from a positive angle – even though sometimes that can be very hard!

So since Thursday the 15th, all UK flights in and out have been grounded because a volcano erupted in Iceland and the ash is drifting over the country.

So that means it looks like I’m not going anywhere, two days later it’s still hanging over the UK and isn’t showing any signs of going, in fact it’s getting worse.

I was supposed to be spending from April 16-24 in Los Angeles and Las Vegas with my sister, and then on April 25 she was gonig to come back to London and I was going to go on to Costa Rica. Our flight out was cancelled, and we’re rebooked for tomorrow (Sunday 18) but it looks like that will be cancelled too because the ash isn’t going anywhere.

So my sister won’t be getting a holiday at all by the looks of it. And the longer this ash continues, the more of my holiday I’m going to lose, and the more it’s going to cost me. I’ve booked Spanish classes in Costa Rica starting April 26 but if I can’t get there, they’re not refundable, and they cost a lot of money.

Also, I moved out of my flat, so if we don’t fly by Sunday, I will have nowhere to live.

For me, a week or two out of a 10 week holiday is not the end of the world, but I’m very sad for my sister who was looking forward to her week-long holiday since December. It’s kind of heartbreaking really.

But I keep hearing about people on the news who are stuck in countries where they don’t have visas, and people whose relatives are sick or have died, and they can’t travel to be with them, so I like to complain as little as possible because there are people out there with much worse problems than me.

I’m spending 5 weeks in Costa Rica, in a beach town called Samara in the Guanacaste province.

Google Maps Link
The Samara Beach website

Samara was essentially a place I picked at random out of a bunch of places in Costa Rica with Spanish schools. It’s apparently got about 1,000 people. I chose Costa Rica because my Spanish isn’t very good, and I hear there’s a lot of American tourists there – it will nice to be around other people that speak some English at first! It’s very warm (30-35 degrees at the moment).

I’m enrolled on a Spanish course which is 20 hours a week for each of the five weeks, and I’m staying in a homestay. Here’s what I know about my host family:

Norma lives with her husband and her daughter (born in 1994) and is an enthusiastic, talkative person who greatly enjoys her contact with foreigners. Her large, comfortable house has two student rooms, each with double beds, one with private bath, one shared. She has two dogs outside, one cat, and offers bikes for rent to those interested– she lives a little under a mile from the school.

It was exciting when I first booked it, but I’m getting nervous as it approaches because it’s going to put me way out of my comfort zone, mainly because I speak very little Spanish! But hey, I’ve thought about doing it for the last 18 months or so, and if I don’t do it I think I’d spend the next few years wondering what it would have been like.

I wonder if they don’t have street addresses in Costa Rica – the address of the school is listed as:

Del Banco Nacional de Costa Rica 50 mts oeste y 150 sur, frente al mar. Edificio de 2 plantas color amarillo – translated that means something like The National Bank of Costa Rica 50 meters west and 150 south, in front of the sea. A two-storey yellow building.

and the address of my homestay is given as:

De Pablitos Bar 500 metros al oeste en el Barrio Cantarrana, segunda entrada primera casa a la derecha. – roughly translated as Pablito’s Bar 500 meters to the west in the Cantarrana neighbourhood, second entrance first house on the right.

I hope I’ll be able to find them!

After five weeks in Costa Rica I’m going to Peru, and maybe Mexico.

I think that 10 weeks away from London means that I need to change the name of my blog! It was “My life, 11,473 miles from home – The life of me, living in London far away from my family and friends in New Zealand”, now I’m going to think of something else.

Well, I’ve been planning this for a year or so, but wanted to wait until unemployment figures were better and my pay review was over – I’ve quit my programming job at UBS.  If you’re interested in knowing exactly why I ended up quitting, send me an email

But I don’t even have another job lined up, instead I have booked plane tickets to Las Vegas in April, Costa Rica in May and Peru in June.  I’m also going to be doing the Inca Trail in Peru at the end of June with a couple of friends, and I can’t wait.

In Costa Rica I’ll be learning spanish for four weeks in a school located beside the beach.  That sounds great, but I better practice what spanish I do know so that I’m not completely hopeless when I get there.  Here’s where I’m going: Samara Beach.

When I get back in July I’m hoping to get back into contracting – because when I was a contractor in 2006 I got paid a lot more than when I was a full-time employee.  Hopefully it will be easy to get a contracting job since I spent four years in the investment bank at UBS and have some decent experience now.