Today has possible been the most traumatic travelling experience of my life! Picture this. We turn up to the airport, admittedly feeling a little worse for wear having said goodbye to our friends at The Point, only to be told that our tickets are invalid and we wont be able to fly to Costa Rica. Although we had a bit of a language barrier I managed to find out the problem!

TACA airlines were no longer accepting paper tickets from STA and STA had issued us with paper tickets. I rang STA in UK and racked up quite a phone bill and must have aurgued in Spanglish for a good 4/5 hours with various different people. STA had no clue there was a problem and it ended up reaching the Head of STA and the Head of TACA who had it out over the phone. We missed our first flight but we eventually werte told we would be put on the afternoon flight! We made sure we had a big lunch on STA´s expense as they have promised to reimburse us for our troubles.

So at 3 o´clock when STA UK was closed and we´d checked in and been through security we were sitting waiting at the gate when the supervisor of TACA approaches. All three of us got the feeling it wasnt good news and we were right! He said we weren´t allowed on the flight unless we paid a penalty at $25 dollars each! I argued that this wasnt our problem and that he should take this up with STA not us but he tried to insist he was doing us a favour by allowing us on this flight!

The law student inside me came out arguing that after giving us tickets and telling us that we wouldn´t be charged it was too late to then ask for money. Thankfully someone at STA had given us a name of a person high up in TACA so as soon as we did a bit of name dropping and we gave them our puppy dog eyes we were being bustled onto the plane. In all honesty I think they were all just fed up of fighting with me as it was clear we weren´t backing down and they knew they would have a challenge on their hands if they made us miss our second flight!

We´ve got one heafty complaint to make when we get home!

Just arrived in Costa Rica safe and well!

Emma. xxx