Our travel agent at Kilroy had booked us a weird set of flights for our trip to the United States, where we would start by visiting my old host family in Oregon (I was an exchange student in high school in 2006-2007). To get there from Lima we would start by flying to San Jose in Costa Rica and continue to Los Angeles with a technical stop at Guatemala. In LA we would have to get our things from the belt and check them in again for the final flight to Portland Oregon. This was, apparently, much cheaper than any other options. I truly respect Kilroy for offering these kinds of deals to us, many travel agencies wouldn't be so willing to make their clients suffer through such trips to save a little money, so they won't even tell about the options. That being said, it really was an awfully long trip…

We started by hailing a taxi from the street and negotiating a rate of S/35 for the trip to the airport. This was done at about 7.30 a.m.. Our flight to Costa Rica took off at 10.50 a.m. and landed on schedule at about 1.50 p.m. local time (-1 hour). We had a bit of a wait there with the second plane departing at 5.35 p.m. and taking until 7.15 p.m. (no time difference) to get to Guatemala. This being a technical stop and us continuing on with the same plane with the same flight number and seats we thought we would spend the next 45 minutes sitting still while some people got off and others got in. However, we were asked to get off the plane so the flight attendants could check and clean it. Turned out we weren't allowed to just go through the gate and wait to get back on, we had to go through a security screening situated a long way away from the plane and the gate. Even though we had just gotten off a plane we went through all the formalities: checking of the passport and the boarding pass (1), followed by X-raying our carry-on luggage, followed by a metal detector and a patting, followed by another checking of passports and boarding passes (2). With that dealt with we almost ran to the gate where we showed our passports and boarding passes (3), opened our bags for checking, showed our passports and boarding passes (4), were patted a bit, showed our passports and boarding passes (5!) and got back in the same plane and the same seats.

Really it wasn't as easy as that. When we got to the gate the checking of the passports seemed to take awfully long so Sini asked what the lady was looking for. She replied, with puzzlement, that we seemed to be missing the ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) required to enter USA. The E in ESTA standing for Electronic, we were also pretty puzzled, not to mention annoyed. She seemed determined that after we had successfully completed the form and paid the thing online it would magically appear in our passports. She also seemed pretty determined not to let us re-enter the plane. Luckily she was one of those people who break easily under pressure. First of all, we were the last ones getting back to the plane and it was in a hurry to go. Second of all she probably didn't really have a clue of what she was doing. Thirdly, she was very wrong. Fourthly I told her so in a very determined manner. She let us through and we got to continue our voyage.

The good part about these first three flights was that we got EXIT-seats on all of them, meaning more legroom and comfort. They also served surprisingly large amounts of alcohol, even mixing up simple drinks like rum and coke. After seeing one guy ask for a shot of Red Label I thought I should do the same, but keeping up with our hygiene precautions I asked mine to be served without ice. I got what I asked for, and more since I was served about three regular servings of booze. Apparently the alcohol is poured up to the same line on the glass regardless of whether or not part of the volume is filled with ice.

We arrived to Los Angeles at about 0.15 local time (-2 hours to Lima) the next day and went through one of the slowest lines we've been on this trip to get stamped in to the US. No paper copies or anything like that were needed for proof that we had done the ESTA thing, by the way. After that we got our bags and walked to another terminal to kill some time since our next flight wasn't leaving until 10.50 a.m.. I tried to get some sleep on Sini's yoga mattress, but had a very hard time doing it. We weren't able to check in to our last flight until 4.30 when we had to pay additional $25 each to have our bags join us at Portland. Then we waited. For a very long time. We had thought that LAX would be one of those big airports where you have dozens of stores and hamburger joints lined up in every terminal, but the truth was different. We had to walk to another terminal to find a book store where we picked up Lonely Planet's USA guidebook. Sini walked yet to another terminal in search of a McDonald's or similar, but couldn't find one for us to eat in. The only "reasonable" food available was cold sandwiches for $12. So we stuck with our snacks.

It was a very, very long wait.

The time went by eventually and our last plane departed on time at 10.10 a.m., arriving at Portland a little ahead of schedule at 12.15. We might have made it earlier still, but just as the plane was starting its descent a very upset looking lady jumped out of her seat and rushed to the back of the plane where she crashed to the floor and demanded to be let into the toilet, crying. The flight attendant eventually had no choice but to open the bathroom door and let her lock herself in. After that he called the captain and the plane slowed down to a crawl. I didn't know planes that big could fly so slow. When the lady finally re-emerged from the toilet she was seated next to the flight attendant and we landed just minutes afterwards.

And then we were finally there! The father of my old host family was there to pick us up and take us back to their place, the same house I spent ten months in all those years ago. It still had a feel of home to it and we were extremely happy for the welcome we received, a big thanks to them for that!