A nice quiet evening in San Jose. Kolkatta photos.

There are people dancing Tango outside in the garden. We have tummys full of Tacos and Burritos, so let's catch up with some photos.

This was our first hotel in India, in Kolkata. Try to guess what these things on the ceiling are for. It was an interesting hotel with lots of men conspiring something on the ground floor, and one of the reception workers insisting to take our photos on his mobile phone.

As is common in India, our Taxi driver didn't really know where our hotel was. So after an hour of driving around and asking many people, we finally found it. During that time, Michael thought he saw 2 men carrying a dead body.

We found this market the next morning, near to the railway station.

Monkey in a dress.

Kolkata is the last place in India to have foot-drawn rickshaws. We couldn't find the cafe we were looking for so this guy took us there - barefoot. Most of these guys are low caste and sleep on the street. We gave him a big tip.

The famous Indian Coffee house.

The Victoria Monument.

In the evening we saw a wonderful lights and fountain show in a park.

Some trash cans from a scary childhood.
We then went on to the station to catch our night train to Gaya....which departed 3 hours late. But it was interesting to see as what seemed like half the city set up beds in the station to sleep.

Do you know the way to San Jose? I've been away so long.....

So we made it safely to San Jose in Costa Rica. Chilling out at a lovely youth hostel with mountain views and hammocks in the garden. Taxi ride from the airport was absurdly expensive but we are just glad to have a bed to sleep in for a whole night. Feels like luxury.

Our next flight goes 29 hours from now. So we are just going to take it easy today.

Adventure rescued...at a price...

Safely arrived in Los Angeles. Checked into a crazy and cool motel for the quick stopover.

Michael Superstar has managed to re-book the journey down to Asuncion, but with fees and price differences, has put us 1000 plus euros overbudget.

We will be leaving tonight at 2:30 down to Costa Rica with a 24 hour stopover there.

Then on to Lima and Asuncion, arriving on 18th at 3:25.

Off to get 3 hours sleep now.... poor tired Kiyomi has already nodded off...

Check-ins and Bombscares.

We are checked in, and while we were waiting in line for the check in the police discovered a couple of suspicious suitcases near to the line. After a while the bomb squad turned up with dogs and all the equipment.

We are beginning to think that somebody is surely trying to kill us....

Not sure what we can do when we arrive in L.A. tomorrow. Maybe we can get a flight, maybe we have to quickly redesign the whole trip, and lose a whole load of flights into the bargain....

A slight improvement.

After 14 hours of waiting to get some customer service from the Airline here. And despite me seeing on the internet that tickets for today's flight are still for sale, and the airline workers telling me that there are no seats available, we have finally got 2 confirmed seats to Los Angeles tonight.

I am now struggling to rebook our connecting flights down to Asuncion. A little bit difficult as the airlines call centre number for Tokyo also doesn't work....

Disaster!!! Well that's everything somewhat messed up!!! Flight missed!!!

So, our 2 hour train journey to the airport became an 8.5 hour helltrip including authentic Japanese sardine-can train squash, wrestling with salary-men to get up to a platform (Michael won), and being stranded for an hour when the power cut out on our train.

So of course we arrived some 3 hours late for our flight, and the airline workers decided to knock-off work 5 minutes early, so we missed them, and their call centre didn't bother to pick up. One would think in crisis situation that one would have one's workers stay on a bit longer to help stranded passengers. I will reveal the name of the airline if they don't pull their socks up.

So, we will now miss our connecting flights.

However TACA/LACSA airlines have a very helpful live chat service and we may be able to book or cancel those.

AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

I'm sure we will find an answer.

Ideas tips and suggestions gladly received. We have 10 hours until the airline workers come back.

Status update. Leaving Japan soon.

We are leaving Japan this evening on a Singapore airlines flight to LAX in Los Angeles. The trains to the airport seem to be running at the moment, however the streets to the station are traffic-jammed. We had a 3.0 quake during breakfast.

We then have a 12 hour stopover in LA, maybe we will try to go down to Venice beach.

Then we take another night flight with LACSA to San Salvador.

Then 7 hours stopover.

Then we fly to Lima in Peru. With TACA.

Another stopover.

Then we fly to Asuncion in Paraguay also with TACA.

Arriving in Asuncion on 16th, at 03:45.

Should be nice and tired after that.