Tocumen International Airport in Panama. My last stop before home. There was an eight-hour layover. A hotel hardly seemed worth it. I had a small yoga mat for comfort and two plush bath towels from the set I was bringing back. I rolled up one for a pillow, and the biggest towel worked as a blanket.
And it was needed. While outside was equatorial heat, inside was a meat locker. Cool blasts of air blew down from the ceiling. I was one of around one hundred people overnighting, all bundled against the chill like football fans on a cool autumn day.
Flying Copa Through Panama
In 35 years of flying in and out of Costa Rica, this was my first time flying Copa, based out of Panama. Quick review. The positives: Copa allows a carry-on and a personal item and is generous with the maximum luggage dimensions. All flights were on time. On the longer flight, they served a functional hot breakfast or lunch, and the beverage carts passed by several times.
The negatives: no video screen, no reading material, only two bathrooms, and seats that were cramped and too close together. It was like being on a school bus with wings. Spirit Airlines may have gone under, but Copa, it seems, is ready to carry on with the same indifference toward passenger comfort.
Air travel has evolved, or maybe devolved is the better word, from the days when people dressed up to fly. Photos from the fifties and sixties show elegant couples eating prime rib and drinking champagne at 30,000 feet. Flying was only for those who could afford it. Now it is an equal-opportunity means of transportation.
My typical dress code when flying these days is long pants and a button-up shirt. On my flights, most passengers dressed casually, while others were barely casual. The woman next to me, a Salvadoreña accompanied by three kids, wore an old pair of cut-off jeans and what looked like a pajama shirt. There were people dressed for exercise in spandex and sweat suits.
The worst dressed was a big 300-pounder, who fortunately was not seated next to me. He wore knee-length beach swim trunks, cheap rubber sandals, and a T-shirt that barely covered his ample gut. A bus with wings, filled with numerous flyers who looked like they belonged in a bus station.
Spending the Night at Tocumen Airport
We landed in Panama after 9 p.m. My connecting flight to Costa Rica was just before 6 a.m. Tocumen Airport has about 400 daily flights, and many of those connect throughout South America. In-flight announcements were made in Portuguese as well as Spanish and English.
Tocumen International was my hotel. After hours, an airport takes on a different look. A communal charging station had several phones left in the open, with no fear of theft. An airport at midnight is also maybe the only place in the world where no one bats an eye at seeing people sleeping on the floor in public.
I got comfortable on my yoga mat and was almost asleep when the night cleaning crew arrived, industrial vacuum cleaners whining inches from my head. At about 2 a.m., I got an email with my gate number. I lugged my heavy bags and walked a long 300 meters, about 984 feet, to my gate. It always seems there is a direct relationship between the amount of weight in the suitcases I carry and the distance to my gate.
At about 4 a.m., I rose from the floor, went to the restroom, splashed water on my face, slapped on some deodorant, and brushed my teeth. Back at the gate, the airport came to life for another day with a string of early flights to cities throughout the Americas.
We arrived in San José at 7 a.m., and by noon I was home, ready to catch up on the sleep I had missed.
