Sitting in the lobby of "villa blanca" way up in the hills of Costa Rica. It's this eco/green hotel on something like 300 acres of land, in a cloud forest (basically clouds all around us) and got a FULL day of filming in. I'm freaking beat!

Some hilarious footage today at the airport of NatureAir... Wait, lemme go back to yesterday. We flew in to Costa Rica on a flight that was supposed to land around 830p. Just before landing the captain came on overhead and said there is too much fog on the ground in San Jose, so we're going to land in Liberia instead. oh ha ha. very funny, liberia is on the other side of the world, funny joke. So then he says, yep, the control tower can't even see the runway in san jose, so we are definitely landing in liberia in about 15 minutes and will figure out how to get you back to san jose afterward.

They announce that in English and my camera guy and I look at each other and wonder if the joke is just on the american people, but sure enough, they announce the same liberian detour in spanish, too. Now brad (camera guy) and I are rolling our eyes... like, ok, this joke is going a little far, it's just not funny anymore.

We land, they say welcome to liberia, we think it's completely tacky and just downright retarded that they're trying to make people believe we landed on a completely different continent. We notice no one is gathering their belongings to exit the plane, so Brad looks at the magazine they put in the back of your seat, turns to the map and sure enough, Liberia is about 15 minutes by plane from San Jose. lol. Jokes on us I guess.
We sit in Liberia for over 3 hours before they agree to let us fly into San Jose and end up getting into San Juan over FOUR hours late! There's a taxi driver there to pick us up and we go to the "only green business hotel" in the city and I'm not really impressed. I guess I thought it was going to be luxurious and business like and while it was, they do a good job of making it feel like a regular old hotel. A little nicer than a holiday inn or something, but just a standard hotel. I meet with the owner of 3 of the hotels we're going to visit and he helps me reorganize our itinerary to make it a little less hectic. Instead of going to 6 places, we're going to 4 total, 2 nights at each except for this green business hotel.
We had an appointment to go to the airport to interview the people at NatureAir, so we left the green business hotel, get to the airport, do a little filming outside (ie: here we are at the only carbon neutral airline, natureair's main airport... blah blah blah). We go inside, they give us funny orange jackets and take us on a tour of the planes outside. Cameraman Brad wants to watch a plane start up and take off so we position ourselves fairly close to the plane in order to capture it and as the plane is taking off, a piece of dirt blows into my eye. No big deal, we all get stuff in our eye from time to time, right? It'll come right now.

Or.. maybe not. That began the next oh, hour of hilariousness. The dirt that went in my eye I think had super glue on it because trying to get it out myself didn't work... My eye at this point is really getting scratched from whatever went in there and wiping my eyeball with my sleeve doesn't help, eye drops do nothing, washing my eye in a water fountain doesn't work either. I couldn't open my eye at all unless I was holding my eye lid up off of my eye, but because it was so bright and because my eye was tearing like crazy there was no way to do any filming. So the lady giving us the tour says we can walk over to the medic station who might be able to help. I somehow make my way over there completely unable to see out of my right eye and super bright sun shining in the other and find INS, a couple medics, firemen, and a few other onlookers. They sit me down, flash a light in my eye, say they can't find anything but will wash my eye out with saline fluid.

They put me in a different chair where I could put my head back and the guy gets a bag of saline... like the kind of drip you get in a hospital. They get a hand towel to hold under my eye, cut the bag open and the first attempt to wash saline in my eye hits my entire head instead. My forehead, bangs, and the entire top of my head are completely drenched. I'm laughing, I've got easily 5 people watching and Brad and David filming the entire thing.
I was completely soaked by the time he was done and unfortunately it didn't work, so here's when it gets good. After trying to wash it a good 6 or 7 times he then decides i should go to the hospital, but in the meantime opening and closing my eye is really bad for my eyeball so he decides to tape my eye closed and put a patch over my eye!!! seriously.

After they tape my eye and getting filmed saying ARRGGGHH quite a few times between my hysterical laughter, they say, okay, we'll arrange transportation to the hospital. There is no way I'm going to the hospital, even though the thing in my eye was scratching the hell out of my eyeball anytime i moved my eye. I've got a huge white gauze patch over my right eye, a camera crew following me around and i've got to walk back in the airport .. in front of more people! so, so embarrassing.

I get into the airport, find the bathroom as stealthily as possible, carefully rip the duct tape and gauze from my eye and try to wash my eye out again in the sink. No dice. I then try to figure out how to turn my eye lid inside out since the chard of glass scraping the crap out of my eye seems to be lodged there. I get a credit card from my purse, pull out my eyelid and stick the credit card in my eyelid to get it to flip inside out. There was a lady in the bathroom watching me in disgust wondering if she could help. I finally get my eyelid to stay flipped inside out and sure enough I could find the culprit piece of whatever it was stuck to the inside of my eyelid. I wet a tissue and the horrified, yet helpful lady saw the dirt and removed it from my eyelid. There was another small piece I was able to remove myself and then my eye was completely fine!
I now have a bloodshot right eye, zero makeup on the right side of my face and wet hair that's stuck to my forehead... great for hosting a potential tv show.

Luckily I brought my makeup, quickly fixed it up.. and well, as you know, i'm stunningly beautiful so it really didn't take long at all. ;)
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From then on it was the kind of filming you'd imagine.. shots of the plane, i interviewed a pilot, i learned how to use those orange sticks and directed a plane out waving the wands, i got to sit in 2 cockpits, one of which no one was on the plane so I was able to get on the loud speaker and pretend i was the pilot. fun and hilarious for me. "this is your captain speaking, captain tracy hayes, please keep your hands and feet in the aircraft at all times. this is my first flight, so wish us luck in getting there safely. sit back, relax and enjoy the ride" stupid fun, but fun nonetheless.
Oh, I started this entry out telling you we were in Villa Blanca and forgot to go back to it. The owner arranged transportation for us from San Jose to here (90 min ride through the hills/mountains) and he picked us up at NatureAir's airport. We went back to the green business hotel (parque del lago), packed our bags, did a quick interview and then came here.

It's so gorgeous here. We're in a cloud forest, so i dont know how to describe it. Basically we're in lush green mountains and everywhere around us there might be clouds at the same level, so you're kind of immersed in them. Anyway, poor description, but here's where we're staying tonight and tomorrow night: http://villablanca-costarica.com/ They gave me the honeymoon suite, so i've got a jacuzzi, a porch overlooking this chapel where the sun rises, a separate bathroom with stand-up shower, stone floors, very cool. http://www.villablanca-costarica.com/accommodations/ there are some pictures.

Tonight we filmed at the restaurant, watched them prepare my "organic" food, i sat at the table by myself while they filmed me eating, which is weird and awkward, but fun nonetheless. I have always wondered why someone would get filmed sitting by him or herself, but whatever, we may or may not use it.

Tomorrow is a jam packed day. We wake up ... errtt. rewind. "I" wake up at 7ish, Brad and David wake up around 515a to catch the sunrise. At 8am we all meet for possibly my favorite part of the day. Okay, I have two favorite parts of tomorrow i'm looking forward to. The first one is at 8am we get to experience the HUMMINGBIRD feeding! Apparently a bunch of hummingbirds swarm to the feeders in the morning and i cannnnooot wait to see it! so so excited! I LOOVE hummingbirds. yay!

Right after the hummingbird feeding/taping, we are going ZIP LINING! wooo weee. That's my second favorite part of tomorrow. Then we have another tour of the hotel's green, sustainable operations part. We're going to look at their organic gardens, the compost area, the special way they do laundry to help save the environment, and a bunch of other random "green" things.
Okee doke... if you made it this far, high five.

I'm super, super tired from getting no sleep last night since we got in so late and were up ready to go at 630a.. filmed allll day and here we are at 940p about to crash. though, i have that awesome jacuzzi I think I'm going to jump in as soon as I get back to my room.