When one letter makes a big difference

Traveller Samantha Lazzaris was planning a holiday in San José, Costa Rica, filled with yoga, meditation, hiking and voluntary work. She ended up in San Juan, Peurto Rico. Waiting outside the airport, she asked the taxi driver to take her to her hotel, giving him an address in San José, Costa Rica. “He looked in amazement, speechless,” she said. “Then [he] laughed and said, ‘This is not Costa Rica. It’s Puerto Rico’.”’ How did it happen? Apparently, the Bristol branch of Thomas Cook had entered the wrong code. Both similar sounding places, with even more similar sounding, and looking, codes - SJO (San José) and SJU (San Juan). To make matters worse, San Jose is also known as Juan Santamaria. According to The Times, tourists looking forward to a trip to San José had also found themselves in San José, California. La Paz, Bolivia gets confused with La Paz, Mexico, and Santiago in Chile gets confused with San Diego, in southern California. Source: Times, 11 February 2009. http://tinyurl.com/c83vou

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0