Travel and other junk

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If mischief was a middle name, he would have a copyright on it.

My 3rd son has always been terrible to travel with. I remember my very first flight with him to Puerto Rico. We were in business class at the very front of the plane. Right as the plane took off, nose towards the sky, this naughty 16 month old chucked his bottle to the floor and I watched, mortified, as it rolled down the aisle alllll the way to the back of the plane. Then he managed to grab his crayons and precede to do the same.

There was also his near naked stage, which he isn’t completely over, if I am being completely honest. *Covers face in shame!* I remember once on a flight in Central America. He was in the row across from me. I looked over and he was in his underwear. My mortification was a solid 12 out of 10!

And the meltdowns. Ohhhh, the meltdowns. Once when he was 3, we were visiting the Vatican Museum. I remember Nathan taking him into the courtyard where he melted down and screamed for what felt like an eternity. Nathan just sat there helpless because Q’s meltdowns were not consolable. They just had to run their course and then he would be fine. And these happened, EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

Buttttttt…remember that the things that cause us the most despair also bring us the most joy? Well, while he has caused me the lion share or my grey hair, he is simultaneously the BEST to travel with.

He makes new friends on every single trip we take. He is always the life of a party and makes everyone laugh. In Guatemala this summer, we went swimming at the hotel pool. There were some early-20 somethings swimming and the next thing I know, Q had them jumping through hoops for him, literally! I’m watching my son holding up a donut inner tube while people are diving through it and then doing the same for him.

In Costa Rica at the Hyatt, he swam and danced and played with a couple we met hanging out by the pool. A few hours later Q was sharing appetizers with them and the owner of a new hat and new best friends.

Once while walking the streets of San Juan del Obispo, an older gentleman was sitting on the sidewalk just relaxing. Q just walked up, gave a friendly “hola” and then sat next to him and just chilled until I caught up!

One of my favorite memories was in Morocco. We had just finished up dinner over in the Sahara desert. There were some young guys there hanging out and playing drums. Next thing I know, Quincy is right there, banging away on the drums while the young men cheered him on. He danced, and partied and laughed for hours with them!

I could go on and on.

I love this sour patch kid of mine so much and truly believe that his experiences he has had seeing the world has helped to shape the amazing little guy he is becoming.

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One night while digging through United award flights to get us back home from Costa Rica, I came across several flights which routed through El Salvador. One particular flight had an 18 hour layover and since the odds of booking a trip to El Salvador in the future were slim, I figured, YOLO and went for it.

As the trip neared, I was absolutely dreading this stop. For one, we had to leave our hotel in Costa Rica at 3:30 am in order to catch our early morning flight out. The flight leaving El Salvador then wouldn’t leave until 1am! The logistics were so complicated and I thought I had made a huge mistake but there as really no turning back now.

The night before we left, I decided to book a hotel in San Salvador with the hopes that I would be able to check in super early but worst case scenario we would have somewhere to drop our stuff off and go explore the area for a while until we could checkin.

Fast forward to the big day. We woke up bright and early and to my shock and pleasant surprise, my kids woke right up, no crying or meltdowns, packed up their stuff, and we headed to the airport. The flight was barely an hour long, and before we knew it, we were in the kids’ 19th country and my 32nd.

Immediately, our experience in El Salvador was incredible. Our pilot, he worked for Avianca and was from El Salvador, helped us off the plane and was happy to chit chat with my kids about all their questions. The various reps that helped us get our paperwork we needed to leave the airport went above and beyond anything I could have expected. They even offered to watch my kids while I ran to the ATM. Tragically, my kid insisted on coming with me!

We went straight to our hotel, a retro feeling but very nice luxurious Best Western in the middle of San Salvador. Now it’s barely even 9am so there is no doubt in my mind they won’t let us checkin. I walk up to the desk and tell them we are here and just asked to drop our stuff off and what the earliest time we could checkin would be. The lady went back and chitchatted with the manager and came back out, with cookies for my kids, and informed me my room was ready. My jaw hit the floor! We headed up and took a quick power nap. That was the best 12k points I have ever spent!

We left the hotel and went to a nearby pupusaria where we pigged out, drinks and all, for about $12.00 total. After lunch, we grabbed an uber and headed down to the historic area of town to check it out.

El Salvador was the most impoverished country I have ever visited and it was very visible everywhere you looked, yet despite the hardships these people face, they were hands down the kindest and more caring people I have ever met. I honest to good felt like Jesus at his second coming every time I interacted with anyone there. They would see us walk into their shop and smile and thank us from the bottom of their hearts for visiting. One lady, after a 10 second conversation, smiled and told me over and over how happy she was to have met me. Another sweet little old lady couldn’t get enough of Q and Loo. She couldn’t even help herself and grabbed Q’s face and started laying kisses all on him. He just stared at my while secretly enjoying all the attention!

My heart was so humbled after this incredible experience. El Salvador has a horrific wrap for being incredibly dangerous and violent, and although gang crime is a problem there, it’s important to remember that it’s such tiny percentage of the population who embarks in the violence and that the vast majority are kind and wonderful people who would never dream of hurting you.

One thing I never expected to do when I first started traveling was to develop lasting friendships with the people I meet. Sure, I knew I’d run into lots of individuals: We’d connect, exchange contact info, etc., but to actually build relationships? I never could have imagined.

On this trip, we truly won the lottery when it came to meeting incredible people. I posted about some of the other friends we made here and about the wonderful things they are doing for the people of Guatemala.

The next family I’m about to talk about just so happens to also be doing great things in Guatemala. You can learn more about their work here.

Anyway, my boys were out by the pool doing their thing when all of a sudden I heard laughter. A sound I’m not used to. That’s because my kids love to fight, so mostly I just hear screaming. Anyway, I ran out by the pool expecting to see blood and possibly death, but lo’ and behold: more children. And they looked about the same ages as my own children. I saw their father and we immediately struck up conversation. He told me that they visited Guatemala each year with their 5 young children, all of who just so happened to be super close in age to all of mine, except they had a baby caboose on the end. They worked hard to bring clean water and other health related resources to some of the very poor villages scattered throughout the country.

The kids all hit it off instantly and it was seriously a beautiful dream after that. They explored the grounds together; we hitched rides off of them into town and they treated us to the most delicious pupusaria; we explored San Juan del Obispo together and hit up the local chocolate factory and maybe sampled a little too much; the kids had talent shows together when it was too rainy to go out and explore; it really was amazing and my kids were beyond thrilled to have other kids to play with. Sadly, our time together ended all too soon and we both headed off onto the next part of our journey.

I’m still so humbled and awed by all of the incredible people we were blessed to meet on our trip this year. Sometimes it’s easy to lose the ability to see the good in people, but getting to meet such selfless and caring individuals definitely helped to restore my faith in humanity, not to mention inspired me to try and be kinder and more loving myself, something heaven knows I need to work on.

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Our time in Costa Rica felt like a crazy whirlwind of, I don’t know, crazy whirlwind stuff. I booked flights from GUA to SJO just a couple of days before we actually needed to leave, so the trip was destined to be a little nuts from the get go. Overall, I’m happy with our experience there, but felt we didn’t get a great and authentic experience because of the lack of planning on my part.

A few things I wish I would have known about going to Costa Rica before we had to find out the hard way would have been:

-Costa Rica is expensive. Or maybe I was just used to Guatemalan prices so the sticker shock felt extreme there, but we paid a lot of money for all the things. Because we flew into SJO instead of Liberia, and because someone lost ANOTHER driver’s license so couldn’t get a rental car, we had to take a shuttle to our hotel allll the way over in the Guanacaste region. We ended up busting out just about, hang on, I need a moment to write this because it still hurts… About a THOUSAND dollars for shuttle services. So. Painful. And no, I didn’t use any points for this one.

-The Andaz Papagayo is an aspirational resort that many rave about and at 20k points a night plus free breakfast if you are Globalist, it’s not a bad deal. Plus, it’s like the most beautiful resort ever. Oh, and the free child care is like the best thing since donuts. Where you save on points and miles, though, you spend on food and activities. We felt pretty resort captive after only the first day and we were there for 5! The salesmen trying to sell us tours were pushy and really overwhelmed me, enough so that I avoided the beach at all costs so I didn’t have to deal with them.

After our stay at the Andaz, we headed west to Tamarindo. Tamarindo was much more our style of vacation. I was able to snag a great little hostel near the beach, which included breakfast. We met up with some friends we had met via Instagram, @mac_explore, which you should totally go follow them if you don’t. They have been traveling since January of this year, I believe and have such beautiful pictures and inspirational posts.

We only stayed two days, but we had such a great experience there. My two big boys learned to surf.

I also got yelled at by a really really mean lady after a misunderstanding. To be honest, I still don’t even totally understand what she was screaming about, but you better believe that I had tons of awesome comebacks….twenty minutes after she left! Why can we never think of things to say during a situation? Ah well. Fortunately, I didn’t let her get me down too much and we continued to have an awesome time at the beach.

This post is allll over the place so I’m going to just end it here with a summary of which points and miles we used:

100k World of Hyatt points transferred from my Ultimate Rewards account for our stay at the Andaz.

15k WoH points for 3 nights, 2 at the beginning and one at the end, at the Hyatt Place in San Jose. Great little property, by the way.

15,000 Bank of America Travel Rewards points to cover our stay at the hostel in Tamarindo.

$80.00/person for flights from GUA-SJO. I had some straggler points from a Capital One card to cover some of the costs here, but not the entire thing.

An arm, leg and first born child for shuttle services around the country.

~$400.00 for food at the Andaz. Another ouch, especially since we only ate dinner there, and my daughter ate for free.

17.5k miles + $80ish per person to fly home. SJO ending in SLC.

I think that about covers our trip cost for Costa Rica. Let me know if you guys have any questions!

I’m a glutton for punishment. That isn’t an opinion; it’s an actual fact. Sometimes I get these ideas in my head that seem really good at the time, but then when it’s execution time, I quickly realize how terrible the idea was, but it’s too late at that point to quit. This is how our trip to Tikal played out —> Great idea, miserable execution, but fortunately an amazing experience overall. 

Nathan flew into Guatemala the night before I hiked Fuego. Can I just give a shoutout to that guy real fast. He’s the most selfless guy in the world.

Anyway, we had rented a car, which, of course I used points for. Fun story, our original rental reservation wasn’t actually accepted. We got to the Thrifty desk and because of a weird lack of communication with the third party booking agency and them, they couldn’t give us the car. I had already used my points as a statement credit to “erase” the expense, I should add. We had to pay for the car again. Most people would be mad, but I was excited. My hopes are that the third party company we rented through will be reimbursing us what we had to pay Thrify via check, meaning that it won’t be refunded to the credit card, meaning that I was able to cash out a bunch of points plus earn more points on the car and now I should be a able to use points to pay for that second charge, so yay for that!

Okay, back to Tikal. So, we had decided to just stay in Antigua since the drive there was so far and I was feeling lazy. Then suddenly, the night before we had initially planned on leaving but now weren’t, I looked at Nathan and said “Fine, let’s just go!” We packed up the house, drove up to San Cristobal el Alto for some hot chocolate and one last glimpse of Fuego erupting and finally left early the next morning. We officially left Antigua at about 8:15am that morning. Fast forward a few hours later and we are sitting in construction only an hour and a half out of Guatemala City. The good news is that people walk up and down the line selling you drinks and treats, so, I mean, if you are going to be stuck in construction, that’s the best way to do it! But at this point, we knew google’s 9 hour route was going to be much much longer. 

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This truck represents mine and Nathan’s love for each other. Coke and Monster sitting in perfect harmony!

Fast forward almost 12 hours later and we finally rolled up to our hotel in Flores. We were all pretty done at this point. Our hotel in Flores was such a great little place, I might add. $50 and it nicely fit all 6 of us. The pool was very refreshing and the customer service desk worker dude was so sweet.

The next morning we woke up and made the drive to Tikal, which was nearly another hour away. We made it in, grabbed a guide, and immediately started exploring.

Right away Tikal blew my mind. Temple 1 and the complex it is in was absolutely incredible. I’ve visited Chichenitza and no offense but Tikal was so much cooler and this was only the very first part.

The kids LOVED it there, as well. I will add that it’s insanely hot. We brought a few liters of water with us not realizing quite how hot it was going to be. We ran through those so fast and had to waste money and resources on bottles of water. I hate buying bottled water. Anyway, Q’s shirt was the first to come off, which isn’t exactly surprising, but when Carter’s followed a few minutes later, things were getting real. Real hot.

We climbed and raced and jumped and explored alllll over those ruins. I was actually quite surprised at how willing my kids were to climb and explore everything. And just when I thought they were sufficiently exhausted and we would have to drag them out of the park from exhaustion, they were asking to climb up the next pyramid.

We finished in Tikal around 3pm and headed straight over to our hotel, Jungle Lodge. I can’t believe how good those ceiling fans felt. We made a quick lunch of tortillas and pb and j, which I proudly used my fingers to spread the condiments. We didn’t have a knife and trying to spread it with more tortilla was a big fat fail. What can you do? Finally, we headed over to the pool. That was the most refreshing experience I think I have ever had.

 

I headed out around 5pm with our guide to go see the sunset over Tikal. Although watching the sunset from the palace was beautiful, I actually enjoyed roaming around the ruins with no other tourists around. It was so quiet, into the howler monkeys decided to turn this place into jurrassic park, and the insane light of dusk illuminating everything made it feel straight up magical.

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I got back, Nathan and I had a hot, literally, to the restaurant while the kids stayed back and watched movies on the iPad.

Nathan headed out super early the next morning to watch the sunrise but poor guy just got a bunch of clouds. He said it was still a great experience, though.

And then it was over. We packed up and headed out. Another 12 hour drive looming ahead.

This time we did make a stop in Rio Dulce for lunch. We had no idea where to stop and randomly made a turn off the bridge that ended up at a restaurant that none of us had much faith in. Fortunately, we were completely wrong and it ended up being a complete win!

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We spent maybe an hour and a half there and continued on our journey to Guatemala City.

On the other hand, stopping at the side of the road for fresh mango covered in lime juice, chili powder and pepitas was an absolute fail. The mango was crunchy and hot and terrible! I had high hopes for that one, too.