Last day!

We had to check out of our AirBNB in La Fortuna on Sunday morning, but we had booked a river rafting tour and it didn’t start until 11am so we had a leisurely breakfast instead of eating groceries at our AirBNB like we usually do.  

The river tubing start was about a half hour drive.  Then a van picked us up and brought us to the start of the river!  There were so many river tours in the different cities we went to  where you can book rafting or tubing.  I really didn’t want to do anything too extreme. I more wanted to do a float down a river with a bit of current and this turned out to be perfect!

The guides were great. They were funny and they went in kayaks to show us where to go. The one guide wanted to strap Owen and Anna to his kayak and asked that I stay with them also so strapped all 3 of us together. He controlled where we went and we just went along for the ride!  Trev and Joel had to work a bit to control themselves to the right spot in the river. Before we started Joel was saying he wasn’t feeling to well but he did it anyways. 

It definitely got a bit wild in some spots!  Just the right amount of fun!

Our kayak guide!

An iguana sunning himself on the rocks 

Eventually Joel joined our caravan

Part way through we stopped and they put out some fruit and some snacks.  Our driver grew these peanuts in his farm!

There were 4 cows there. I think they just stay there because a lot of tours stop there and give them fruit. They ate all the leftover fruit and rinds!  They were a bit feisty and at one point tried to take all the fruit off the kayak! 😂 

Then we were back on the river to finish the tour!

It was cloudy and rainy when we left La Fortuna and we put sunscreen on quickly just in case but we hadn’t noticed that it had actually got sunny and bright!  Pic of Trev’s ridiculous sunburn from this trip to come!  😂 

Lots of fun!

So this is where the end of the trip really went downhill. The plan was to drive 2.5 hours to San Jose where our flight was booked. We had a 6am flight which meant a 2:30am departure from our AirBNB to drop off the rental car and make it to the airport on time. So we had an Airbnb booked right close to the airport. As soon as we we ended the tubing tour Joel starting saying he really wasn’t feeling well. And about a half hour into the drive he was throwing up. 😔 So another couple of hours of driving with a very sick, person who just desperately wants to be laying in bed and not winding through the curviest roads in the world. In Canada, you know you can pull off at a Timmies every 10 minutes if you need a bathroom or to throw out a barf bag etc. but it’s tougher when you are in a different country with just tiny roadside mom and pop joints where they only speak Spanish. We didn’t know if we could just stop somewhere and ask to use the bathroom?  Anyways it seemed like forever but we made it to the Airbnb and Joel crashed into bed. 

So here we were, trying to figure out what to do. It’s now about 7 hours before we need to leave for the airport and we have a kid who is actively throwing up and can’t be away from the bathroom for more than a few minutes. It was a stressful evening. Nobody else in the family knew whether they were feeling sick too. We are so off schedule and off our normal eating pattern. Meanwhile we are all sleeping in the same room, listening to someone get up to throw up. It’s hard not to question whether you also feel sick. What if Joel was feeling a bit better, but we got to the airport and Trev or Owen or Anna started?  We had no idea what to do. 

 

The Airbnb we were at was amazing and they had a sprawling outdoor area with tables for socializing and there was a family there from the US that was commiserating and strategizing with us about what to do. The owner, Margarita, made us some PB&J and ham and cheese sandwiches and fruit and juice boxes for dinner and helped us figure out how to dial the trip insurance numbers from our phone (different dialing in Costa Rica) and where the closest pharmacies and clinics where if we needed them. 

Travel insurance would have covered our expenses if we needed to stay. Margarita had a room for us for an extra night. We found a flight that left 30 hours later. But, what if at that point someone else was throwing up?  To do that, we also needed a doctor’s note so we would have to go to a hospital or clinic with a barfing Joel. We’d miss a day of work by getting in a day and a bit later than planned. Kids would miss another day of school. Anna would miss a volleyball tournament.  We were out of clean clothes and at this point had wet bathing suits and water shoes shoved into suitcases with our laundry in preparation to get home.  And we’d be putting out thousands of dollars for a new flight and then processing all the paperwork when we got home and hoping there wasn’t some fine print that meant they wouldn’t reimburse us. It was very overwhelming. 

In the end we decided to make a last minute decision. We’d go to bed and make the call at 2am when the alarm went off. Trev ran to a pharmacy to make sure we had enough gravol and Imodium in case mid flight, several family members started. We texted back and forth with Nurse Andrew (Trev’s brother) about best strategies for medicating during the flight (what we could give at the same time, what shouldn’t be combined). 

It’s really too bad our last night was so stressful because the AirBNB would have been just perfect for our last night. The temperature was beautiful and it was breezy. There were pretty lights all around and there were tables that people were congregating at. There were hammocks around. The family that we were chatting with hung out at the tables and were playing soccer and I’m sure we would have socialized. But instead we did pharmacy runs and made long distance calls to travel insurance 😂 

Owen and Anna hanging out on the patio

The Airbnb was awesome and so cute!

Organized to change clothes quickly and grab day bags before our flights

Even the shower was cute!

Ready for a few hours of sleep before the 2am alarm!

Joel gives this last day a thumbs down 👎 

Where we would have hung out if our night had been different!

Eating the sandwiches Margarita made us. She originally made us these because breakfast was included but we had to leave early but they were perfect for a quick dinner

Trev’s hilarious tubing sunburn 😆 

And we went to sleep. Joel threw up at 9:30pm and then slept until 2am. He said he was willing to try it and so we started the gravol and headed out. The drive to the airport was ok and we got through security fine. But by the time we got to our gate Joel was feeling horrible and just kept saying we shouldn’t have done the flight and he wished we had stayed. 😔 Nothing we could do now. We were committed at that point. 

Passing the time in the middle of the night 

Poor Joel spent the hour we waited here like this feeling so sick 😔 

The first hour of the flight was miserable and Joel was feeling horrible. Finally 4 hours had passed since the we left the Airbnb and it was time for another gravol round. Joel also thought he might be hungry and ate half a muffin  and drank some flat gingerale.  That seemed to make a difference and while the rest of the 3.5 hours were by no means pleasant, they weren’t quite as torturous as the first hour.

Anna and I passed the time by playing this funny game where you are an airport worker trying to tag and weigh people’s bags while they come in very fast 😆 

The last half hour Joel was feeling pretty bad again and it stayed like that while we went through all the airport stuff once we landed

VERY happy to be back in Canada!

And somehow we made it to our van in record time.  We were driving away in our van at Park and Fly exactly one hour after I turned airplane mode off after we hit the runway when we landed.  So in 60 minutes we taxied off to the gate, got our carryon and made it off the plane, cleared customs (I did arriveCAN in advance), got our one piece of checked luggage, hit the washroom, got a shuttle back to the park and fly, loaded our luggage and a were off.  It was record speediness which we were very thankful for!

 We just stopped to eat in Port Severn. When you leave your Airbnb at 2:30am and then sit in a dark airplane for 5.5 hours and then emerge into Toronto at 1:15pm Canadian time (11:15am Costa Rican time), I can confirm that you are very screwed up. Is it time for breakfast, lunch or supper? It feels like 9pm to me. 🤷🏼‍♀️. I really love exploring another country, but there is something very great about getting home. I hadn’t ‘really’ had a real meal since I was sick and it was tough in Costa Rica to find something that felt safe after being sick. We just stopped now and I got a chicken pita at Pita Pit and knew exactly what I was getting and it felt great to eat a real meal  

Lots of adventures!  Owen says his favourite activity was the fishing trip. Anna says tubing on the last day was her favourite (until recently it had been ziplining). Trevor says his favourite was fishing. My favourite was La Leona Waterfall hike with the time at the beach as a close second. Now Trevor says he might switch to La Leona. He says it’s a tie!  Joel isn’t feeling well and can’t think right now to answer 😔 

All in all an amazing trip!  I’ll do one more post in the next few days as we unpack about the most helpful things we brought with us!

A few let pics to share of our shower head at one of our airbnbs. Do you think this would pass Canadian Safety standards?  It heats the water right in the shower and there are live exposed wires right there in the wet shower with you!  The kids didn’t shower at this place and Trev and I had very quick showers staying well away from the shower head! 😆