Our 30 Day Family Vacation in Costa Rica (Part 1)
Eleven months out of the year I would describe myself as a happy, content person, capable of finding joy and beauty in the little things. Eleven months of the year I mostly feel like I have my shit together - emotionally, financially, physically. However, there is one month of the year when my world seems to go sideways and I barely even recognise myself.That month, is January.Januarys in Canada are the one month of the year that I tend to wish away. They're dark, cold and gloomy, my vitamin D deprivation is on high, I'm hung over from the excitement, alcohol and cheese that the holidays so generously provide while simultaneously suffering from cabin fever, and everyone around me seems miserable, too. I even went so far as to purchase a S.A.D light last year to try and perk me up a bit...it didn't work.
February's are a close second, except about half-way through the month, the days start to get longer again and you begin to see signs of Spring. You could say that February offers hope that Spring and Summer and happier times to come are just around the corner. Which leaves January the winner of the 'most depressing month of the year' award.Flashback to any random morning last January, 2017: me, lying in my bed and feeling oh-so-sorry for myself. I bet you won't even find a social media post from me last January because I was too miserable to put together a positive sentence about my life. To top off the winter blues, I had just found out that I was pregnant with our third, so I was on an emotional roller-coaster as the shock and the hormones of it all pushed me over the edge.I decided on one of those somber, January mornings that life was way too short to spend another January in Canada. Life is also too short to be wishing away precious time. I started to do some past-January-soul-searching, and realized that there wasn't a single January-moment that stood out to me. I became eager to change my perception of it, turning January from the dreaded to the most anticipated month of the year; one that our family could look back on fondly and say, remember that January when we all piled in that raft and went over a waterfall and almost died!?I had made up my mind: next January, I would gather up the Daley's and retreat south with the geese and monarchs. And, you know what? That's exactly what I did. And it was freakin' awesome.
Our Intention For the Trip
Aside from the obvious reasons for getting out of Canada- weather and SUNLIGHT - we also embarked on this adventure so that we could spend more quality timetogether as a family, as well as expose our children to a different culture and way of life.
My husband and I are both self-employed, owning 4 businesses between us, which means that on most evenings and weekends, one of us is working. The downside to that is that there isn't a lot of family time during the year, but the upside is that we're able to take a month off if we want to because we're the bosses! We booked this trip hoping that the month would allow us to spend quality time together as a family without the interference of social media and non-stop work calls.We live in a small town that isn't very ethnically diverse. Going out for sushi is about as far as their exposure to other cultures goes. We really wanted to immerse our kids into another culture to show them that there are other ways to live and that people look different all over the world! I explain in my article, How I Taught my Child That Love is Love, the importance of exposing children to situations early on so that they have a broad view of "normal".
The Year Leading up to the Trip
I shared my idea to head south for the following January with my husband, and being an equally adventuresome (and seasonally moody) individual, he gave me the go-ahead to start booking our month-long tropical get-away. I began scouring the internet for family-friendly, safe, hot and fairly affordable places to travel to with kids and we decided on Costa Rica which checked all of the boxes.
Our next step was booking accommodations. We decided that, to keep costs down, we'd rent a place for the entire month which would allow us to get the best rate. Booking that far in advance was to our advantage because it gave us a lot to choose from and some rate-negotiating power. We used VRBO and AirBnb to find a house to rent, and after looking at what felt like thousands of homes, we settled on one that suited our needs - close to the beach, a walk in to town, NO pool (because it's a safety issue with small kids), 3 bedrooms, authentically Costa Rican and had a washing machine. The house was located in a town on the Carribean Side of Costa Rica called Puerto Viejo. You can view the property listing here! We were only required to pay a deposit for the rental, which secured the home, and the remainder wasn't due until we arrived. This worked well because it gave us the entire year to save - we had committed without having to financially sacrifice too much.Another benefit to booking this far in advance is that you're always consciously saving. We stared a "Costa Rica jar" where we'd put our change and money we'd get from selling stuff on the local Buy and Sell. The trip even inspired us to have a garage sale, with money earned going toward the trip. When it came to eating out, we'd ask each other - should we go out for dinner tonight or put that money toward our trip? The trip usually took preference.When it came to booking the flights, we used Google flight tracker which alerted us on rate changes and the best flights throughout the year. We switched all of our Credit Cards to ones that earned travel points (in my opinion TD has the best travel Visas), and put everything on our Visas. We waited to book flights until 2 months before our trip, and by that time we had earned enough points to pay for our flights and rental car! (I should note, my husband owns a construction company and puts a lot through on his Visa, so I realise that this won't be the case for most people.)Tip for travelling with kids: choose daytime flights that won't interfere with their bedtime if you want to keep your sanity and avoid some stage 5 temper tantrums (in my mind stage 5 is the maximum!).
Days Leading Up to the Trip
It honestly didn't really sink in that we were heading away for a MONTH with our three, little kids until after Christmas. On Boxing day I glanced around the house, which looked like a Christmas hurricane had just passed through, and felt a wave of panic wash over me as reality sunk in and thought, "holy shit, we're leaving in less than a week and I still haven't even started packing, let alone clean up the Christmas". So that night I cleaned, boxed and put-away until there was no sign of Christmas.Now, packing for a family of 5 for 30 days is no easy task. I knew my husband was going to be pretty useless in this department and would only worry about packing his own clothes, and I would be left to figure out wtf we were going to do with the dog (whom we completely forgot about), cleaning out the fridge, packing activities for the kids for the flight, converting money to Costa Rican Colones, etc. etc. etc. So I started writing a list. Actually, I had a few lists going, being the list-maker-master that I am: "Things To Do Before We Leave", "Things To Pack" and "Things to Pack for the Plane".We loaded up our mini-van and headed to the ferry to Vancouver, which was the beginning of our 3 day journey to our home in Puerto Viejo.Read Part Two Here (Coming soon).