Costa Rica- Negative vs. Positive

 There are two ways of looking at our recent trip to Costa Rica- the negative way and the positive way. This may end up being two posts- we'll see how it goes. 

I'll start with the negative. I always like to end on a positive note. 

We left super early Christmas eve morning. It's only a 20-minute drive from our house to the airport,  but it was just long enough and just early enough that Erik got car sick and threw up in our friends ' van, right as we were pulling in to the airport. It was uphill from there. He threw up again on the plane all over his second shirt and face mask. We had to tell the flight attendant that he couldn't wear a mask or a shirt because he needed the airflow. They were going to make him put new ones on! 

He threw up again on the way to the connecting flight and was finally able to sleep on the next flight.  He made it the rest of the way, all the way through customs and car rentals to the Walmart where we went to in San Jose to get new sim cards. He threw up out on the dirt and trash in the parking lot.  Jason, Victoria,  and Kai went in to buy some food and sim cards while the boys and I stayed outside in the heat, with Erik shirtless and nauseous,  for 40 minutes. 

The sim cards ended up not working because we had to call in and follow a bunch of prompts in Spanish, that even for Jason, was proving difficult. So, we found the mall that we should have gone to in the first place and eventually found the phone company that switched out our sim cards for us. After that, we could drive with Waze, the Google Maps that works in Costa Rica. We went straight to our hotel that Christmas Eve ( a few hour drive south from San Jose) instead of going to see my mom, Jim, Derek's family, along with 3 of Karina's kids who were already there, staying at a house they had just booked a few days before because their previous house had just been sold and the new owners were not working with Vrbo, I assume. We were so exhausted that I didn't want to go to Midnight Mass, like I was originally thinking we might do, even though that would have meant being up for 24 hours. 

Christmas Day was nice, so nothing on a negative note there, thank goodness!

On Sunday, we had to drive the 5-ish hours to another house that was different from our original plans. The house we had booked for the whole group was closer to where we were in Dominical the first couple nights, but that also fell through about a month before the trip. The owners neglected to pay their taxes, so we had to book a new place. It was north, near Tamarindo. On our drive, when we stopped to see the crocodiles about halfway there, Austin complained of a bad headache. He was in a lot of pain. We chalked it up to the bright, hot sun, the winding roads, and our long travel day two days before. We gave him ibuprophen and he seemed better. 

Karina's family, due to flight changes, ended up arriving to our house in Villareal just before us. So she got to meet our lovely landlord Maria who knew hardly any English, yet insisted on Karina speaking English and her using a translation app, rather than just communicating in Spanish, which both Karina and Dan know fairly well. Maria was surprised to see Karina's tall boys (both over 6 ft tall as well as Dan), but still insisted that there were enough beds for all 23 of us. So when our  group arrived, with the rest of the family, it took a few hours, and a trip out to get some air mattresses, for us to figure out the best sleeping arrangements. 

Monday morning, Derek, Missy, Karina, and I went for a run together. We decided to go toward Tamarindo, thinking that since it was just after 6am, the traffic couldn't be too bad in that tourist, surf town. Well, it was pretty crazy and very dangerous with lots of cars and hardly any shoulder to run on. Missy ended up falling and messing up her hand with a big abrasion and possible break to her thumb. She and Derek went to the urgent care later that morning. Luckily, it wasn't broken, but still very painful for her. In the meantime, the rest of us made our plans for the day and when they returned, we were all ready to go to the beach in Tamarindo since were were leaving later and it was the closest. In leaving the house, someone accidentally locked the main house on the lock that wasn't supposed to be used. With 23 people, it was hard to get that message to every single person. Maria didn't have a key to that lock and wasn't even able to get in her usual manager's door since someone had accidentally locked that as well (we think that one was a kid), though she never said not to lock that, so we weren't too happy with Maria by that point. But, we were at the beach and enjoying time there, however we were there much longer than expected due to being locked out of our house. It was dark when we got back and luckily the house was unlocked by then.

Tuesday we went on an amazing excursion, so not much negative happened then. Though in the car, I noticed that Austin was coughing a bit. Austin coughs all the time at home, so I didn't think much of it, but I did notice that he was coughing, whereas he hadn't been the previous couple of days. 

Wednesday was the day that five of the youngest grandkids, Nikolas, Peter, Austin, Erik, and Kallie, got stuck in a riptide with my sister and they all had a very stressful time in the ocean getting out of it. I was on the beach avoiding the waves since I had been having ear problems the entire trip and didn't want to risk water getting in my ear unnecessarily, so I didn't even see it, but Karina was pretty upset about it for a long time afterwards, so it very traumatic for her. I believe that was the day 20-year-old Mariah thought they she had lost her tooth while eating Cheezits, so she went through the day worrying about that. That ended up being a hilarious story in that the tooth was 7-year-old Izakk's that he lost the day before. His dad put it in a bag that Natalie grabbed for the Cheezit bag, and then when Mariah asked Natalie if it was her tooth, she seriously thought it was and confirmed it!! It wasn't till that evening the Missy put 2 and 2 together and realized it was really Izaak's tooth! Mariah had an appointment for the dentist lined up and everything! 

Nik, Izaak, and Erik, sometime after the riptide experience.

Volcanic rock at the beach.

Wednesday was also the day that Peter started having problems breathing because of his asthma. He and Austin were always together, so I have other suspicions. That evening, there was a cousin conflict, Erik being the main source. I don't really know what happened, but apparently he said something and offended many cousins. He was then locked out of the room that every other cousin was in. He was pretty upset. I was too. I was mostly disappointed in my other children for not supporting their own little brother. If he was truly the one at fault, there are things they could have done to help him in making it right without him being made to feel ostracized. 

I woke up the next day, Kai's birthday, not feeling great. Since I went to bed upset about the Erik conflict, I thought that had something to do with it. Plus, as I had said, my left ear was plugged up and ringing still and I had a hard time thinking straight because it that. I tried to make the most of the day for Kai. Karina had taken Peter to the urgent care for his asthma, which hadn't gotten better. He was put on oxygen and given a shot and steroids. When everyone went horsebackriding, minus a few of us, I just sat for that hour and a half on the beach. I felt really tired and worn. I was cold at dinner and so ready when it was time for bed! We had also lost our debit card that day.

Friday was the same, I didn't feel well, but I couldn't really pin what was wrong. I was just so tired and worn out. It was New Year's Eve, but the entire day I just sat at the beach, so looking forward to starting the journey home the next day. I could also tell that Victoria didn't feel well either. She was a little quiet, but that also could be chalked up to the fact that she really wanted to rent a Wave Runner, like the other families, but at first we had said no because we're saving up for our Hawaii trip, and then after we changed our minds, it was too late for our family. 

That evening, we had a bit of New Year's celebration, but suddenly, a couple of Derek's kids and Kai started throwing up. We thought it was the sushi. As Jason and I were getting ready for bed, definitely not staying up till midnight, he started coughing and wasn't feeling great. By the next morning, I had strong suspicions that Covid was amongst us. Our family was scheduled to fly out the next day, Sunday, but drive to San Jose on Saturday. We had to take Covid tests 24 hours in advance. As we were taking the tests and achieving positive results (that's the bad kind of positive!), Missy was trying to change her family's plane tickets from Tuesday to Sunday. She had 3 kids throwing up by now and we were suspecting a stomach bug more than food poisoning. Karina and Dan also started looking into changing their tickets since their kids' passports would expire 4 days after that time and they couldn't be stuck in Costa Rica on quarantine. They all started taking their Covid tests and miraculously were all negative at the time, except for Peter and Calvin. It took the ENTIRE day to take Covid tests ( we had brought them with us) and change flights. Internet was slow, service was spotty, and nerves were frayed. 

We were happy to know that Kai was negative and Grandpa Jim as well, so we decided to send them bask ASAP so they wouldn't have to quarantine the 10 days in Costa Rica with the rest of us and chance catching it, making the stay even longer. Kai only threw up for the night. After we sent them back, they spent the night in Atlanta, then Jim stayed at the Detroit airport, trying to get a flight to SLC. He had forgotten his charging cord, so all the while we didn't have much communication with him and were worried about him getting back home, Kai getting her friend Olivia's family sick (where she was staying), and cleaning up Peter and Austin's throw up. 

The rest of the family had left by then. It was just Dan (who was negative at the time) with Peter and Calvin, my mom, and the rest of us Mercados. I didn't feel very well, but it was hard to tell what was stress-induced and what was Covid. The pounding headache could have been either one. Erik and Calvin were pretty much asymptomatic, but were down in the dumps. Sunday was a blur.

Our three Covid kids in our room, out of the main house. 

Jason secured a place for us to quarantine at. We left Monday around noon after cleaning up for Maria. She didn't give us our deposit back, which she still owes my mom. Our new place was nice, but there were a lot of bugs there. I had to store most of our food in the refrigerator, even food you wouldn't normally store in the fridge. The second night there, I was so looking forward to making and eating dinner, then watching a movie and going to bed. Jus as we started making dinner on the electric stove, the electricity went out for a few hours. They think it was a howler monkey that had gotten caught in a transmitter! When we got the negative results and were able to fly back a few days earlier than we had originally hoped and planned, we weren't able to get the money back from our quarantine place. 

Before leaving the house in Villareal. Austin, Erik, and Peter.

Victoria got to sleep in the king sized bed by herself when everyone left.

Chugging the last of the Coke before leaving.

Eating the last of the cake and ice cream before leaving. (Don't worry, we gave them lots of vitamins too!)

This is a good breaking point, but I'm going to keep on this post. I can't end it like this!

On the positive side:

We had celebrated our Christmas on the 23 and it was just as lovely and special with our Secret Santa gift exchange as it would have been on Christmas. The kids enjoyed the soda and movies on the flights out, even Erik enjoyed watching Home Alone and managed not to throw up that entire time! 

The day before we left!

Our wait through customs was only an hour and there were Christmas Carolers singing in English and Spainsh while we waited. The car rental employees were so concerned about Erik's car sickness. They brought a candycane for Erik to suck on, snacks in case they would help him, and let us have extra water. 

The time outside of Walmart, though hot and very long, was spent playing I Spy with my boys and I enjoyed that simple moment with them. When we found the mall, we really enjoyed the decorations, air conditioning, and cleanliness of it after being outside in the dirty, hot, Walmart parking lot. We were at the mall a lot longer than we expected, but that was the time that Erik needed to finally recover from his motion sickness. He ate his favorite McDonald's dinner (chicken nuggets and fries), Kai and Austin had their favorite: pizza, and Jason, Victoria, and I split some delicious Costa Rican food. The food and rest from traveling is what made it possible for us to make the few hour drive without Erik getting sick again.

Cute mall store.

Loved the Christmas ballet dancers!

Dinner!

Seeing family on Christmas, swimming in the pool, body surfing and attempting surf boarding at the beach, made Christmas Day so relaxing and wonderful. It was stress free! We all made steak and fish tacos together that night, partly in the dark until the fuse was fixed, but we enjoyed working together to make our Christmas meal. We're grateful to my mom for making this happen!

Our bat friends.

Our hotel

Christmas morning breakfast at our hotel.

The back of the house where Derek's family and my mom and Jim stayed.

Missy and Derek

Kallie surfing

Erik surfing

Prepping dinner

Jason and Jake were the main chefs (actually, Jake was for his Spanish class, but Jason gave the most assistance.)

The drive through Costa Rica to our next location was beautiful and the crocodiles were fun to see. The main house of our stay had a huge private pool that the youngest boys in the family enjoyed all evening (with supervision) while the rest of us tried to figure out the sleeping arrangements. There were two rooms that were part of the Annex. My mom and Jim got one and Jason and I got the other. So we had our own bathrooms and small refrigerators in them with our own keys. The day we were locked out, it was only from the main house. My purse was in the main house at the time, but I had everything else in our room, which we had to ourselves!

View on the drive up.

Crocodiles

Everyone waiting to play a game I brought for the entire 23 of us to play.

The boys played so well Monday morning while Derek and Missy were at the urgent care. They went from hours in the pool to hours at the beach. This was the beach that I spent the most time in the water because the waves were small and the water felt good! We enjoyed delicious food at the Surf Shack for lunch. When we made it back to the house, we made a huge spaghetti meal and were able to share it with Derek's friend Humburto, who had found us the house the month before and was so helpful in so many ways!

Sleeping buddies

The house and pool from the back.

Big lizard friend on the tree somewhere.

Kai decided her T-shirt was harder to swim in, so she took it off!

Kai, Victoria, me, and Mariah

Jason, Dan, Calvin, Grandma, Drew, Peter and Austin

Erik and Nikolas

Kallie, Layla, and Kai

The excursion the next day (I had forgotten in the negative side that after Derek and Dan had driven Humburto home, the gate to the street where our house was was closed and locked ) only could happen because Derek had driven Humburto home and knew the gate problem ahead of time. Though Maria wasn't happy about it, she sent someone to unlock it early the next morning before our departure time so we could make the couple hour drive to the adventure at the national park. Erik did get a little car sick, but he miraculously recovered sooner than normal. 

First, we walked over where we smeared mud all over ourselves for a healthy mud bath. Followed by a cold rinse in the stream or shower and then a good long soak in the hot springs. There were many different springs of different temps, but most of us settled on the 100 degree one. The 107 was just way too hot!

Next, we went ziplining! With the instructors so near, we had to wear facemasks, but it was so fun and some of us even went up-side-down!

Jason, Austin, Dan, and Peter

There was even some rock climbing involved!

Afterwards, we ate a delicious buffet style lunch. Erik didn't see anything that he wanted to try, so I had him grab a pile of the sweet bread, meant for dessert, and some cake. It was 7 pieces of bread! He did drink the pineapple juice too. Lunch was followed by a horse-back-ride through the woods and up to where Victoria Falls began. That's where we got our own innertubes and got to ride the river rapids 3 miles back down. 

Izaak and Blake

Victoria Falls

They had all the young children go first. I guess they kept a good eye on them. I was at the back with Jason, my mom, and Jim. I had my earplug in, but after that first rapid, I was a little traumatized because of the way I went down amongst the rocks and rapids! Don't get me wrong, it was super fun and I like a thrill, but watery thrills aren't my favorite because of my ear. There were assistants dressed in orange at every major rapid point to help you get through, but I was so tense and nervous, not to mention freezing, that I was shaking and chattering. Suddenly, I realized that the "Orange Angels" as I called them started coming to help me and were there to help me when I got stuck on a slow drifting area, and most importantly on the big falls down into the rapids. One angel in particular made sure that my innertube didn't go into the rapids as much as it could have. I had to find him at the end and thank him. I didn't communicate much with him during the whole adventure because I couldn't hear with my earplug in and I was so scared I couldn't communicate well in Spanish or English!

The employees at the national park went above and beyond. I was very appreciative of all their help during that day. We left feeling tired and satisfied and found another delicious place to eat dinner, where I had ceviche!

A friend at the restaurant.

Kai's birthday was so fun. She felt loved by all her family and we played fun games and enjoyed good food. She got some Costa Rican jewelry from some and a card signed by all. She got to go horseback-riding on the beach. They even got to gallop! Victoria says it was the best horse-back-riding ever! We lucked out on finding an awesome restaurant right across the street from where we were at the beach, so we didn't have to pay for parking at another place. The restaurant even had a pool we could swim in and you better believe that my boys swam every moment they weren't eating! There was all you can eat rolls and Kai got a little flan with a candle in it. Back at the house, we had two huge cakes ready to share with everyone. Derek and Missy had gotten candles and it turned out they were trick candles, unbeknownst to them! Even Victoria couldn't help her blow out the candles very easily!

The boys and Grandpa played a little soccer that morning. 

The return back!

She got a pina colada with her dinner.

Approved by Victoria and Nik!

Kai loves animals!

Birthday flan!

Cake at the house.

The candles that wouldn't go out!

When we discovered our plight in not only having Covid, but having to stay for up to 10 days, I was so upset. I don't like my kids to miss school for vacation and I don't like missing work. I felt like I was drowning in the weight of the burden of it all. But as I stood outside, trying not to be upset with my family who had locked the doors to the main house, I felt the love of Heavenly Father for me. He comforted me and let me know that everything was going to be okay. 

I remembered that feeling over the next few days, and to be honest, I didn't do very well, even still. After announcing my plight to the Facebook world, I received so many messages of love, concern, and offers of help. Then I started worrying about how to thank all these people in return. 

Miraculously, Dan, Peter, and Calvin were able to go to a doctor's office and ended up with negative test results on Monday so they could leave Tuesday. Using Peter's asthma attack from the previous week helped them. They made it home before the passports expired. Eventually, Dan tested positive in the States. 

On Wednesday, just before lunch, we decided to go get tested at the same doctor's office, just to see if at least some of us would be negative and be able to leave. At noon in Michigan that day, our Ward Council prayed specifically for our family to be healthy and able to be reunited again soon. We went to the dcotor's office and got a very painful test done. 

We didn't know we were supposed to bring our passports to the office so we got the results way later than anticipated since we had to drive the couple hour ride back and send pics of the passports in. The office was closed when we finally received the call that the results were negative and we could leave!!

Many more hours later of trying to secure flights and not able to use our original flights because American Airlines kept taking too long and our phones ran out of minutes, we finally just bought new tickets. Jason's dad helped us and it was Jim's daughter, Shelley, who booked our tickets for us, as well as my mom's. She didn't want to fly the whole way by herself, or sleep in Atlanta, like Jim and Kai did, so we got both flights on the same day and we flew the flight to Atlanta together.

One last hiccup was that the system wouldn't let me check in the night before, so I had to check in at the airport right before the flight, where I was tagged as suspicious and they had to give me an extra security check-in pat down right before we got on the plane, twice over!

We got my mon safely to her connecting flight before finding ours. We drove home safely at 1 in the morning in our friend's truck because our car had died on them when they tried to take ours to the airport that evening. They couldn't even get into it because the key entry lock system had frozen. We did get it fixed late the next evening.

After a couple of days home, I still feel very traumatized by the whole experience, but blessed that it didn't get any worse. Also, again, grateful my mom wanted to take us all to Costa Rica. I'm still super tired, but I'm finding improvements in my ear. 

So far, we haven't found any stowaway geckos like Layla found in her luggage upon returning. She appropriately named it Covid Rica!

Cute town found while running. 

A little gem beach some of us went to on New Year's Eve.

It was all shells, no sand!

Jason and Victoria

Cheers!

New Year's Date!

Victoria and Karina

Natalie and Mariah

New Year's Eve game

New friend at our new place.

The view from our new room.

It was the same beach as the shell beach where we sat on the first full day of our quarantine, just way down. It was sand here.

The pool of our quarantine place.

The front of our quarantine place.

My mom had this crazy bruise that appeared all of a sudden. It reminded us of an avocado.