Anxiety of Travel
It never feels comfortable to travel to new locations. We have lived this feeling over and over this year. We again found this out as we navigated over to San Jose from Montezuma and then again as we transitioned back to the RV in the US for the 12 days until we take off for Brazil. Our mind is flooded, our heart races and many times we feel the rush of a small panic attack. Our excitement is tempered by the overwhelming fear that swells up in our minds about all the possibilities of your choice to be in a new environment.
"Why are we doing this?" And "Haven't we done enough already?" are two questions that cross my mind a lot. A simple answer is that we are doing this because our dreams are bigger than our fears, I guess. I'm sure that another reason is that I am a very goal driven person who sees failure in this goal of world travel as a greater fear than the immediate fear of traveling to an unfamiliar place. We have now become more conditioned to the positives of traveling to new places and understand that the transition period is just the hurdle to reach our dream. This stress of transtion applies to so much in life, but when it comes to travel it looks like the following:
1.) Loss of sleep on the day before, on and after we leave will always occur. That's three days of feeling tired. When we book travel days we need to make sure that we have days in-between to relax. Sounds simple but we have failed to plan this way many times during this year and have paid for it in worry and irritability.
2.) Planning food and meals requires a lot of thought if you want to eat healthy and avoid the high cost of eating out. These days all food is costly but we have made our money stretch by making sure we have plenty of groceries at all times. This can't happen lately now that we have been transitioning into and out of the RV so often. We can always count on travel days, the day prior as well as the day after, to most likely include expensive meals at restaurants (including high cost airport restaurants). Last minute, impulsive food buys at gas stations and convenience stores often spring up because Boyd and Blythe inherited my affinity for this travel treat. They beg us every time we stop for gas or a bathroom break for a drink or a "sweet treat". We almost cringe now as we pull in and wait for the voices in the back to start chirping because we know how hard it will be to say no.
"Hi", that was Blythe. She is laying next to me as I type this on my phone. She is watching "Girl Meets World" on Netflix which keeps timing out due to our poor WiFi coverage at our RV park. So, she asked to type something and that was all she could come up with. Anyways...
3.) Fear of the unknown is sometimes so intimidating that you can't push past it easily. We are now preparing to travel to Brazil, a south american country that for all of it's culture and beauty we are willing to risk taking our kids to a country known for corruption and criminal activity. I don't for a second think this simple assessment of the country encompasses what we will come back with due to my previous experience in other foreign countries. This is the extreme perspective of Brazil that we have been given by people we have met who are very familiar with Brazil. We have registered with https://travel.state.gov to make sure we get security updates just as a precaution, but this works as much to create fear, as we read all the travel alerts, as it does to erase fear.
As we walked the old city streets of downtown San Jose during our last week in Costa Rica we were always on guard and constantly sharing with the kids our thought process and decision making as it ran through our minds. "Always walk with your head up and make sure to look people in the eye as they approach you", I said to the kids. This was always followed with a "Why?", which opened the door to great dialogue. They are both at the age where the fear that is created by these conversations can be expressed by the kids through their questions and concerns and then addressed by Erica and I as best we can. We made the decision to leave a tour that we were on at a moments notice when we felt uncomfortable about the group we were traveling with. It turns out that everything went okay but Erica and I were feeling uneasy and made a decision to be safe over staying the course and learning about the city. The kids of course wondered what was happening and we told them the real reasons we were leaving and now they have the knowledge. Without pushing our limits we just might not have done any part of this trip and so we honor our transition hurdles and the anxiety they bring by capturing what is on the other side in pictures.
Here are some photos from our last week in San Jose where we spent time at volcanoes (Irazu), markets, arte museums, great restaurants, our little boutique hotel (KC Hotel) and city parks.
