Miami and South Florida And A Few More Snafu's

The twelve days in South Florida have been extended by a few days due to some additional planning snafu's. One was huge... I'll get back to that in a minute.

We came back to Orlando from Costa Rica and pulled the RV out of storage at 10pm after our storage unit was technically closed.  (Snafu numero uno...our RV park storage was a great idea, but I forgot to check that it closes daily at 7pm.) When we arrived, we begged the host to unlock the gate and let us pull the rv out to our site. He really didn't want too and I can't blame him, but our pathetic situation wore him down and thankfully he was accomodating. The fact that it was pouring rain and our uber driver had left us standing there with two kids and four pieces of luggage helped our cause. We were ignorant and thank God for kind people. We have met so many good and kind people that have bent big time to help us.

We extended our stay in Orlando for two more nights in order to buy us time to find an RV spot in the Miami area. Tammy and Judy, the hosts at our park worked every morning as people left sites early to make sure we could stay an additional night since the park was completely full. Turns out that we really underestimated the demand for RV spots in the winter in Florida. There are none available...zero!  

We finally got lucky to get a kind host at the Hollywood KOA just outside Fort Lauderdale to accommodate us for the entire nine nights we needed. The park was a bare bones park yet we paid the highest price per night that we have paid this far.  The kids luckily found friends their age and spent hours outside in the streets playing with Nellie, Gus and Sal. (Luckily, our kids have grown up playing in the streets around San Diego so they have some instinct when cars are present)  Boyd made friends with Diego and spent hours playing play station.  It worked out and now the RV is being stored just down the street at the last RV storage spot available in South Florida or so it seemed after calling around for three days and getting a "no" every time.  We are grateful to keep learning and that we have healthy lungs to breathe deep a lot. Keeping calm and positive as we figure things out is something we are still struggling with and we find ourselves apologizing a lot to each other afterward.

While in Hollywood, Erica made a quick three night trip back to San Diego to get some things taken care of. Her drivers license expired in January so she got that taken care of at the Poway DMV. We also needed our car title from the bank safe deposit box in SD to settle the total loss claim at our insurance company from Erica's accident in December. Once we get the funds, then we can plan to purchase a new car. We have been spending a small fortune on rental cars and the fact that our insurance is cancelled now means we have to purchase rental car insurance from the rental agency and it makes every car rental so much more costly. Erica also made the most of her trip catching up with friends and getting her hair cut by her stylist in our old neighborhood. She loves having Noelle to trust with her hair. She cut it really short and it looks great. It reminds me of how her hair was when we were kids and she loves it as much as I do.

We went to the Everglades National Park the day after she returned and spent time hiking a trail to see alligators and birds in their natural habitat. Boyd was in heaven as he has really become a fish expert. He was fascinated by all the Florida Gar he was able to spot in the crystal clear fresh water swamp. It was a very hot day but so beautiful. The thrill of driving into a National Park never gets old even after having been to so many. They all possess something unique to get excited about and Erica and I both love exploring them which makes it hard to get us out.  We capped the day by taking a charter boat from Flamingo Harbor out off the southern coast of Florida into the shallow waters around the keys.  We didn't see any manatees like we hoped but we enjoyed the peaceful cruise as the sun set around us. We found out that you can camp on little man-made platforms called "chickees" which leaves us thinking there is very good reason to come back here.  To be camped next to an osprey nest with the chance to see dolphins and manatees would be incredible.

We spent a day at the Miami Seaquarium and enjoyed a meal at Salt Restaurant at the University of Miami Research Institute on Biscayne Key. This restaurant is a hard to find spot right on the coast and had an excellent fresh food menu for very low prices and a priceless view of the water from our balcony table. 

Now to our huge snafu...

We stayed at a hotel at the airport the night before our flight to Brazil so we could relax before our long overnight flight to Brazil the following day.  After returning our rental car on the day of our flight, we shuttled to the airport with plenty of time left to enjoy changing into comfortable airplane attire.  We had all ducks waddling in the straightest row possible.  Confidently we all waltzed to the self service kiosk and put our four passports in and the kiosk lights up for an agent to help us.  The agent kindly walks over and says, "You all are going to Brazil, may I see your passports and visa?" We went back and forth about not having our visa due to not staying in the country for more than ninety days and told her that we have return flights in a month. Of all the countries we have been to so far, we have never needed a visa as long as we had return flights and our stay was less than ninety days. She said we could not board the flight without a tourist visa and then gave us instructions on what to do next.  You could imagine the stress and anxiety Erica and I were under in that moment. We were very ignorant here and unfortunately there was no amount of bending that this agent could do to get us on our flight.  We learned that Brazil and most South American countries require visas for every US passport holder to travel there. We sat down to compose ourselves and then frantically scrambled to figure out the online application for visas. Time just flew by and before we knew it two hours had passed and slowly our hopes for a fix to be able to board was gone. The eVisa website was very uncooperative with our picture uploads so we succumbed to finding a hotel for the night while also re- booking our flights for five days later to give us time to get our visas from the Brazilian Consulate in Miami.

A couple of things we were grateful for in this situation was 1.) Having some extra cash in the bank as this snafu would cost us significant coin. 2.) Being in Miami was a blessing since there is a Brazilian Consulate a short twenty-five minute uber drive away. 3.) We still had Friday left to possibly get an emergency visa issued for all four of us if we could get passport photos at CVS when it opens at 8am and get to the Consulate when they open at 9am. 4.) Our kids are seasoned travelers (since we have now been forced to drag them through this new mistake regardless of their care or concern for anything else they might desire to be doing.) 5.) American Airlines was so helpful, as we were forced to reschedule flights last minute, to not charge us a dime (if once was a blessing, this would happen twice at no charge which might never have been done ever by an airline in the history of air travel). 6.) Luckily we are going for a month and not a week as this mistake would have made a week long trip much less worth the massive headache. 

In the end, we booked three nights at the Marriott Hotel since it was the cheapest we could find close to the Brazilian Consulate. We arrived at 11pm and settled in as best we could. We spent all day Friday (yesterday) at CVS where we purchased our four passport/visa photos. We have this moment frozen in time now since we look so tired from dragging everone up at 7am to get there by 8. We then ubered to the consulate and arrived at 9:05. Immediately, the security guard tells us that we need an appointment to see someone. We plea to him that we have an emergency and he quietly gives us the office number on the 13th floor where we can pay for concierge service to complete all our paperwork and "hopefully" get seen by the consulate the same day. Mister W Concierge was a wonderful help to compile all the necessary paperwork, except the fact that we needed to have the kids birth certificates, which we didn't know was needed until we sat with the consulate. We sat and chatted with another nice Canadian couple who were in our similar predicament as the concierge completed four applications over the course of 3 hours. After we finish this part we have two hours for me to uber to our RV in Fort Lauderdale to get the kids birth certificates. (Luckily, we decided to bring all these with us as without originals we would not have had a chance to get their visa).  Erica walked the kids to get a bite to eat and then return by 2pm to make sure that we had a spot in the line as I was running late due to horrible Miami traffic. The consulate locks doors at 3pm sharp and they don't waste a minute on a Friday afternoon. I arrived with the birth certificates at 2:15 and the consulate saw us at 2:55.  She worked diligently to issue us visa's and we had them in hand shortly before 4pm.  We were so grateful and relieved. Now we just needed to go back to the hotel and try to reschedule our flight for the second time for Saturday (today) night.  American Airlines were so accomodating and thankfully we get airborne tonight to Rio Dr Janeiro.

So many lessons and so many stories to tell for the remainder of our lives. We are grateful for this relaxing afternoon by the hotel pool before we travel to the airport to repeat a similar path with hopefully a much better outcome.

Peace and Love and so much Kindness!