Have Backpack – Will Travel

When our year in Costa Rica was coming to a close around April/May, we started researching options for travel in Central America for a week or two before heading back up north to Canada. Our shortlist of countries consisted of Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Panama. However, safety issues deterred us from travelling with the kids to Guatemala and we found that plane tickets were pricey flying to Nicaragua or Panama from Costa Rica. (There was also the option of travelling overland from Costa Rica to either of the two neighbouring countries but Gabriel gets carsick quite easily and we felt that he had endured enough long car journeys over the last 12 months.) With Central American travel being out of the equation, we focused our research on the rest of the globe.

Europe

We started brainstorming the possibility of taking the kids to the place where we met to celebrate our anniversary. Mélanie is a black belt at working the travel websites and found some options to fly to either Belgium or Greece at very reasonable rates from Montréal. The timing for Greece worked better for us so we booked a charter flight from Montréal to Athens, and informed the kids that we would be backpacking in the Greek Islands for two weeks. (A screening of the movie “Mamma Mia!”, which was filmed on the islands of Skopelos and Skiathos, helped them visualize the destination.)

The bags that we brought are small enough to have them categorized as “day packs” rather than “backpacks”.

Each of our kids had their own little bag to carry some toys and a book. Naimah’s bag was so small that it could contain just her blanket and two Barbie dolls.   

With only the first two nights in Athens booked, we headed to Greece with some guidebooks in hand and a completely open itinerary.

How I Met Your Mother

In the 1995 Hollywood movie, "Before Sunrise", a North American tourist in Europe played by Ethan Hawke falls for a French woman played by Julie Delpy. At the end of the movie, the audience is left wondering what happens to the couple. Here is the real-life version…

Mélanie and I met in Bruges, Belgium 15 years ago on June 28, 1995 while traveling in Europe for the summer. Originally, our paths were only meant to cross for two brief nights - two nights out of a romance novel spent talking next to the windmills along the canals. Since the itineraries for our trips would not find us in the same locations on the same dates, we both doubted that we would ever see each other again. Well, the romance novel was only meant to begin there. Arriving in Luxembourg the following day and yearning to see her again, I left a message for Mélanie at the only hotel that I knew in Amsterdam for her to meet me in Greece in a month. Perhaps destiny was smiling on us because even though Mélanie was not staying at that hotel, she somehow received the message and sent me a reply at a hotel in Paris. A month later, we met up on the Greek island of Corfu on the agreed upon date and then spent the next two and a half weeks traveling together throughout Greece, Spain, and France.

It took crossing an ocean to find each other and now we love travelling together with our “little backpackers”.

Life Purpose and Longevity

Meaning of our blog title “Pura Vida, eh?”

While we were living in Costa Rica during the past year, the title of our blog was “Pura Vida, eh?”. “Pura Vida” literally translates to "pure life", but the meaning is closer to "full of life", "purified life", "this is living!", "going great", or "cool!". Costa Ricans use the phrase as both a greeting and a farewell, to express satisfaction, or to politely express indifference when describing something. The phrase is used to express a philosophy of strong community, perseverance, resilience in overcoming difficulties with good spirits, enjoying life slowly, and celebrating good fortune of magnitudes small and large alike. (Wikipedia)

“Eh?” is a phrase that is commonly associated with Canadians. “Eh?” is often added to the end of questions asked by Canadians to confirm the attention of the listener and to invite a supportive noise. It essentially is an interjection meaning, "I'm checking to see you're listening so I can continue." "Eh" can also be added to the end of a declarative sentence to turn it into a question. Sometimes Canadians use “eh?” throughout sentences and they don't even know when they're doing it, eh? (Wikipedia)

Change of our blog title to “Plan de Vida”

To mark our departure from Costa Rica, we decided to change the title of our blog with this 100th post.

Some background on the name “Plan de Vida”…

A Blue Zone is a region of the world where people commonly live active lives past the age of 100 years. Scientists and demographers have classified these longevity hot-spots by having common healthy traits and life practices that result in higher-than-normal longevity. The name Blue zone seems to be first employed in a scientific article by a team of demographers working on centenarians in Sardinia in 2004.

In 2007, the Blue Zones team visited the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, a place with a cluster of the longest-lived people in the Americas. On the second day of their expedition, they interviewed a centenarian whose “Plan de Vida” (Life Purpose) keeps him going strong.

Part of our family’s “Plan de Vida” is to travel the world to enjoy the many wonderful places, cultures, traditions, and people. If we can help those individuals less fortunate than us in other areas of the world at the same time, our voyages and experiences are even more gratifying.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

Hasta Luego

It is not easy to say goodbye after growing close to so many wonderful people. The kids found it harder than they expected to leave their school and friends. It really takes a full year to settle into a different community, culture, and school, and once you find your groove, it is time to leave. Here are some pictures from our last few days in Costa Rica.

Last day of uniforms (Gabriel made sure to get his pants even more filthy for the finale. Those pants stayed in Costa Rica so that the bacteria growing on them can apply for permanent residency.)

Gabriel with his teacher, Ana Carolina, in front of his classroom

Gabriel’s “Primer Grado” (Grade 1) class

Léah with her teacher

Léah`s “Tercer Grado” (Grade 3) class

Léah with some of the other girls in her class

Last playdate with Gabby

Hamming it up with Henri

As the taxi taking us to the airport pulled out of our driveway, we nearly ran over this Fer-de-lance waiting to say goodbye outside of our gate.

Fiesta at Wendy’s

Naimah was invited to her first birthday party in Costa Rica last weekend at the Wendy’s in the outskirts of San José.

With her light skin and hair, Naimah was quite the fascination for the other little girls in her class from the first day of school last July. She has made some great friends in the past year and will truly miss them when she leaves.

(An aside: most of Naimah’s friends don’t speak any English so it is cute when they call me “Daddy” because they think that it is my name from hearing Naimah say it.)

Naimah with her closest friend, Melany.

Piñatas are such an integral part of birthday celebrations in Costa Rica that Wendy’s has large, retractable metal beams built solely for hanging piñatas.

Every child has a chance to whack the piñata.

The kids played musical sombrero instead of musical chairs.

Birthday cake is part of the celebration in Costa Rica and we felt right at home seeing the familiar face of Hannah Montana imprinted on the cake.

Serpentario

I took the kids to the Serpentario in Monteverde. Mélanie has a fear of snakes so she opted out of this visit.

The Fer-de-lance is the most dangerous snake in Central and South America, and causes more human deaths than any other American reptile. It is the deadliest creature that one can encounter in Costa Rica. When I mentioned to our guide that a friend of ours in Atenas found a Fer-de-Lance in her bushes, he confirmed that this species of snake likes our small town. I passed on this information to Mélanie and it was clear from her expression that she was already mentally packing our bags.

In some regions of North America, the order of the bands of color on a snake distinguishes between the venomous coral snakes and the non-venomous mimics, inspiring folk rhymes such as:

Red touch yellow, kill a fellow.
Red touch black, venom lack.

Our guide explained to us that this old saying doesn`t apply to Costa Rica. Instead, to identify a venomous coral snake, in Spanish you would say RANA: Rojo, Amarillo, Negro, Amarillo (red, yellow, black, yellow). This acronym is easy to remember because “rana” is “frog” in Spanish.

On the subject of deadly snakes, our guide let Gabriel pet this one as it was strangling its lunch to death.

The Serpentario does not only contain snakes. We also got to see some huge toads and colourful frogs.

Monteverde Cheese Factory

Naimah’s favourite meals: chicken with rice, and plain spaghetti noodles with sprinkled parmesan cheese. In Costa Rica, her favourite parmesan cheese comes from the Monteverde Cheese Factory. Monteverde cheese is acclaimed throughout Costa Rica and we felt it a must to take Naimah to the birthplace of her beloved “bally cheese”. (She has labelled it as such because in this humidity, the fine-grained parmesan ends up forming balls in the shaker).