So here we are… the day that we will be leaving for the hotel we will stay in tonight before leaving for Costa Rica out of LAX tomorrow. I thought to myself, “You’ve had a lot of thoughts leading up to this trip, why not capture them before you go?” So here we are.
Where to start… first of all I wanted to set our family up for a successful vacation, and one that we would be able to capture and preserve the moments of. To that end I went a little crazy buying little knick-knacks (waterproof camera case, video camera, camera lanyard, larger sized media cards for cameras, etc.). I’m sure I will have sticker shock when all the nickels and dimes are added and I decide to look at the bill, but I will defer that until later.
Other thoughts that have been running through my mind have to do with the fact that I am taking my entire family to a foreign country that none of us has ever been to. We will be on our own for the most part since we are renting a car. Yikes! Is this a sound plan? I know Costa Rica is not Mexico… and I know that all kinds of folks go there without issue. I also know that tourists are targets :-(. I worry about running into trouble along a desolated stretch of road, becoming EXTREMELY vulnerable, providing a “crime of opportunity” opportunity. I will be careful and vigilant, but the whole thing is a huge unknown, and unknowns are always cause for anxiety.
To add to this, the US has just (literally 3 days before we leave) issued a travel advisory for all Americans abroad based on intelligence that August may be a month for some sort of terror attack. The warning is in particular for the Middle East and specifically mentions the Arabian Peninsula. I do not have any major concerns about being in Costa Rica during this time… my concerns stems from the additional security that will be in place in the airports and how that will affect us… I’d also be lying if I didn’t admit that there is a tiny piece of me that thinks a flight to/from Costa Rica may be obscure enough to be a terrorist target.
So these are the thoughts running through my head as I get ready to go and I do not share them with my family because I do not want to create any additional anxiety in them. They are, for the most part, little thoughts and I am not anymore anxious than I get about flight travel in general… I know we will have an amazing life experience; I just can’t wait to be on the ground in Costa Rica.