Traveling during a pandemia... Covid-19 adventures

January 10, 2021

Well, 2020 was a different year for everyone in the planet. But, as always, disruption creates opportunities for innovators, sure enough some people will come out of this stronger, more resilient and with a different of way to see their life.

For me the lack of daily interaction with people has been a challenge. I consider myself a very social person, I like to hug, shake hands, etc. and that hasn't been acceptable during this social distancing times..

With that been the theme for the entire year, I was missing the family a lot. Every year we travel down to Florida to visit my mom, sister, niece, nephews, cousin, etc etc.. I bought my tickets well in advance and before Covid-19.. December came along and with all the uncertainty I wasn't 100% about traveling down to the US (which according to the news has been the worse country handling the pandemia, with over 400,000 deaths to Covid-19 and millions of infected people).

I discussed it with the kids and Maria and agreed that if we all committed to be extra careful while traveling abroad, we could still make it. The biggest challenge was going to be "The Family", how not to hug, and kiss, and shake hands every day with the ones you only see once a year.. Anyway, we ventured down south and tried to relax as much as possible.

Airport wasn't as busy, although the flight was full ! We were all wearing masks and using hand sanitizer every second ! The kids were exited to go see their "Mamina" (grandma) and cousins Vicky and Isabela. Never mind Christmas Day in anticipation of all the gifts from Santa !

Among all the extra precautions, we rented a car from the airport to the house, so that no one needed to come to the airport. We arrived and showered immediately as well as changed all the traveling clothes.

For me the most important part of Christmas is spending time with family. Celebrating a new year has been part of my entire life. Meeting in person my cousin's son Christian was the highlight of the trip./

I grow with Angel and we are like brothers, we pretty much shared our entire life, adventures, learnt to drive, bike together, hike together, camp together, you name it !

Christian is only 8 months old now, but sure he is cute, can't wait to see him next year and teach him how to ride a bicycle!

While in Florida we stay at my mom's house as always, eating delicious home made food everyday and sleeping in as much as we wanted.

We went to the beach every day, cold, hot, rainy, didn't care much about the weather. I rode my bike pretty much everyday (800 kms in total for the entire trip).

Single Speed machine with new wheels

Due to Covid-19 restrictions we couldn't visit to many of the attractions we would normally do, we went to our local oceanographic to pet the Sting Rays and see the big Turtles and Sharks and also managed to visit a Safari we haven't been before, it is called to Lion Country down in West Palm Beach. We can stay in the car and drive through for about 2 hours. Pretty cool.

Lion Country Safari

Fort Pierce old art school

we also spent some time in Fort Pierce, it is very close to my mom's house and had some neat old buildings.. and abandoned art center and even some real Peacocks walking around.

Fort Pierce

While we were there, Canada announced a new rule to come back, and that was that we all needed a negative Covid-19 test ! that added some extra stress to our trip.. not only that, but at 200$ per test for a family of five ?? ouch ! Anyway, luckily we found a nearby lab that was able to do our test 72 hours prior to boarding.