ChrisJenTravel.com – Honeymoon Trek

Relieved and thrilled to be getting back to our baby boy (Morgan), our family and friends. The plane descended into Orlando and Dad Schroeder picked us up. Like a favorite memory, we hit up a restaurant with him – the floor covered in peanut shells like a Warhol painting. Relieved to once again have iced tea….I gulped down 3 glasses – my favorite part of any day. The time was precious and like dejavu – we had just been on the dock, saying goodbye. Chris and I headed out late – a big, black and hairy magnet force pulled us towards Jacksonville Beach. Long, late night drives weren’t anything new. We had just finished driving over 6,000 miles and another 180 was just the icing on the cake. Morgan wasn’t an option, we would see him before we slept, smell his smell, rub his ears and belly and kiss his wet nose. Counting down the minutes as we got on JTB toward the beaches, 20….18….12….6…..3…. I began to cry. We just wanted a big lick in the face from Morgan. We wanted his 100lb/12 year old frame nestled in between us.

The homecoming was great. Morgan, however, was a bit confused. He ran around excited and probably thought that he was dreaming. In one way, he acted as if we had never left, then he began to put on a show saying with his movements, “look at me play…remember how cute and I am, remember that I play a good game of fetch – don’t leave”. Next he became highly confused over whom to follow: my dad or Chris. I looked at Chris and could tell his heart had just broken into a million pieces.
Chris took him behind closed doors, had a one-on-one with him and before you knew it, Morgan was his shadow once again. This trip home would be short (5 weeks), and we were determined to take him everywhere with us…the car, the beach, the store, to Mamaw’s and to anyone’s house that we were invited to. The rule was if we went, Morgan went….if Morgan wasn’t welcome, we wouldn’t go.

Home was like cookies and milk after an upsetting day of 3rd grade. The temperature was perfect, the flavor and smell perfected. So many little things that we took for granted, from ice cubes to bath tubs. We took full advantage of the little things. I took a couple 4 hour long showers complete with hot water and better than any spa one could imagine. Chris developed an addiction for wireless internet (not to update the site, but to get caught up on every Lost episode of the season). [read on]

Our last night in Nicaragua we were exhausted and excited to grab dinner and bring it back to watch something on the 10 or so TV channels. Instead, we got back and the power was out – half of the night. We weren’t astonished, just tired. We had to continually knock on the owner’s bedroom door to find out when they would be through with our laundry…each time being berated by a disheveled slob who was grossly eating a feast in her bed. We woke up at 5:00am with dry laundry and literally dragged our 2 tons of junk around the corner to the bus station – taking breaks every 10 steps because of the enormous weight.

We caught a bus from Nicaragua to Costa Rica ($12 each). It was a nice AC bus, the AC just lacked freon and well, power. So, the toasty ride started at 5:30am and ended about 8 hours later. The border crossings were pretty easy. To depart Nicaragua, we stopped at the border crossing and waited outside of the bus as customs officials went through a stack of passports that had been collected when we boarded. Easy. Chris even tried his luck with a quesio-quesio (tortilla made with nasty homemade cheese and covered in a similar cream) – he couldn’t quite get it down. Then, we got to the Costa Rican border. It would have been easy, if we were simple travelers like everyone else. But, when entering, they have to search your bags and well it took us a long while to figure that out after going through customs, plus we had something like 9 bags. We had to drag our boards and bags into a long line and then haul them back before the bus departed.

Of course, the long board ended up getting a solid ding in the nose, but other than that, we had successfully transferred to the land of easy….Costa Rica, a place that we both had been, a place where we felt comfortable and could relax. Chris woke up in enough time to realize that we were nearing our stop. The bus abruptly stopped and we got out at a gas station in Liberia. On the curb, with no idea where to go, we hauled our enormous amount of luggage across the street [read on]