Monday 19 October 2009

Latin American travels of a mum and teenage daughter.

For those interested in such things there's an interesting dynamic to travelling on long haul flights with your children. We've been doing it since before babies had to have passports of their own and over continents and time zones.

Pre children of our own, my first experinece was taking my godson Ben on a flight to Switzerland. At 10 months he sat straddled on my lap and fell into a deep sleep cuddled into my chest. He was blonde and blue eyed and no one considered that he wasn't mine as I proceeded to lay a napkin over the top of his sleeping head and tuck into the meal provided by the airline. The friendly passenger to my left commented that I was obviously really experienced at such things and I felt it would be tempting disaster to apologise for having such a natural 'talent'.

Life continued to give opportunity for the practise as I travelled single handedly with a four and two year old across America and then to Uganda via Nairobi when they were six and four respectively.

As the girls have grown we have tried to tailor our trips to suit their personality and giftings and have the luxury of being able to take them individually. The younger daughter seems to have come off best, so far having travelled with me to India last year and recently to New York. Both long haul flights were a dream for me as this self motivated and avid reader used every opportunity to learn and take in every piece of information she could.

Our eldest has been poised and at the ready waiting for an approriate opportunity to travel and was finally thrilled when it worked out that she could accompany me to Latin America. At thirteen she is not at the easiest of ages to have to deal with long haul flights and changes of culture. Her memory of previous travel was hazy and her observations of airline and service were astute and comical. The first thing that grabbed her attention was the age of the cabin crew. She has a specific interest in cabin crew as she thinks this is what she wants to do when she grows up! 'Mummy, when I'm 50 I could come and work for this airline.' was her loudly whispered conclusion. I marvelled at her positive outlook and resigned myself to the fact we were travelling on what must have been one of the cheapest low budget airlines around!

Due to the fact our final destination was Costa Rica we had to enter America in order to connect to an onward flight. This was SO annoying as we did not want to be in America and would only be there in order to catch the next plane. It has been this way since 9/11. At this point patience was at it's shortest having travelled 9 hours. I needed to use the bathroom as we disembarked and consequently we ended up at the back of the queue for customs. This was too much for my thirteen year old and she flipped at the fact we were at the back. A very public confrontation followed which did not make for an easy wait in the passport queue and I became quite nostalgic for the days when I could simply stick a napkin over her head.

We've arrived and it's day two of our adventure....more to follow I'm sure.