On Our Way

Steps One and Two

On August 4 my Husband Myles, our two cats Gru and Luna and I took off from Toronto to start our new life in Costa Rica! 

This isn’t really where the story begins but it is a beginning. 

We could hardly sleep that night even though we knew the next day would be long with many unknown challenges, but how can you sleep the night before you head for a new country that you will call home?  There had been 5 months of intense planning, purging, tears, fear, and excitement all coming to this moment. 

Step One:

We were met by our Scottish escort to pack our 22 totes, one bicycle, two carry-on packs, two cats and ourselves to Toronto International Airport.  Jimmy got us there about half an hour before the counters even opened for Avianca Airlines and our totes were swept into the airport with 2 porters.  Now we had been handling these totes with care.  Our entire lives were in there, from cherished ceramic pottery, Myles’ electronics equipment for his hobbies and tools, to computer equipment for our livelihood, were in there.  We had been handling them with care, placing them carefully whenever they needed to be moved.  I saw these men slogging them and crashing them down on the ground and the other bins.  I knew that that would not be the last time they would be thrown around.

With a quick thank you and goodbye we saw Jimmy drive away and headed into the airport to wait.

Step Two:

Oh, the look in the staff’s eyes when they saw our wall of totes to be checked.  They moved us off to the side so as not to hold up the other passengers.  It took us the entire 4 hours to just check our bags with a warning that not all of them may arrive with us. They could only guarantee 2 each and the others may not come until a later flight.  Also, the payment for half of our totes that we had paid for online mysteriously did not show in their system.  It was an interesting start.

We were also not aware that Myles’ bike needed to be taken apart and packed in a wood case for transport.  The airport does provide a shrink wrap service that was given as an option but the tires had to be taken off in order to make it more compact.  Myles had to do this without access to tools while I moved totes to the airline scales and then set them to the side to go through the big scanners.

Once his bike was ready it was checked and all the totes went for inspection through the large x-ray machine.  Myles will tell this story in a later blog.

After everything was weighed, scanned stickered and zip tied the airline attendant that helped us check in walked us to security.  Step two to the day was now complete!