Maybe the title is a bit dramatic. I mean, it’s not as if I am known for overreacting to things…

This blog is about all the wonderful joys that can come from traveling with kids – watching the wonder in their eyes as they see something new for the first time, making memories that the whole family will look back on fondly for years to come, teaching your children to be strong, proud, caring world citizens. So it pains me just slightly to be writing this post as my second one. Normally, I would wait awhile before writing about one of our not so great trips but seeing as we JUST got back and it’s fresh in my mind, I thought I would be honest and talk about the times when things don’t go exactly as planned.

This past week was our first grader’s Spring Break and, as you will soon learn, Ron and I don’t do well when we have days off and nowhere to go. Of course a trip was in order and through the wonders of travel deals (which I will discuss soon) we were off to Quito, Ecuador. Now, I was in Quito about 12 years ago but this was Ron and the girls’ first time. We are not going to discuss how this means that Ron is now one country closer to evening out our country count. But I digress. We left Tuesday morning to spend 4 days in a city that I remembered with nothing but fondness.

Our trip down was perfectly fine, as were our first two days. It was the evening of our second full day in town when things started to go south. Ron has this thing for heights/views/anything that allows him to see the world from a different perspective. I personally don’t share this affinity but hey, I usually humor him and take a ride up an elevator, climb (some) stairs, or, in this case, crawl into a cable car for a ride up a mountain. We rode the TeleferiQo (see what they did there?!) up Pichincha Volcano and enjoyed some brief but stunning views of the entirety of Quito before being enveloped in a cloud that produced a pretty outstanding hail storm. With nothing to see but layers of white hail, back down the volcano we went. That’s when the trouble began.

Our oldest started throwing up that evening and remained sick for the remaining 2 days (plus 1 travel day) of our vacation. Altitude sickness. Seriously. How did Ron and I NOT consider the fact that being 10,000 feet above sea level in Quito, and then 15,000 feet up at the top of the volcano, would cause problems?

We didn’t even think about it. I guess that’s not entirely true – we brought our oxygen monitor for pete’s sake. But the possibility of actually getting altitude sickness didn’t even cross our minds. We say that we learn a lesson during every trip. The lesson learned here? There are things that you will just not even think about and it is so frustrating when those things you completely dismissed, forgot about, or didn’t even know about, cause stress. But it happens and while it sucks, it doesn’t mean that a vacation is lost. Traveling with kids can easily be salvaged. My favorite memory from this trip? The pure joy and laughter from the girls when Ron pretended to be scared when we went over the poles on the gondola ride down the volcano. My least favorite memory? My second child getting sick at the exact same time Luis (you’ll meet him in a minute) rescheduled a tour for us for the third time. Oops.

Second lesson learned: No mountains for our family for a very long time…

I would be totally remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to Luis from the Casa Hotel Las Plazas. He was awesome in scheduling our tours and then subsequently cancelling our tours when the girls got sick, and then acting as our guide and translator when we finally took our oldest to the medical clinic. Amazing service and great hotel location – check it out.

One last soap box statement: Socialized medicine is awesome. We were in and out of the medical clinic, one of the cleanest I had been in, in less than 20 minutes. They  treated my daughter without even getting her name (side note, we went to a walk in clinic when we got home because she STILL wasn’t better. I had to fill out a number of forms, provide ID and insurance, AND give the place a credit card number to put on file before they would see her). The whole visit in Ecuador, including medicine, cost less than $35. Socialized medicine for the win, even for crazy Americans who don’t think anything of the altitude shift.