Traveling in the middle of a pandemic

Yep. We did it.

Life happens, or not, and sometimes we have to take big decisions. This time is my mother who is not doing really well so we decided to visit her now that we had the chance and to not regret it later. We might talk about it in a separate post, is just not the moment right now.
So, we traveled, and we had COVID-19 some months ago so we felt sliiiightly safer. Here is more or less the whole experience (for a travel between December 31 and January 11.

We traveled Germany-Netherlands-Costa Rica and the other way around. Costa Rica was not asking for any requirements at the moment so we only needed to fill up the ones for the Netherlands; a PCR test done no longer than 72h before the flight and a paper for the ministry of health.

Arriving to Costa Rica was just easy going, the normal procedure. We got to see my parents, my aunt and uncle my brothers and my cats. And of course also we are some real nice costarican food.

Then for coming back to Germany was more complicated, we needed a PCR test and the letter for the Netherlands, which we got, but the German rules were not so clear. A test must be made either 48h before you arrive or immediately. I never made the math for our existing Netherlands test and when we arrived to Germany everything was empty. Confusing. Oh, you also have to register in a German website, basically giving your data, contact information and address, but that’s it. I guess it must be harder if you arrived directly to Germany from Costa Rica without stops. Anyways, for our region you can make 5 days quarantine before you go and get another PCR test. If this is negative you can cut the quarantine there. If you don’t want to do it you just stay in quarantine for 10 days.

The travel itself was nice, KLM is one of the best airlines ever and my respects go fully to the poor pilot who brought us from Costa Rica to The Netherlands, it was literally a flight in turbulence and we made it alive. I really hate to travel in winter now but next time I need to do it it will definitely be with this airline again. And no, they’re sadly not sponsoring us haha.

Is not so hard to travel, but is uncomfortable and really expensive with so many tests in between, don’t do it unless you have a reason like ours, though we hope you don’t. Stay healthy and love each day of life as if it was the last, really.