International travel with kids: surviving the first 48 hours (oh, and the bag that went to Texas)
We traveled to Costa Rica for work and for a break for the family.
That was the intention, anyway.
Reality began the night before we left when we didn’t sleep. Again. Because we’re not good at packing in advance. My wife and I keep doing this thing where we look at each other, dead-eyed, and say: never again.
And then what do we do? We do it again. And again. And again and again and again.
By the way, this isn’t our first travel-with-kids rodeo. We’ve done this over a dozen times in the last decade. Trauma work needed, clearly. Anyway.
At 5am we wake the kids. We shuffle around the house like ghosts. Clothes on, out the door. We hike up our dreaded ice hill. I’m not kidding, by the way. It’s mid-winter Norway—the kind of cold that makes your face feel like it’s being sanded.
Up this hill we go, lugging our two overweight bags (because we like to live on the edge and don’t mind being that awkward couple opening suitcases in front of everyone to adjust weight if we have to). And one blasted suitcase has a broken wheel, so rolling is impossible. It doesn’t roll. It drags. Straight-up sled pull from the gym. With a 45-degree incline. On ice.
We then wait for the bus. Take the bus to the boat. Take the boat to the train. Train it to the airport. And yeah—at check-in, what does the university-aged check-in girl say?
You got it: bags are overweight.
Good thing we thought to bring one of those clearly-a-wee-larger carry-ons for this kind of thing. She suggests we take the extra kilos from both checked bags and toss them into the carry-on.
Which we do.
What do we put in it? All the kid essential stuff that isn’t necessary for the plane rides. Critical for when we arrive, but if we can check it in now and not lug it around, all good—right?
Put a pin in that. We’ll come back to it.
Then the plane: three hours to Amsterdam, then twelve-plus hours to Costa Rica.
A whole day of travel. No sleep. Three kids. Two parents running on fumes and denial.
And the kids don’t sleep a wink on that giant journey because, naturally, those blasted infernal entertainment screens on the back of the headrests. The ones that can be a blessing, let’s be honest… but also leave some serious withdrawal symptoms.
Before all this—again—we knew what would happen.
We knew we wouldn’t sleep the night before traveling. We knew the kids wouldn’t sleep on the flight. We knew we’d say, “We need to limit screen time this trip,” and then, in the moment, we’d be so fried we’d hand over the screens like peace offerings to the gods of aviation.
And we did.
Then we landed in Costa Rica and walked straight into 140% humidity, like being hugged by a wet blanket.
The kids were wrecked internally. My wife and I were wrecked externally. And just when you think the universe might offer you a small mercy—thinking (hoping!) our luggage comes out first on those conveyor belts…
No sign of them. We wait. We check the other four carousels.
Huh.
None of our luggage arrived.
Not one bag.
Where was it?
Customer service tells me one is in Norway. The other is in Amsterdam. And the third one is… unknown. She says not to worry—the ones in Norway and Amsterdam will arrive the next day and we can come by, or they can drop them off.
Phenomenal start. Phenomenal.
Remember that carry-on we stuffed with “arrival essentials” so we wouldn’t have to lug it around? Yeah. That was now in one of the checked bags. Which was currently on its own spiritual journey through Europe.
When you’re traveling to Costa Rica with kids, you imagine your first evening being something like: sandals, warm air, maybe a calm dinner while everyone exhales. You do not imagine standing under fluorescent airport lights doing the slow, stupid scan of a baggage carousel that keeps spitting out everyone else’s suitcases like it’s mocking you personally.
Fine. Whatever. Thank God I got travel insurance before we left. I’m mentally flipping through the insurance procedure like it’s a sacred liturgy and I’m a very tired priest, trying to remember what you do in the situation where your luggage decides it needs space to find itself.
Anyway—we need a ride. Car rental agencies around the bend. Now do any of them have something readily available for a little over a month?
Negatory.
Then the last guy goes, “Hold on—I know a guy.”
Welcome to Central America.
We WhatsApp “a guy,” and after about 45 minutes of back-and-forth, he tells us to call him in the morning. “Don’t worry,” he tells me in Spanish. I know what that means, I think to myself.
So we taxi it to the Airbnb. My wife has the right frame of mind and asks me in Norwegian if I could ask the taxi driver if he knows someone we can contact about renting a ride for a month too. Just so we don’t put all our eggs in one WhatsApp basket.
We crash at the Airbnb. Haul our totaled, dirty, sorry asses into the beds and all pass out.
Next morning: WhatsApp Guy #1 says he doesn’t have anything left. WhatsApp Guy #2 says sure—he’s got something—and suggests we meet in a few hours.
We leave the Airbnb and walk with the kids (still nice and stinky, because the Airbnb shower situation didn’t look too appealing) to a car rental agency we’ve used in the past. Which, lo and behold, also had nothing available.
So now we really were left to the mercy of WhatsApp Dude #2.
The rest is a blur I honestly don’t want to relive in full because it’ll give me a headache, but here’s the speed-run version: two hours of verbal negotiating, another hour at Walmart pulling out cash to pay the first installment, then spending the afternoon buying emergency clothes for all of us because we had jack. That money was the pocket money we had for our trip, by the way.
We called the airport. They said the bags should be there the next day.
They weren’t.
We even went to the airport the next morning because someone promised us the bags would be there. They were not. They told us we shouldn’t have come to the airport in the first place, even if someone promised us they’d be there.
International travel with kids is basically a controlled demolition where you try to keep everyone emotionally alive.
Yeah. That’s the gist of it.
Anyway, two of the bags arrived about five days later. Like I said, we’d already blown a bunch of money we didn’t really have on kids’ clothes and supplies—stuff we had packed in the first place. You know that specific kind of frustration where you’re paying extra money to re-buy your own belongings, just in a different location?
I would say “thank God for travel insurance,” but I haven’t heard back from them after submitting our massive emergency bill.
There’s a hole in my stomach right now, and it has a name. It’s named after that claim number.
And then—this part still makes my brain itch—a week later we get a call from a woman with a thick Texan accent:
“Are y’all still in Costa Rica?”
Uh… yes? Why?
Because our third bag had ended up in Texas.
Texas.
Explain that one to me.
Two days later, it finally arrived. A week and a half late. Like a missing family member who came back with a cowboy hat and no explanation.
Now? The kids are happy enough. They’re enjoying the sun, swimming, eating fruit like it’s candy. They’ve already forgotten the part where they wore the same emergency outfits for days and we rationed clean shirts like wartime supplies.
My wife and I, on the other hand, are enjoying and stressing about money, while working, writing, researching… trying to keep our nervous systems from declaring independence.
We keep saying to each other, “It’ll be fine.”
Sometimes we mean it. Sometimes we’re just casting a spell.
But here’s the thing I’m noticing—again, because life keeps teaching the same lesson until you finally stop pretending you didn’t hear it:
The bond between spouses is something to never underestimate.
We’ve had more than our fair share of stress. We’ve been wrung out. And if it wasn’t for that love—like something deeper than the gravity well of the universe’s largest black hole—I genuinely don’t know what we’d do.
Our spiritual ground helps in that.
Not in a “everything happens for a reason” way. More like… it gives us something to stand on when the practical world is wobbling. It reminds us we’re not just two frantic adults doing logistics until we die. It gives us a wider sky to breathe under.
Which is fortunate, because apparently the universe sometimes routes your suitcase through Texas just to make sure you haven’t gotten too confident.
And maybe this is the real travel lesson, the one I keep learning the hard way:
You can’t control the chaos.
But you can practice the glue.
Grateful Dad. 
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