Hi everyone!
Well, we made it to our home in Costa Rica! Our last day together on the road was a blur as we were both excited to get south and arrive in Ojochal. We left the condo in Playa Hermosa (thanks again Michael and Josta!) fairly early without our Scottish friends Darren and Caryl because they had left to ride up to Lake Arenal and the Arenal volcano. They promised to stop by our home in Ojochal in a few days on their way south to Panama.
Dad and I rode steadily and after a few hours we crossed the crocodile bridge at the Tarcoles River which meant we were just three hours from Mom and Jossy. We stopped in Jacó Beach and met with Hannah Fletcher, broker/owner of RE/MAX Oceansidea and she signed our RE/MAX flag.
Back on the road, we passed familiar towns like Parrita, then Quepos and just outside of Dominical we stopped to put on rain gear for the final time as it had just started raining. By 3 p.m. we turned off the main road and onto the beach at Dominical, riding past the shops along the palm-tree lined beach road. I was excited because our house is only about half an hour from Dominical! As Dad kept saying, we were now like two horses that “smelled the barn.”
We stopped at the oceanfront RE/MAX office in Dominical for the final Motorcycle for Miracles flag-signing of my journey and met Dave West, broker/owner of RE/MAX Costa del Sol Properties. He has one of the most beautiful views of any RE /MAX office that I’ve ever seen. We chatted for a bit with Dave and then began our final leg of the trip. We rode into our town of Ojochal on what was by far the worst stretch of gravel road of our entire journey and I got very excited as we rode by all the familiar landmarks. Just as we were about a minute away from our house our GoPro video camera we had attached to dad’s helmet earlier stopped working. Of course.
We pulled over and as fast as we could we installed a new memory card before re-mounting the bike and riding up the road past my favourite pizza restaurant, past our tiny store and the library. And then we were on our street! And then Dad started beeping the horn! We were holding hands and yelling happily! And just like that we pulled into our gravel driveway and came to a stop. My trip was over. We had done it!
The front door flew open and we were quickly greeted by my mom, sister Jossy and our friends the Coulsons who had flown down the previous day and had just arrived at our house a few hours earlier. We all hugged hello and then dad parked the bike in our carport and we changed into bathing suits and jumped into the pool in our backyard!
It was so nice to cool off… That day of riding had been way to hot!
After we dried off a few hours later we had dinner and then my sister and I drifted off to sleep in our hammocks in the living room.
For the past week, dad and I have been resting as much as we can… I still am trying to comprehend everything that just happend! We have gone to the beach almost everyday and Adam (the 12-year-old Coulson) and Lauren (the 10-year-old Coulson) have been boogie boarding, swimming and surfing with us!
We have gone out to eat a lot because our town is the “food town” of our area and so all the best restaurants are within a stones throw (or a short drive) of our house and the food is always delicious.
We are swimming in the pool everyday and struggling with the lack of wifi… the house that the Coulsons are renting has wifi but it’s very spotty so it’s often hard to connect to the world and see what’s happening!
And that basically brings us up to date!
I am very sad that the trip is over and I wish that I could go back up to Las Vegas and then to Ontario with dad in February but I would be missing too much school. The trip was so much fun and it was so awesome to have all of you tagging along thanks to technology nowadays and I wish that I could give you all a HUGE hug for supporting me, my dad and the Children’s Miracle Network! I can’t even imagine what the trip would have been like if the Children’s Miracle Network and SickKids Hospital weren’t involved. I am so grateful to them and to all of you for embracing my dream, donating to the Alyssa Rae Johnson Fund and commenting on my blog. I am reading all of the comments and it warms my heart to know that you all are looking out for me and my dad! This has been an experience I will never forget…
Thanks for everything!
~Holly Jo
