Following our own travel anxiety advice

Image credit: Zdeněk Macháček/Unsplash

Earlier this year, I blogged about how my anxiety had got in the way of our plans to visit Panama. I promised myself and anyone reading that Liz and I would book a trip to Costa Rica instead.

This week, we finally finished booking all our flights and hotels. And in November and December, we’ll be spending a few weeks in Central America.

Planning a holiday

You might already have read Liz’s guide to planning a holiday. It’s designed with less-experienced travellers in mind – those who might want help navigating each step of the travel planning process – but the advice in her guide applies to anyone. With our next big holiday booked, it's a good time to reflect on whether we followed our own tips when making our Costa Rica plans.

We have followed Liz’s tips on booking flights to the letter. Rather than booking the cheapest flight, we spent slightly more money for a flight with a longer, overnight layover in Montréal. That will give us time to get a good night’s sleep before our onward journey to Liberia on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica and, fingers crossed we don’t get hit with any delays, should even give us a few hours to see a bit of Quebec’s largest city at a relaxed pace.

We spent a long time choosing the right place to stay. As usual, we possibly spent even more time than necessary. But taking a few days to work out the best combination of hotels that would fit our budget has made me feel much better about our upcoming trip than I would have done otherwise. We prioritised spending a little more on hotels in locations where we plan to be more active – including Tortuguero, where we hope to do some canoe tours, and Monteverde, where we’ll want to take long walks through the cloud forest – so that we can be as relaxed and rested as possible on an evening.

As Matt from Matt’s Next Steps wrote in his recent guest post, feeling rested and refreshed makes a huge difference to how much anxiety you feel when you’re on holiday. While writing this blog, I'm also realising that the planning we've done to ensure a good night’s sleep on the most tiring days is already making a difference to how much anxiety I feel before travelling. It's just one less thing to worry about.

We have built in some restful days, as Liz strongly recommends in any longer itineraries. We’ll be taking it easy at the start of the holiday, staying at a beach resort, and we’ll also be taking a rest day in the middle of the trip. How we’ll spend that time, I’m not sure… but I am pretty sure I’ll feel grateful for that quieter day by the end of our trip.

And I have sorted my travel vaccinations well in advance. That includes vaccines for chikungunya and rabies, because it’s better to be safe than sorry. If you’re like me, prone as I am to health-related anxieties, it’s helpful to sort your vaccinations as soon as possible. Not only does it mean you’ll be protected, but it’s also going to give me much more time to stop thinking about any health concerns before travelling.

There is still a bit of planning left to do. Some of our holiday essential items need to be repurchased, and I need to buy clothes that will be suitable for a freezing cold night in Montréal and tropical temperatures in Costa Rica.

When I wrote that blog about cancelling our Panama plans several months ago, I said that it was important to push myself to take on certain anxieties at a pace I can manage. On reflection, changing our destination has made less of a difference than taking longer to prepare for our next big holiday and being a bit more mindful about following our own advice.

Taking longer to plan our Costa Rica trip has given me more time to find things to be excited about, more time to get comfortable with the idea of travelling to a new continent, and has given me a little break from the few thoughts that were lodged firmly in the front of my mind earlier this year.

I’m excited to find out where that approach will allow us to travel in one year, two years, and five years from now too.