The Hard Part
by Jenn Lopez
The few hours we spent in the airport before our first flight were surreal. We were celebrating. We had accomplished a huge feat. We acted on a big crazy idea and couldn’t believe how far it had taken us. So excited for the 9 months ahead of us, we settled in for our first flight.
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a germaphobe. I hate being in dirty places, and I think COVID really didn’t help it. But knowing full well that we were going to be traveling and staying in airbnbs for the next 9 months, I tried to come to terms with the idea that I needed to relax about it a little.
Our first stop on our way to Puerto Vallarta was Chicago. We had to stay overnight, so I booked us a room at an airport hotel that had good reviews and a shuttle. We arrived, and I was pleasantly surprised at how clean the place was. Maybe I could actually relax a little during these 9 months instead of cleaning like a crazy person.
Our flight was early the next morning and the excitement outweighed our tiredness. We had bought our eSims already for Mexico and were ready to go when we landed... or so we thought.
When we landed, the heat and people yelling at us as we exited the airport was completely overwhelming. On top of that, our eSims weren’t working, so we were stranded in the middle of the chaos trying to fiddle with the settings to get one of our phones to work.
Exhaustion started to kick in as we tried to use the airport wifi to order an uber. We then had to hoof it to the pickup spot. We had to beeline it up a ramp to a bridge that crossed a busy boulevard then down the ramp in the allotted 6 minutes. Sweating, overwhelmed and hoping the uber didn’t cancel on us because we had no way of checking if it did at that point, we headed to the spot the app told us. Thankfully the uber was there and we headed to our first new home of this trip.
We knew there would be some cleaning to do. I mean I’m good, but I’m not a live-in-someones'-home-for-a-month and not-clean-it kind of person. But there was a pool to cool down in and it was supposed to be very centrally located. Gold.
We arrived and turned on the air conditioning right away. I thought I noticed something running across the paper I laid on the counter, but thought I’m just tired. It was tiny if I did see something so it was probably just a floater in my eye… yeah I’m old now. We put our bags in our room and started to assess the place.
One air conditioner started to spit and sputter and looked like it might vibrate off the wall. Chucks of ice started flying out of the thing. Determined that everything was going to be fine, we wrote the host to let him know and went on finding out more about the place. It was while I was writing the host that I noticed the paper again, so I asked Edgar if I was seeing things.
God I wish I was seeing things. The more we looked the more we found. There were little tiny ants and they were everywhere. They were coming out of the stove top, they were in a line on the floor, they were in the bathroom, the walls in the room. I mean there wasn’t a surface we could find that didn’t have them.
Trying our best to be brave and not completely freak out, we decided that we would go to the nearest general store, get some Raid and cleaner and get to work. When we got back, we started, and it was becoming so overwhelming that I asked Edgar to take our little one to the pool so she wouldn’t get completely overwhelmed too.
He’s awesome, and got her ready and they tried their best to have a good time, while mama stayed back and cleaned. And boy did I clean. We had sprayed Raid in all the important spots, so my job was to try and clean it up and make it comfortable enough, at least for the night.
With most of the ants dead or dying, I sprayed Lysol, scrubbed and cleaned, did laundry (couch cushions and blankets), swept and mopped, and then cleaned some more. Thankfully Edgar had Nora tired but happy and smiling when they returned. And I had a clean safe space for our little family to spend the night. We showered, got in our pjs, and tried to get some sleep.
The next morning we woke up to more ants. Less than before, but still a lot of ants. Again thinking we could salvage this, we sprayed more Raid and left the house so we wouldn’t poison ourselves. We wanted to go check out the sights and sounds of Puerto Vallarta.
This was what we were here for right? A lot of planning had gone into getting us here. We wanted to see the place, taste the food, hear the sounds, to explore, and to live like a local… a local that has ants.