The Dreaded Chicken Pox

As you may re call if you read my blogs regularly we recently went on our first family holiday of the year to Gran Canaria. We traveled with TUI , stayed in some lovely apartments called Revoli in the resort of Puerto Rico. Having worked in the ravel industry for 14 years this year I knew Puerto Rico was set along a cliff side  which did mean a fair amount of walking up and down hills but we coped absolutley fine and the plus side was the views were amazing.

Puerto Rico is a fairly busy resort if you want it to be, we tend to steer clear of the busy bars and English and Irish pub overloads and went for the local restaurants instead and found some really fantastic eateries with beautiful food and wine too!

But, the holiday unfortunately did not go to plan, we arrived late on the Monday evening and the next day explored the area and had a little amount of pool time in the afternoon then got changed to head out for dinner which is when we noticed just a few spots on our little ones back, straight away we thought oh no, could this be?! And the next morning sure enough it was chicken pox! We wasn’t due to fly home for days yet but I knew that airlines refuse you to fly with chicken pox so I panicked straight away! I was online googling all sorts and eventually decided to call my travel insurance which I have through Barclays bank, they were great and told me the first thing I need to do is head to a local Drs and get him checked over and have something in writing to confirm it is chicken pox, 160 Euros for that visit! Next stop we had to re visit them on the Sunday before we were due to fly home to see whether they would allow him to fly, and as we had guessed the answer was no, we were given a not fit to fly letter and back to the insurance who arranged for us to move hotels but technically we didnt know how long extra we would need , we missed our flight on Monday and were booked in for 2 nights at a different resort 15 minutes away and were re booked to see the Dr again on Tuesday back in Puerto Rico, so a few taxis later the Dr signed Alfie as fit to fly, next stop getting a flight home. Straight back onto the insurance and a few hours of waiting but they then confirmed they had booked us onto a flight back on Wednesday. Phew.

What a pretty rubbish holiday this had turned out to be, we couldn’t use the swimming pool so spent our days walking around the resort and my biggest gripe was fellow holiday makers , the looks we had , the comments and whispers made me feel so uncomfortable at times. He is a little boy with chicken pox, we have all had it and unfortunately Alfies turn happened to be whilst on holiday! Imagine trying to explain to a 3 year old why he cannot use the swimming pool, why he cannot use the park and is spending his time sat in a pushchair walking around or sat in a room! I think we need another holiday, ASAP!

Moral of the story, always make sure you have travel insurance it is so important as you never know what might happen! Big thank you to Barclays insurance for all the help we received.