GUEST BLOG: Adventure by Chicken Bus, An Unschooling Odyssey through Central America Janet LoSole Plus Giveaway!

Drowning in debt and disillusioned with the workaday world, Janet and her husband Lloyd, are at their wits’ end. Despite working day and night, Lloyd’s earnings barely cover household expenses. Determined to make a change, they write out a list of what they want most in life. When they swap lists, an identical word appears at the top: travel. This is the kick in the pants they need to get out of debt and land teaching jobs in Costa Rica. Little did they know that they would be embarking on an adventure by chicken bus through seven nations with their homeschooled daughters Jocelyn (eight) and Natalie (five).

The plan collapses when job offers from a school in Costa Rica fall through, and because Lloyd has been granted a leave of absence from his position in Canada, he is jobless in both countries. On a leap of faith, they sell all possessions to finance the trip. To travel long-term though, they must commit to living frugally, but it is an opportunity to teach the girls what it is really like to live in a developing country.

Nothing is more important to Lloyd than protecting the environment, so once they arrive in Costa Rica, they board a re-purposed North American school bus called a chicken bus, to a sleepy island backwater where Janet has arranged volunteer placements with a grassroots conservation program called ASTOP. The family signs up for midnight beach patrols to protect endangered sea turtles from poachers who roam the beach in the dark of night. Then, they travel to Tortuguero National Park and paddle the canals, cataloguing dozens of species of wildlife.

Further south they meet a Bribri family through El Puente, a non-profit organization. The family invites Janet, Lloyd, and the girls to stay overnight at their homestead in the Kekoldi Indigenous Reserve. Janet struggles to repress fears about taking the girls into the jungle, after all, it is part of the trip mandate—to learn about other cultures.

After ninety days, the family exits Costa Rica to renew their tourist visas. Instead of returning in seventy-two hours to continue their tour of Costa Rica, Janet convinces Lloyd to trek all the way to Panama City to view the Canal. There, they meet hordes of young backpackers who are gobsmacked at the sight of an adventuring family. In return, their stories inspire Janet and Lloyd to overcome their timidity about voyaging through adjacent countries, Nicaragua and Honduras.

The excursion to Panama is cut short when Lloyd lands a teaching post in Costa Rica. The family returns, rents a house in a small village, and Janet and the girls volunteer in the community, to deepen their understanding of the culture and learn the language. For the next year, they live like the locals, on a meager income, a primary objective of the trip. The presence of the children breaches the culture barrier so profoundly, they consider relocating permanently to Costa Rica.

They exit the country at intervals, alternating between Panama and Nicaragua, bumping around like turnips in the back of a truck to visit places like a monkey sanctuary and pre-Columbian archeological sites. The more backpackers they meet, the more they gain confidence to consider returning home overland through northern countries. Or, are they staying in Costa Rica?

Months later they have forged deep friendships in their community which becomes crucial when Natalie acquires a serious bacterial infection that requires a trip to a run-down hospital. While she recovers, Lloyd and Janet admit that they have taken the health and safety of their home country for granted and decide that returning to Canada is in the best interest of the children.

At the completion of Lloyd’s contract, they depart Costa Rica for good. Their journey home has only just begun when they receive a warning from a Canadian expat in Nicaragua that they will be targeted by bandidos if they travel by first-class coach. They re-arrange their itinerary, planning their route down to the kilometer, taking short hops on chicken buses with the locals for the sake of safety. With Jocelyn recovering from a stubborn lung infection, they vow to remain close to medical clinics to keep everybody safe. It’s a good strategy; while touring Granada’s historic sites, Natalie bashes her head against a rusty sign, and they must rush to a hospital. The accident is minor, but Janet’s worries are never far from the surface.

Jocelyn and Natalie find Nicaragua charming, but despite the museums, galleries, and concerts they attend, they must adapt to deteriorating infrastructure—using flashlights during power outages and flushing and washing with water collected in garbage pails. Young boys approach the family begging for money. The girls are too young to know how to support people of the developing world effectively, so Janet and Lloyd lead by example, shopping at as many small businesses as they can.

In Estelí, the girls spot an iconic image of a woman breastfeeding her baby with a rifle slung over her shoulder in the middle of the Contra War. A discussion about casualties has a devastating impact when Jocelyn hears that children died during the conflict.

Janet learns that bus jackings, reckless driving, and drug trafficking make Honduras one of the most dangerous countries in the world outside a war zone. Her stress levels are at an all-time high. They discover an oasis in a lakeside community called Lago de Yojoa, where Lloyd hires a driver to transport the family safely to the coast. Janet is relieved to be leaving Honduras, but it doesn’t last; traversing the Bay of Omoa by boat to Dangriga, Belize is terrifying.

Janet can finally breathe in Dangriga and figures that a pit stop to a hot sauce factory can be educational too, right? For the first time, chicken buses motor at a sensible speed, and they board one to San Ignacio to rest up before the culmination of the adventure by chicken bus in Tikal, Guatemala’s massive Mayan ruins.

At the top of Temple IV in Tikal National Park, Janet ruminates on the adventure, which is coming to an end. After two days exploring Mayan ruins, the family retraces their steps to Belize. In a disastrous turn of events, Jocelyn nearly gets hit by a bus on the highway. Then, a death-defying ride to the border in a crowded mini-van is a hair’s breadth from becoming tragic. Janet convinces Lloyd to decompress on Caye Caulker, an island offshore from Belize City.

The family navigates to Chetumal for one last crack at exploring history at Mexico’s famed Mayan Cultural Museum. Then, they book a flight home from Cancun.

Back home Lloyd admits he cannot drive his car one day more. He rides his bike to work every day, even in winter. Janet’s describes a strategy she employed to cope with anxiety about the girls’ safety. Jocelyn and Natalie are nearly fluent in Spanish, have developed compassion for others, and an appreciation for environmental conservation. Above all else, this renders the trip a success.

Embarking on a homeschooling field trip to Central America is stressful enough, but add in perilous bridge crossings, trips to the hospital, and a lack of women’s underwear, and you have the makings of an Adventure by Chicken Bus.

Buckling under a mountain of debt, Janet LoSole and her family are at their wits’ end. Determined to make a drastic change, they sell all worldly possessions and hit the road. With only a few items of clothing, a four-person tent, and little else, the family visits a sleepy island backwater in Costa Rica to save endangered sea turtles. In Panama, they bounce around like turnips in the back of a vegetable truck to reach an isolated monkey sanctuary. In Guatemala, they scale the ancient Mayan temples of Tikal.

In between tales of begging rides from total strangers and sleeping overnight in the jungle with an indigenous family, Janet endorses community-based travel–supporting local businesses and favoring public transportation called chicken buses. She also writes candidly about what it takes to travel long-term with two little girls amid the chaos of border crossings, erratic drivers, and creepy crawlies lurking at the edge of the jungle.

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