Hi Felix, thanks for the reply.
I have done some testing after your reply and the code works fine on a raspberry pi, its only when I connect it to my Mac does it output these strange errors. I have created a python 3.7.5 venv on my Mac and tested with that too and the issue is still there. Then I tried using the FTDI drivers from ftdichip.com but it still throws the same exceptions. Trying to decode with 'ISO-8859-1' is much better on the Mac, it doesn't throw any exceptions but still cannot get all the values from the node properly.
On the other hand radiohead works flawlessly on the same mac with the same python code and venv.
So in short:
On Rpi 3b+ code running on Python 3.5.3 runs flawlessly.
On macOS 10.15.2 code running on the same Python 3.5.3 is throwing all sorts of exceptions while the same Python code with Radiohead works correctly
I am using the FTDI R3 Adapter with the default settings on macOS which was brought from your store.
How should I debug this further? I have also tried using the code Wireless Programming code you linked and the same problem occurs with that too. And yes I am using the default settings when opening the Pyserial port.