A Shit Start to the Year

2025 has gotten off to a shit start. And I mean that kind of literally. Hawk and I both came back from Panama with some kind of stomach bug. We've been suffering diarrhea for going on a week now. In addition we're achy overall and fatigued. I've felt like lying in bed half the day each day. I've taken a few mid-afternoon naps, even a few mid-morning naps, and I've gone to bed before 9pm several times.

What's the cause? It's hard to say. Early on I wondered if we might be coming down with Norovirus, as it's in the news recently rates of that have shot way up as part of a tripledemic/quad-demic coupled with Covid— which we both had four weeks ago— and flu and RSV. But our symptoms seem mild compared to what you read about with Norovirus. OTOH maybe we just have mild cases and have been able to stay on top of staying hydrated.

Update: as of midday it's been 24 hours since I've had diarrhea. Hawk is on the mend, too. We'll see if fatigue stills hits us later today/this evening.

Pissed Off in Panama. Time's Finite.

Panama Travelog #Whatever
Everywhere we went - The whole damn week.

Our trip to Panama in late December, which we returned from a week ago, was an exercise in joy and frustration. Exercise is an unfortunately apropos term as it often took effort to find the joy and hold onto any sense of it amidst all the setbacks.

What went wrong? Lots of things big and small. I'll group it into categories as Five Things:

• Problems started from the hour we landed. The car rental agency downgraded us to a smaller car because they didn't have the one we reserved. At first that seemed like a negligible issue because they also charged us the lower rate, but then two days later our little vehicle couldn't even drive some of the roads in El Valle.


• Meanwhile, we had room trouble at the hotel we checked into the first night. And there was trouble with the second hotel we visited. And the third. Literally everywhere we went, there was a problem. The latter two we serious enough that we would have demanded refunds and gone elsewhere if it weren't too late to find reasonable alternate accommodation.


• Oh, and it wasn't just cars and rooms we had trouble with. Some of the hikes we had on our list were falsely advertised. Like, reviews full of superlatives but nothing actually there. Or officially closed.


• Oh, and it rained every day— and this was supposed to be the dry season!


• Our phones basically stopped getting cell service halfway through the trip, requiring a three-hour troubleshooting session with tech support. Even after it was "fixed", connection remained spotty every time we weren't standing still.


• Oh, and just when we thought we were done with this star-crossed trip.... We were sick the day we traveled home. And sick for almost a week after.

Okay, so that's six things when I promised 5. Even when I group the problems by category there are still too many.

"Okay, so it wasn't perfect," you might respond. "Whenever is a trip perfect?" And haven't I congratulated myself before on planning flexibly so I can call an audible when plans need to change?

Sure, I know things don't go perfectly. That's what I plan to be ready to call an audible when necessary. But understand that calling an audible means crossing things off the list and skipping them. It's fine to do that a small number of times. After a certain number of times it's just frustrating.

What's the frustration, BTW? Aren't there other things I can do? The frustration is about money and opportunity.

Money: We spent several thousand dollars on this trip. It's a real pisser when things we aim to do are suddenly not available. Sure, there are other things to do, but when I get down to having to choose between fourth and fifth choice, is it still worth the thousands of dollars to be here? If I'd known in advance I may have chosen not to go there. ...And gone elsewhere instead. Which leads to the second issue....

Opportunity: Possibly more so than wasting money it's wasted time. I have finite opportunities for international trips like this. Recently it's been 1-2 a year. I do not have an infinite number of years of life. Fewer, even, of active, globe-trotting, get-outdoors-and-do-stuff life. This trip means using up a ticket from a very limited number of tickets in my proverbial ticket book. It infuriates me to see that I've burned one of those tickets on a trip that hits failures left, right, and center.