[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland. Since much of my news these days relates to trying to age gracefully, this series might be called The Geezer Gazette.]
12/20/25
Aloha All!
Well, I see that you mainlanders may be getting a break from your deep-freeze weather, a nice warmup for Christmas. We're pretty much the same for the rest of the month -- highs around 80 at our house, lows in the upper sixties, sunny mornings with a chance of afternoon showers. The current volcano forecast is for the next fountaining episode to occur between December 22nd and 27th so there's still a chance for a lava Christmas present from Pele.
This week we finalized our plans for our trip to Panama and Colombia ("Panombia") next spring. The Panama portion will be a custom tour we put together with a local company, and we will make a deposit soon. This took some back-and-forth to tune the itinerary to our liking, and we're pretty happy with it. It will be a total of 12 days in Panama, spread between Panama City, the Caribbean Coast, and the mountain area in the northwest. Our activities will include touring the canal, guided wildlife walks (particularly birding), exploring historical sites, and perhaps doing some snorkeling. To the extent we could arrange it, the itinerary will provide for the things we like when traveling -- nature, architecture, history, culture, interactions with locals, food. Following the Panama portion we'll fly to Colombia for our cruise on the Magdelana River, starting in a coastal city named Baranquilla and ending in Cartegena. At the beginning and end of the cruise we'll spend time on our own to flesh out the itinerary a little. We spent a good deal of time in Colombia on a previous trip several years ago, visiting a fairly large portion of the country, so we don't feel the need to make this an extensive trip. Anyway, we made the final payment for the river cruise and all we have left is to make some hotel reservations and book the international flights. We're getting pretty excited about this trip, our first foreign excursion since last year.
In Geezer Gazette news, I'm progressing on my ablation consultation. I have a virtual session scheduled for January with a cardiac electrophysiologist on Oahu. If I have the ablation procedure it will be at Queen's Hospital in Honolulu as an outpatient. Prior to the consultation, I have a second echo-cardiogram scheduled also in January. This should provide an up-to-date assessment of how my heart is functioning, along with the data from my recent heart monitor. Should be a fun month.
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| What a Float! |
Ok, that's it for the week. Have a great Christmas, and treat Santa with extra kindness. He deserves it more than ever.........
2 comments:
I always love to read about your travel plans and thought I would should share some of mine with you. This last August and September I completed a drive to Alaska and back again through BC & the Yukon. I enjoyed the entire journey but fell in love with the Yukon (though I won’t ever return in the winter. This coming summer I plan on driving to NY state then on to Newfoundland and Labrador. And I’ve just put down a deposit online a 136 day cruise for 2027 that will circle the pacific going from San Diego to Vancouver with dozens of stops including Easter Island, Pitcairn, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, New Caledonia, NZ, Australia, through Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, China, Japan, Aleutians, coastal Alaska, and BC. It hits a whole lot of boxes of places I want to visit. This shows a lot of pent up travel desire on my part.
Happy Holidays and New Year, with good health! Stay warm.
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