From Bad Omens to Blessings

How we detoured after a dream trip went bust

This is not the post I planned to publish this week. I pre-wrote something else and scheduled it to upload automatically while I was off the grid. This story kind of wrote itself instead.

I planned to hike and camp along the Inca Trail today, then spend Thanksgiving and the day after reaching and exploring Machu Picchu. I also planned to arrive last Saturday with my husband in Peru’s high-altitude town of Cusco to absorb the indigenous and colonial history and culture of the Sacred Valley, then embark on the Inca Trail with a group and guide, and then glide down a river for several days on motorized canoes through a jungle near the border of Bolivia for wildlife viewing.

I am a planner, so I arranged for all these things on a bucket-list dream trip to happen just right. I researched thoroughly, packed all the gear necessary, read books about Peru, brushed up on my Spanish, and counted the weeks in anticipation of our first trip abroad since 2015. We shelled out many thousands of dollars on this gift to ourselves, even popping for business class seats to sleep better on the red-eye from LA to Lima.

But things often go spectacularly wrong in spite of the best-laid plans. This trip’s logistics got off to a rough start and then went off the rails. Consequently, I am by the beach in Santa Barbara. After coping with frustration, anxiety, and sadness triggered by loss of control and change of plans, I let go of the plans and did my best to make peace with the circumstances.

Not Cusco, Peru.

Life challenged me to be adaptable this week and to look for silver linings. I mostly, albeit belatedly, met that challenge. Perhaps being an ultrarunner helped, since success at ultras takes adaptability along with endurance. Plus, an “embrace the suck” gallows humor helps.

The bottom line is, I am fine, I am not a victim, and I’m grateful we’re experiencing a very nice and privileged Plan B of a week with family. I’m also grateful we’ll return home Friday to be with our sick dog. But still, I can’t believe this past week unfolded as it did and that I DNS’ed (Did Not Start) the journey.

Bad Omens

Our beloved dog’s cancer diagnosis and sudden blindness (described here) on November 8 blindsided us. How could our happy, seemingly healthy dog have a latent illness that emerged so unexpectedly and acutely? We wrestled with whether to cancel the two-week trip, since it meant not being present to make the tough decision whether or when to say the big goodbye and put Beso to sleep. Reluctantly, we left him in my wonderful brother’s care, since Beso seemed relatively comfortable and happy with my brother and his dogs. A cloud of sadness and guilt hung over our departure.

And, looking at the weather app, I realized that real rainclouds awaited us during the hiking and camping portions of our trip. We chose to travel during the slightly less crowded season at Machu Picchu. Not coincidentally, it’s also the rainy season, when a monsoon pattern dumps a half inch of rain on the Inca Trail each afternoon and evening. No worries, I told myself, we have rain gear. We’re used to the San Juan Mountains’ monsoons.

We left last Thursday with plans to fly to Denver and spend the night in Boulder to visit our son Kyle, then fly LAX > Lima > Cusco Friday through Saturday. A major storm dumped several inches of snow on the Front Range that day. The United app kept showing our flight from Montrose to Denver delayed, first by just a few hours, then more. We’d get to Boulder so late, we’d miss dinner with our son.

Screw it, I said, let’s drive and leave the car there. It meant a seven-hour drive bookending the trip, but no worries, we could listen to audiobooks. So we drove all the way to Denver, navigating slow and dicey conditions on snowy I-70.

“This trip is not getting off to a good start,” I told Morgan, the understatement of the week.

Nonetheless, we made it to Pearl Street by 7 p.m. as Kyle was getting off work, and we had a great dinner. We had arranged for him and our daughter to meet in LA this week for Thanksgiving with my in-laws, since we would be gone, and I felt a twinge of guilt and regret we wouldn’t be with them.

Friday morning, we navigated the insanely crowded security lines at DIA (even the TSA pre-check line was about 100 deep), too tight on time for comfort. We boarded and weirdly got a window seat on the one row that doesn’t have a window. What are the chances of that? No worries, we were on our way.

Morgan in the window seat with no window. Thanks, United.

At LAX, we collected our bags from United and started to make our way to the international terminal to check into our flight on LATAM, the Peruvian airlines. We took a happy selfie to send the kids. We planned to enjoy dinner and read books during a long layover, then sleep on the flight in our cushy business class seats.

Happy selfie right before the news broke.

Then our phones blew up with notifications. A firetruck had collided with a departing airplane on Lima’s runway, killing the personnel in the vehicle and setting the aircraft on fire (thankfully no one on the plane died). Our flight was canceled.

Fun fact: Lima’s Jorge Chavez International Airport has only one runway (a second one is under construction). All flights go through that hub. In other words, the country’s connection to the outside world entirely depends on that single runway in Lima. When the runway shuts down due to a major accident and ensuing fuel spill, with no clear idea of how long the investigation and cleanup will take, chaos ensues.

As if quickly processing the stages of grief, I felt shock, disbelief, anger, sadness, and resignation that eventually gave way to acceptance.

Twenty-four hours later, we were still stuck in LA, and we had no assurance that the airport would actually reopen as scheduled and that our rebooked flight to Lima would take off (and forget about business class seats or even sitting together). If we could get to Lima, we did not know when we could rebook a flight to Cusco. News reports showed airport scenes of crowding that made my stomach churn.

Then we found out from the trip organizer that everyone else in the group had canceled because they could not get to Cusco in time to start the Inca Trail on the day that our group’s trail permit specified we had to start.

Our group trip was canceled. We weren’t going to Peru. This trip this week wasn’t meant to be.

Counting My Blessings

As disappointing as the turn of events was, I realized we were lucky for many reasons:

We were not on that LATAM flight that crashed on the runway, nor on any of the flights heading to Lima when the accident occurred. Those flights had to divert to other airports, and international passengers got stuck waiting interminably at regional airports because only Lima, the international airport, has customs and passport control.

LATAM promptly offered and processed full refunds, so we got the airline ticket money back. We’re optimistic our trip insurance will cover the cost of the group itinerary.

Our daughter Colly lives in LA and picked us up from the airport, and we stayed in her apartment. We could have been stuck somewhere without family, like Dallas or Miami.

We had a lovely urban hike with her on Saturday. I ran around LA, then met Colly and Morgan at the base of the Culver City Stairs that lead to the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. We hiked 300 feet upstairs and received the gift of a picture-perfect day in LA, the sky so clear we could see a snow-capped peak past downtown on the Angeles Crest.

Hoofing up the Culver City Stairs.

My husband and daughter at the top.

My in-laws, also in LA, loaned us a car so we could get around. They and the kids are delighted we’ll join them for Thanksgiving. It’s been many years since we celebrated the holiday with Morgan’s parents.

Morgan and I felt deflated, however, because we so very much yearned for an unplugged vacation. We had carved out time to get away off the grid. Then it hit us: Take these days off anyway and go somewhere special.

We drove up the coast to our old getaway of Santa Barbara, where I used to go on day trips to the beach with my family as a kid growing up in Ojai, and where I used to party with my big sister when she went to UCSB. The familiar coastal mountains and vegetation of the Los Padres National Forest tugged at my heart with a feeling of welcome and nostalgia.

I have known Santa Barbara in the worst of weather—from hot Santa Ana wind-whipped red-flag days that light up the hillsides with terrifying wildfires, to chilly June Gloom dense-fog days that dampen a beach trip. The perfect weather this week feels like a gift.

As soon as we arrived, I went to the beach with my book and lay on a towel in the sand, observing clumps of seaweed and V-shaped tracks from seagulls as I used to do as a child. The 70-degree sunshine with just a hint of breeze warmed my back while the sound of crashing waves melted away the tension in my shoulders. On that beach, I mentally released the sadness about the canceled trip.

Reschedule the trip another year, I told myself. Be here now.

As more luck would have it (and I’m being genuine here, not sarcastic), I found out that my lifelong friend and her husband, who we also went to high school with, had just arrived down the coast in Ventura. We made plans for dinner together.

This is a friend I’ve known since preschool. I slept over at her house countless times, took riding lessons with her, and graduated from high school with her. We had our babies months apart when we both lived in the East Bay, and we spent a wild 2010 new year’s eve camping and kayaking together with our school-age kids in New Zealand. She’s the precious friend you can tell anything and always pick up where you left off. We toasted nearly 50 years of friendship (since we met in 1973) and swapped stories about our past and present.

Carolyn and me

I’m sharing this as a reminder that you don’t have to travel to find adventure. Life’s surprises can be adventures and gifts. I am so grateful for the past 72 hours.

Morgan and I even experienced an extra-challenging hike. It wasn’t the Inca Trail, but we tackled the Three Peaks route above Santa Barbara. The first couple of miles gained 2000 feet up a rocky spine of boulders, which necessitated using hands and scrambling nearly the whole way. I inhaled the smell of chaparral, gripped smooth red-brown manzanita branches, and gazed at the pinkish-red sandstone that’s so different from Colorado’s iron red. I loved the feeling of using my whole body—reaching and clambering while bouldering—to summit each of the three peaks.

Arlington Peak above Santa Barbara, the first peak we ascended, followed by Cathedral and La Cumbre.

The route up was a lot more rock than trail.

Tomorrow I’ll jump into a Turkey Trot 5K near my in-law’s house and celebrate Thanksgiving with extended family. Then we’ll fly home to comfort our dog. Perhaps we’ll reschedule the Peru trip for spring. Who knows? I am taking this vacation day by day now.

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Speaking of gratitude, thank you all for helping me reach a goal. I hoped to gain 1000 subscribers, 50 of them paid, by year’s end, and I reached that milestone this week.

Has travel ever thrown you a big curveball? Or do you have a lemons-to-lemonade experience to share? I hope you’ll comment below or on the chat thread. Happy Thanksgiving.

And please, enjoy some pie.