The Traveling Widower

Tag: adventure

  • Baja and the Grey Whales – A Really Bad Start

    A person's feet in sneakers visible on a hospital stretcher, with medical equipment and staff in the background.

    Feb 21, 2026

    Note – I wrote most of this on February 22nd, and completed it on the 26th – much has happened in between. This is Part 1 of the Baja trip blog…sorry, you will have to wait for the rest of the story since I’m still working my way back home.

    I left for the first of my major 2026 trips on a beautiful Saturday morning, with high hopes for this long awaited trip. My plan was to drive down I-5 to Valencia (North of LA) on the 21st and stay at a nice hotel, then drive on Sunday to the hotel in San Diego where a van from Baja Jones will pick the group up on the 23rd, and travel to the airport in Ensenada. Great plan. It did not work out quite the way I expected it to. Read on.

    I drove down to Valencia on Saturday since driving all the way to San Diego in one trip is much further than I like to go in one day. I find it difficult now to drive one distance by myself – I miss my co-pilot. It was about a 5.5 hour drive, and I made it in time for happy hour at the hotel. I had a nice dinner at the bar, and two small glasses of beer, and headed back to my room. All good so far. When I was getting ready for bed, I got really dizzy and my heart was pounding. Not good. My heart beat was way over 100, and remained high. I was absolutely panicked and had no idea what to do – I tried to relax, but that did not help, so I eventually called 911. I do have heart related issues – these were classic symptoms of a tachycardia event, so I knew that I needed to have a physician check me out. An ambulance ride was not high on my list for this trip but I had no choice. There is nothing quite like being carted out on a gurney through a hotel lobby to an ambulance. 

    A long story short – they checked me out thoroughly at the ER –  my EKG’s, X-Ray and blood tests were all normal, so there were no indications that I had a heart attack. Always good news. My blood pressure was high, but not at a dangerous level and it had been elevated of late. The doctor said it was probably due to long and short-term stress and dehydration from the drive, and the alcohol and caffeine did not help either.  He recommended that I see my cardiologist soon, and also said I could go ahead with the trip.  

    The best part of this incident is that I got to experience the joy of being all alone in the ER. This facility had most of the patients on beds stationed along the walls and I was lucky enough to be where the police gathered with prisoners who needed medical attention. I got to listen to all the “Bro” talk from the officers, and the endless chatter from the handcuffed detainees. I was not about to tell the police to be quiet, but some poor patient, who was in incredible pain from a passing kidney stone screamed out “Shut Up”. That worked for a while. I’ve heard that passing a stone is the male equivalent of giving birth. I hope never to have that experience. 

    Now I understand why Jan hated going to the hospital,  but at least she had me by her side each time. Having support from a family member or friend really helps while you are lying there, waiting for hours for test results. She was always there for me whenever I did something stupid (rock climbing accident, bicycle accidents, etc.) This was my first time experiencing the ER solo. It sucks.

     I was eventually discharged and made it back to the hotel via UBER around 4:00AM. I was in no rush to leave the next day, so I managed to get a few hours of sleep. I considered briefly just heading home the next morning, but decided that I just needed to relax and stop worrying about the trip ahead. I really did want to see the whales. So, I headed off to San Diego later in the morning – just a 2-3 hour trip, depending on LA traffic. 

    Shortly after I arrived at the hotel, I checked my mail and found some additional, untimely bad news. I had read about the killing of a Mexican cartel lord in the news feeds, and the reprisal gang violence which had spread across Mexico. The owner of Baja Jones (Keith Jones) had sent out an e-mail providing some detail on the impact of our trip, and also included a copy of the State Department warning for a bunch of the Mexican states impacted by the violence. The two Baja states were listed at levels 2 and 3, with the latter suggesting to reconsider travel. Hmmm. 

    U.S. Embassy advisory for U.S. citizens in Mexico regarding safety measures due to security operations in specific states.

    I spent some time reading through the news reports, and to me at least, it appeared that all the violence was centered in the mainland states, not in either of the Baja states. But, there is still risk in going, possibly of being stranded in Mexico for a while. Keith had contacted his transportation companies, and there were no reported incidents in the places we travel through so for now, the trip was still on. One more thing to worry about, and stress was something I was trying to avoid. I had bought some calming gummies (no THC) on the way down and started popping those early on. After thinking this over for a few minutes (I did not have a lot of time, the vans were taking off at 7:00AM), I decided that if we could make it the airport without incident, we would be OK. Guerrero Negro was in an extremely remote part of Baja – not exactly a hot spot for tourism or the drug trade. So, I packed up my duffel bag, checked my pulse (almost normal), put a handful of gummies in my pocket, and headed down to the lobby. The two vans were in the parking lot – time to leave for Ensenada and start the adventure. 

  • Travel Is Complicated…Who Knew?

    Entrance to the Traveling Widower Travel Agency featuring a dark door, a sign indicating 'Photographic Gallery Inside', and a decorative light fixture.

    February 19th, 2026

    I’m not really starting a travel agency but I feel like I could run one of late since that’s all I seem to have been doing the past few days..weeks…months. As I strolled along a trail on my daily walk/limp the other day,  I started thinking about how making travel arrangements has changed over the past half century  (I’m really old).

    When I first started working, back in 1978, we actually had travel agencies that took care of everything – you picked up a phone (a land line of course), told a real person where you wanted to go, and magically, an envelope with tickets and an itemized itinerary showed up on your desk or mail box. As online capabilities for reserving airlines and hotels appeared a decade or two later, the burden of travel reservations slowly moved away from travel agencies to the travelers. Hotels and airlines ramped up on reward programs, which likely accelerated the migration for both corporate and personal travel to online reservations. Reaching frequent flyer goals, such as 100K with United, became something of a game for IT consultants –  increasing points outweighed getting to your destination so that flying to Chicago from Denver with stops in Seattle and Fargo made perfect sense. 

    When we first got married (1975…I told you I was really old), vacation travel for us was just hopping in a car and staying with friends and family, or looking for the cheapest hotels. We rarely traveled anywhere by plane, and there were travel books that listed hotels along highways and various destinations. AAA was great for planning trips.  Once we both started working, we relied on our company travel agencies until the Internet made everything available online, and then we both became pretty adept at making reservations. We rarely did long-term planning – sometimes we just decided (usually after a glass or two of wine) to head off to somewhere – Ireland, Italy, Maui. No problem – we just pulled out our laptops and coordinated on hotels, cars and flights. The one time we used a travel agency, we wound up in separate seats on a long flight to Tahiti. But after that experience, we always handled all of our own reservations. 

    Jan and I were a pretty good team at most everything we did together, except for tennis. That’s a long and painful story which I’ll share if I ever start drinking again. So now that she’s gone, travel reservations are just one more formerly shared task that I now have to do solo. Bummer. Given the number of trips I have been scheduling, this has become something of a necessary burden, especially for some of the more distant destinations (now that I’m a world traveler). 

    A table with a National Geographic Expeditions brochure featuring a woman and a llama, several invoices, and a mug.

    Up until recently, I’ve been focusing on just two tour companies for my adventures, and both of these, National Geographic/Lindblad and Natural Habitats/World Wildlife Federation, have travel agents who take care of pretty much everything. It’s just like the good old days – I speak to a real person, provide them with what I’m looking for in terms of flights and they take care of everything. For example, on my Grizzly Bear trip with Natural Habitats, I wanted to get there a day early to see a bit of Kodiak on my own, and then stay in Anchorage for a few days rather than heading straight home. The Natural Habitats agent worked it all out for me. All I have to do is figure out where I want to go in Kodiak and Anchorage. I did something similar with my first trip to Iceland, arriving two days early so I can visit a weird volcanic chamber, and maybe go snorkeling in the continental rift. All I had to do was reserve my extra-curricular activities – National Geographic took care of the rest. 

    So up until now, my life as my own travel agent has been pretty easy. But now I’m making my own life more complicated. There are quite a few touring/cruise companies that cover the Arctic and Antarctic, and not all of the smaller ones have their own travel agency. The hard part though is comparing each of the tours – how large are the ships, number of passengers, solo cabin size, comfort features on the ship. The larger ships are usually more luxurious, but with more passengers, the excursions are more crowded and require staggered scheduling. The smaller ships on the other hand, may not have as many creature comforts (hot tubs for example), but you get to spend more time doing what you came for. Finding reviews is important as well – I was keen on going with one particular company for the Svalbard trip, which emphasized how they welcomed solo travelers on their web site. The reviews told a different story, so I went with another small-ship company.

    One complication with the small companies is trip insurance – it’s a necessary rip-off, since most foreign destinations require at least minimal coverage for emergency medical and evacuation services (including shipping your body home…never mind, lets not go there). The larger companies offer insurance as part of a package, which you pay with the final invoice. With smaller companies, you are on your own, and usually have to pay within 15 days of the initial deposit. Ouch.

    So now that I’ve settled on this one particular cruise company (Poseidon) for two of my trips to obscure, far away places, I’ve discovered that there are some good reasons for using travel agencies. The first trip I booked with Poseidon travels to the Falkland and South Georgia Islands (penguins!!), and starts and ends from Ushuaia. Now that was easy with National Geographic/Lindblad – they had a charter flight from Santiago Chile, where we stayed at a Four Seasons for one night. As it turns out, all other scheduled flights go out of Buenos Aires, and for most of them, you have to switch airports. OK, complicated but I can figure that one out – it may require an overnight at a hotel airport, but I’m good with that. I’ve already done that a couple of times, where I fly to a major hub, stay at a nice hotel near the airport, and then take an early flight to my destination. That way I’m not as rushed and exhausted when I get there. 

    The next trip later in 2027, is a nightmare. I really wanted to go to Svalbard, Norway after seeing a series on Apple TV, The Long Way Home (worth watching). This is truly one of the most remote spots in the world, accessible by plane via either Oslo or some really small city in Norway (Tromso). That makes it hard enough. But (there’s always a but for me) I’ll be finishing off a Natural Habitat photography tour in Iceland just before the start of the Poseidon one, and will be leaving from Reykjavik Iceland. There is no easy way to get to Svalbard – I will have to stay overnight somewhere in Norway, and may wind up stopping in Copenhagen to get there. I have a long time to figure it out, since I’m not leaving until July 4th, 2027…but I’m already worrying about it.

    A few people have asked me how I manage all the travel arrangements for the many trips I’ve scheduled so far, and they are usually surprised that I’m doing this all on my own. I kind of surprise myself sometimes. It’s time consuming and sometimes frustrating, especially now that I have eight trips in 2026 to manage (…there’s still a few gaps), and then another five so far in 2027. I keep spreadsheets which lists costs, important dates and task reminders, but even with that, I find myself having to dedicate entire days sometimes for the initial scheduling of a trip, and then follow ups when I have to make payments or schedule airline travel. I have inserted automated reminders in my calendar for payment dates, and spend a lot of time checking out various excursions for my free days on the trips. For the first Iceland trip, I had already booked the magma chamber (another cave) trip, and had hoped to do a really weird one – snorkeling in a continental rift zone. In really cold water. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the tour operators do not book anyone with any type of heart disease. Kind of makes sense – that’s why I have declined the “polar plunge” opportunity twice. So I’m doing a half-day tour to see Puffins instead. Safer I guess, and those little guys are so cute. Sort of like penguins that can actually fly.

    Two puffins standing on green moss with pink flowers, near a body of water.
    Not my photo…I wish it was

    I’m not really complaining about any of this – it’s kind of hard to bitch about traveling this often, to so many strange places, and it’s not like I’m pressed for time any given day when I’m not traveling. In some ways, it is sort of like a work replacement, without the free food.

    Two days and I’m off to Baja and the friendly Grey Whales. I did not get to pet one the last time I was down there. This time for sure.

    A gray whale breaching the surface of the water with a mountainous landscape in the background.

    Peace