Vacation Outtakes

One thing I’ve learned over the years while scanning the luggage carousel for my bag, s that your vacation never ends up like the travel brochure.

Your trips (well, at least, mine) are usually like the part of the photograph that was cropped out, the trailer park behind the pricy water park destination, the burnt bits on the overpriced fries.

This trip to Patagonia, like every other, has been full of those cropped out moments, such as my previous post with the epic-long bus ride. Or, the ordeal I had this morning, New Year’s Eve, when my hotel announced they would be closing.

Yes, closing.

Insert your favorite expletive here.

“How can you close? You’re a hotel! I had arranged to keep my bags here while I join the glacier tour!”

The desk manger gives no response from my tirade. “We close at 2 PM and will unlock the doors at 10 AM tomorrow on New Years.”

“But what do I do with my stuff?”

No response .

Anger surged through my veins, my blood turning into ink writing the blackhole review at Booking.com:

The constantly dripping faucet, smell of leaking gas, and dreary atmosphere made my stay slightly better than camping on a fire ant hill. Camping is what I imagine living quarters are like in hell…

“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday when I made arrangements for my luggage?”

A shoulder shrug on her part followed by a convenient sputtering of, “Sorry, no English.”

Like I said, vacations are not the travel brochure or TikTok page or Instagram post.

Things worked out, well sort of, thanks to my tour guide to the Peurto Mereno Glacier, whom I tipped generously. He locked them in his travel agency until we returned from Los Glaciares National Park.

El Calafate, Argentina, the gateway to Los Glaciares National Park, is a gem of a location, but the prices that are out of my league, which is why I booked a room at the Leaky Faucet-Locked-Door Hotel. I refuse to pay more for a meal than I do for a night’s stay, which is what you can expect to pay at one of the juicy locations featuring a side of lamb sizzling in their window, and which is why I’m dining on kitchenette meals. Canned tuna, macaroni, and a 60% off store-brand Christmas Panetone. Definitely not a four-star diner experience on Travel Advisor.

I think about my travels in Thailand. I met a guy who was a famous Instagrammer photographer, his paycheck coming from a famous watch brand (the name I can’t remember). The brand paid this guy to post photos of him wearing their watch in exotic locations. Dangling inside a cave in the Philippines, scuba diving in Phucket, gazing at ancient ruins in Cambodia, but never wrestling with an overly crammed backpack at a bus depot. I fantasized for a moment about such a life, if I were approached by a company to post photos of me with their product in front of a “Don’t you wish you were me” location instead of eating a bruised banana.

I wouldn’t want to transform any holiday into work, spending hours at coffee shops analyzing SEO or editing videos instead of enjoying an unscripted life. A few travel vloggers were at the same hotel as me last year–not the one with the dripping faucet–but in Buenos Aires. Their lives off the screen didn’t look that fun, but raking their fingers through their hair while crouched over a screen. Not much fun, but stress of a career packed in their carry-on.

Actually, if I were approached by a brand to feature their product, it most likely would be for some humiliating middle-aged product one of those drugs with countless side effects or adult-diapers or something. Not that I wear them… anymore. Just wait til you hit menopause!

Vacations don’t go as planned, but that doesn’t make them awful, unless you’re a ten-year old kid getting rained out of Disneyworld. Or, you are six hours away from the airport in Cambodia when you realize you picked up the wrong luggage. True story, that is, if the girl sitting next to me in the vav could be trusted, though I secretly suspected she’d show up on LOCKED UP ABROAD.

Birds also have changes in their vacations due to wind. The Reserva Laguna Nimez in El Calafate was packed with birds who stranded, the gusty wind making it impossible for them to fly. Please trust me when I say there’s about three dozen flamingos in the lagoon with their heads dipped in the water.

Just one of the stranded species I clicked off my Merlin’s list.

Life hasn’t gone as planned for the glaciers, too, thanks to global warming.

Most of my photos were over exposed: the sun is that bright here. Even the tour guide made sure everyone was slathered with sun block before disembaring the minibus. Condors soared overhead, these refrigerator -sized creatures appearing like ants in the sky. Birds hopped near our feet..well, near enough.

My adventure will continue, not just in Chile or not just in Lima back my classroom. It won’t go as expected. Life doesn’t go as planned, it never does. Ten years ago, if you told me I’d be divorced and teaching English in a city named after my least favorite vegetable, I would’ve called you bonkers. I don’t know what lies ahead in 2026, none of us do. But let’s take that trip together.