What do 4 nurses, a photographer and gardener have in common? The future will tell. Many months ago over a dinner that included 2 bottles of wine and 2 Martini's retirement and travel plans came up as dinner conversation. By the end of the evening a fall trip to Peru morphed into a great excursion in January and a chance to travel with good friends.
First an introduction is in order. Tim and Blanca, neither retired, Tim is the nurse manager at Naval Hospital Balboa in the Employee Health Department. Blanca is the nurse case manager for Marriott Corporation in Hawaii. Tim and Blanca live part time in San Diego and part time in Kona, Hawaii. Tim keeps talking about retiring and letting Blanca (who is the baby of the group) support him. Best assets of the traveling twosome is Blanca works for Marriott so has all kinds of connections around the world and is bilingual to boot. She is the trip planner which is hard for me to let someone else take care of details, but I am trainable.
Next up Patti and Don. Don is the photographer, maybe not professionally but he could be. He is the designated driver of our group although none of us will be driving. He may be responsible to get us back to the right hotel if the 4 nurses and gardener can't remember how after drinking too much "coco" tea to ward of altitude sickness not too mention other liquid type refreshments. I haven't figured out how we are going to get Don to send all of us the pictures he takes. Patti is a nurse working as a consultant in the field of safety, benefits, worker's compensation and policy review and development. She hasn't quiet figured out retirement either so continues to work and travel when it can fit into her schedule. I am designating her at the tech expert, perhaps she can even teach Dan to us the Kindle he got for Christmas and help figure out any telephone issues we may have.
Dan and I make up the last of the 6. I will be the self appointed historian so everything you read may be colored by my "sense of humor". There most likely will be other additions from some of my travel mates and hopefully the photographer will be adding to the blog with terrific shots of everything we see and do to complete the picture. The most exciting part of the whole trip may be Dan and my lack of physical fitness since we "haven't" been exercising or hiking. Maybe we should have scheduled this trip for the fall after all. Dan may actually eat in local eateries which usually he won't since there will be someone fluent in the language who could decipher what he is really eating.
We are looking forward to 12 days in Peru with 4 very good friends who are fun to be with. Dan and I will extend the trip 48 hours and travel down to Lake Titicaca (just because I am curious) to see the highest lake in the world. Our last planning meeting will be 2 days before we leave and a quick look at the weather shows rain every day. Maybe that is why the airfare was so reasonable??
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