Panama Was Supposed to Be Cuba
We planned Cuba carefully enough to walk away. That's how we ended up discovering Panama instead.
Cuba had been on my bucket list for years.
I spent three years stationed at Guantanamo Bay, but GTMO isn't exactly the Cuba most travelers imagine. I'd always wanted to see the other side of the island, spend some time in Havana, meet people, eat the food and experience everyday Cuba.
And yes, I wanted to do one completely touristy thing.
Straw hat. Cuban cigar. Mojito. Riding around Havana in the back of a 1957 Chevy convertible.
I'm allowed one.
As Americans, we planned to travel under the U.S. government's Support for the Cuban People category. That affected how we could travel and where we could legally spend our money. We planned around private accommodations rather than government-connected hotels and resorts that can be prohibited for U.S. travelers.
That wasn't much of a sacrifice.
Staying with local families and spending our money with privately owned businesses was much closer to the kind of trip we wanted anyway.
We booked four nights in Havana and another three in Varadero. We arranged transportation from the airport, between our two stays and back to the airport for the flight home.
Beyond that?
Almost nothing.
We weren't going to Cuba with a clipboard.
We were going to do Cuba.
But We Booked Cuba With an Escape Hatch
We also weren't naïve about where we were going.
This wasn't Vermont.
There were political tensions. Cuba was already dealing with shortages. Russia's war in Ukraine was continuing. Venezuela was increasingly part of the geopolitical picture. The United States had a new president, and relations with Cuba could change quickly.
So when we booked the trip, I had one overriding rule:
Everything that could be refundable or cancelable was.
The Airbnb’s could be canceled. The transportation arrangements could be canceled. We deliberately avoided locking ourselves into a trip that we couldn't unwind if circumstances changed.
That wasn't something we figured out afterward.
We knowingly booked it that way from the beginning.
We'd even started collecting things to bring for our host families and their communities: toiletries, soccer balls for kids and other useful items that could be difficult or expensive to obtain locally.
We wanted to go.
But wanting to go and needing to go are two very different things.
As the situation deteriorated, eventually we reached the point where Cuba no longer made sense for this trip.
So we pulled the plug.
The Airbnb money came back. Our airfare became an American Airlines credit that we're now using for another trip.
The only money we really lost was the cost of the Cuban visas.
Considering what could have happened if we'd booked everything differently, I'll take that deal.
So...Where Do We Go Now?
We were still tied to a school spring break schedule.
We still wanted somewhere warm.
We wanted tropical.
And we didn't particularly want an all-inclusive resort where the biggest decision of the day was which side of the pool to occupy.
We'd already been to Costa Rica and wanted somewhere different.
Panama started creeping up the list.
Gina began looking for the kind of small, unusual places we tend to enjoy. She found some interesting B&Bs, but several created another problem: getting there.
We're perfectly willing to go somewhere out of the way.
We're considerably less interested in spending 30 hours of a one-week vacation doing it.
Then she found Hawk's Nest.
Our cabin is called Eagle's Nest.
Someone reviewing Hawk's Nest called it a "hidden gem."
Our lake house Airbnb is called Hidden Gem.
At that point, apparently the universe had abandoned subtlety.
We had to stay there.
Getting to Panama Was Surprisingly Easy
I'd looked at Copa Airlines before while researching flights to Peru, so when Panama became the plan, I gave them another look.
They had a nonstop flight from Orlando to Panama City.
The price was reasonable and competitive with the other options, but the nonstop flight was the deciding factor. The flight times worked well too.
We booked it.
Then came a nice little bonus.
Copa offered us the opportunity to bid for upgrades. We put in bids and won them in both directions.
The front of the airplane wasn't some extravagant international first-class suite. The seats were comfortable, the service was good and we were sitting up front.
I'll happily take it.
The priority baggage tags turned out to be more useful than I expected.
When we arrived in Panama, our luggage was already sitting at the carousel with the other premium-cabin bags before the carousel even started turning.
That's how you make a good first impression.
From Touchdown to Road Trip in About 30 Minutes
I'd done a little homework on the rental car too.
I was using my Capital One Venture X and planned to rely on the card's eligible rental-car collision coverage rather than automatically buying everything offered at the counter.
Before leaving home, I printed the applicable coverage documentation in both English and Spanish.
I wasn't interested in standing at a rental counter after a flight trying to explain insurance coverage using interpretive dance.
As it turned out, I didn't have to explain much of anything.
They looked at the documentation, accepted it and there was no hard sell.
About 15 minutes after stepping off the airplane, we were outside.
Roughly 30 minutes after touchdown, we were in our rental car and headed west.
That's hard to beat.
Driving in Panama
Getting out of Panama City was a little hectic, but nothing outrageous.
If you're a nervous driver at home, you're probably going to be a nervous driver here.
Traffic moves. You're somewhere unfamiliar. You need to pay attention.
But we had no problems.
Once we got farther from the city, the traffic thinned and Panama began changing around us.
This was exactly what we'd wanted.
Not another airport.
Not another connection.
A car. A road. And a week ahead of us.
Our First Real Taste of Panama Cost $13
About two hours into the drive, we were hungry.
We stopped at a roadside fonda.
Nothing fancy. No carefully curated tourist experience. Just somewhere to eat.
And it was terrific.
Chicken, rice, plantains, drinks, bread, the whole meal.
For both of us, including the tip:
$13.
This was more like it.
One of the reasons we travel independently is because moments like this rarely appear on an itinerary. Nobody needed to recommend this place to us six months earlier. I didn't need to bookmark it, rank it against twelve other restaurants or watch somebody's video about what to order.
We were hungry.
There was food.
We stopped.
Sometimes travel really can be that complicated.
Then We Reached Hawk's Nest
The farther we drove, the more the scenery changed.
The highway gave way to smaller roads. The terrain became hillier. Eventually we were winding our way toward La Laguna and the place Gina had found while trying to salvage our spring break.
Hawk's Nest wasn't Havana.
It wasn't supposed to be.
By the time we arrived, Cuba wasn't really part of the equation anymore.
We'd landed in Panama, picked up a rental car without drama, driven across a part of the country we'd never seen, eaten a $13 lunch at a roadside fonda and arrived at a small place tucked into the hills.
The trip had started.
And there wasn't a straw hat or 1957 Chevy in sight.
The Trip We Didn't Plan
There's a tendency to treat canceling a trip as a failure.
I don't.
We wanted to visit Cuba, and I still hope we eventually do.
But we also recognized from the beginning that circumstances could change. That's why we deliberately booked a trip we could unwind.
When those circumstances did change, we didn't lose thousands of dollars because we'd convinced ourselves that "nonrefundable" was worth saving another $73.
We changed plans.
And because we'd protected our money on the first trip, we still had the freedom to take another one.
Panama wasn't the backup version of Cuba. We didn't spend the week comparing the two or wishing we'd gone somewhere else.
We got in the car and let Panama be Panama.
By the first evening, sitting high in the hills with nowhere in particular we needed to be, Cuba already felt like a different trip.
One we'll take another day.
Panama wasn't a consolation prize.
It became the trip.