Bit by the travel bug.

Lately, I've been getting a bit of cabin fever.  Chicago seems to be perpetually cold and gray.  Spring, while it may be around the corner, is never long enough here.  Settling for it being lighter for another hour seems to be the greatest of concessions these days.  So I have taken to buying plane tickets.

To Indianapolis next week (that wasn't really a voluntary purchase).  Onto Tampa in April/May.  New York in June.  And, the grand trip: A Panama en octubre, el mes de mi cumpleanos.  Oh, sorry.  Did I just start typing in Spanish?  Well, I hear that I will need my Spanish-speaking skills there.  Now THAT is a vacation, right?

Now that my partner-in-crime and I no longer work at the same place of employ, we can take a real vacation.  We can go someplace for longer than four days (with two of those days for travel).  We tossed around many ideas, both being enthused about the prospect of actually getting to travel together.  We discussed Europe, but figured that there were too many places we'd been and too many places we wanted to go that it was overwhelming.  Mexico?  That was an option, but we wanted a bit more culture than the average resort.  Costa Rica?  Same idea.  But then PIC told me that he'd read about Panama (not the city in Florida) being a great place to visit.  Panama was like Costa Rica before it got very touristy.  We researched it, found out we can do it on a dime.  Face it, while we might be able to take a vacation for longer than a few days, we still need to be budget-conscious.  We can use our backpacks.  We can hike in the rain forest with monkeys.  MONKEYS!!!!  We can go to the beach and pretend like we will try to surf, but likely end up finding a beach bar and relaxing.

Most importantly, Panama seems to be a trip that neither of us have taken.  It is a place undiscovered by either of us: Central America.  We can get a bit of culture, a bit of nature, and a bit of beach.  At this point in our lives, it seems like the perfect vacation.  For me, it seems the perfect place to spend my thirtieth birthday, a date that seems to be more quickly approaching by the month.

We haven't bought our tickets yet.  We have, however, started looking in Mountain Gear catalogue.  You know, a nature trip requires the appropriate gear aside from our REI backpacks.  More than anything, we have started saving money.   The trip of a lifetime awaits us.  (And I'm not referring to Indianapolis.)