Okay, no more excuses.  The great Panamania recap begins NOW.

Vacations are awesome- that’s a given.  However, getting to wherever you’re going is sometimes less awesome, especially when you seem to have a black cloud surrounding you re: all things travel, like I apparently did during this particular trip.  Don’t believe me?  Let me share the following pieces of evidence:

• Exhibit A: American Airlines had some magic hiccup and apparently canceled my reservation 3 days before I was scheduled to leave.  I only found out when Scott, who had generously offered to upgrade me to first class with his frequent flier miles, called to confirm my upgrade and was told that my Record Locator no longer existed.   When I received his text message at 6 am Pacific time and confirmed that this was indeed the case, I spent an hour frantically trying to call the airline, only to find out that AT&T was down.  It took 90 minutes of hyperventilation and bewilderment to reach the airline, followed by 30 minutes of arguing with customer service that I in fact did NOT want to cancel my ticket, before they re-issued said ticket.  It then took 4 hours for me to find out that that transaction didn’t go through because customer service had entered in my billing address incorrectly, which sparked a security block on my credit card, which then took a solid hour of calling the airline and the credit card company to get my card reactivated.  In short, it took 12 hours before I actually got my tickets re-confirmed.  NOT a fun way to spend the day.
• Exhibit B:  Our flight from LA to Dallas, where we were meeting up with Scott and flying to Panama, left at 7:00 am Saturday morning, which meant we had to be at the airport at 5:00 am.  This meant I was up at 4:00 am- that’s too early to even take unflattering pictures of myself, which I normally kind of relish.
• Exhibit C: Upon arriving in Dallas, we found out that my name had mysteriously fallen off the upgrade list.  Honestly, at this point, I had pretty much accepted the fact that I was cursed, so rather than trying to argue, I just accepted my fate and moved on.

So what do you do when, en route to Panama City, Panama, you find yourself with a 2 hour layover in Dallas Texas, have been up since 4:00 am and just found out that you’re going to spend the next 5 hours alone in coach while your two besties get wasted in first class?  You comb the airport for an Irish pub and eat a bunch of pork.  Obviously.

Shockingly, Mary and I didn’t actively go out searching for Irish food that morning.  Rather, we both woke up from uncomfortable but extremely deep sleep during our LA-Dallas flight LITERALLY STARVING TO DEATH- seriously, I distinctly remember waking up as the plane landed and hearing my interior monologue tell me, in a scary deep ogre voice no less, “MUST.  EAT.  NOW.”  Evidently Mary had a similar experience (though I don’t know if she was actually hearing strange voices in her head like I was) and we got off the plane and made a beeline to the food court in our terminal, which we found to be sadly lacking.  Faced with the choice between Burger King, some random wraps joint and the Irish pub, we sat down at the Irish pub, figuring that they would at least have something reasonably non-offensive to offer for breakfast.

And then we both proceeded to order the full Irish breakfast.  Because when in Rome…  eat saturated fat.

The full Irish breakfast: blood sausage, streaky bacon (aka fatty ham), fried eggs, black pudding (little wafers of oatmeal and ground pork), a slice of soda bread, and something else fried that I couldn’t identify.

What the hell, right?

And coffee.  Of course, when Mary asked for milk with her coffee, she was told that they were out of milk.  They were also out of cream and half and half.  A little confused (and a lot groggy), I asked what they did have for the coffee.  The waiter’s response?  “Baileys.”

So we got doubles.

Sometime after our food came, Scott’s plane from New York landed and he called asking where he could find us.  When we casually told him we were at the Irish pub in terminal 4, he started laughing hysterically and hung up.  But eventually he got there.  And then he ate my streaky bacon.

Eventually we realized that we needed to hike it to our gate in order to actually catch our flight, so we got the check, cursed the waiter for charging us full price for the Baileys, and made it to the proper gate.  Mary and Scott happily breezed into first class, where they were greeted with champagne and smiles.  Meanwhile, I joined the other cattle and made my way into coach, where the combination of booze, exhaustion and pork quickly lulled me into a dead sleep.  I seriously don’t even think I made it past the plane taking off.  So far, the only saving grace of this flight was that I had an entire row to myself.

Meanwhile, in first class, Mary and Scott enjoyed the good life.

Thanks to the fact that Mary had the same rock sitting in her stomach that I did, she was completely unable to eat any of the food that her upgrade entailed.  Thankfully, Scott is a bottomless pit and made sure nothing went to waste.  This is what he ate during the 5 hour flight:

Vodka cran and 2 servings of warm nuts.  (heehee)

Steak salad.

Jamaican Jerk Chicken.  Scott commented on the pool of oil and still gave it a good review.

Halibut and Rice Pilaf.  This was originally Mary’s, but she was a wee bit full.

2 gigantic ice cream sundaes.  Seriously, I saw the bowls during a brief moment of consciousness- they were at least as big as my head.

Of course, since these are my two very best friends in the whole world, they weren’t totally ignorant of my plight back in coach, so at one point they asked a stewardess to send me a glass of champagne.  When the stewardess came back with the champagne still in hand, she informed them that “their friend” (me) was sprawled out across 3 seats sleeping and therefore unable to imbibe.  Like the good friends they are, they then made their way back to coach to take unflattering pictures of me sleeping.

Sexy, yes?

Thanks guys.

Eventually though, I woke up, we landed, and we were in Panama at long last!  We checked into our hotel, met up with our first travel companion, Kat, did some freshening up and set out for dinner on the town.

Next up: The arrival of PP (aka Priscilla), traffic jams, giant bugs and roadside chorizo.