I've just realized that another stage in my life has been realized, the one where I keep finding myself saying, "I've always wanted to ......, so here goes." I've always wanted to do this, and always wanted to do that, but because of the constraints of time or money or whatever they've never been done. Until now.

So, I've always wanted to transit the Panama Canal, and I've always wanted to explore some Mayan ruins, and now's the time. We leave on Sunday, flying to Los Angeles, where we'll board the Holland American cruise ship Ryndam and head south along the west coast of Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica, stopping every now and then to explore.

We'll then go through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean Sea down to Cartagena, Columbia, where we'll head north along the east coast of Central America with stops in Belize City and Costa Maya (site of Mayan ruins) before making a bee-line to Tampa and our flight home.

We're excited about this trip. For one thing it's in a new venue, a cruise ship rather than a motorhome, and for another it takes us to entirely new worlds, and for a third it lets us do some things we've always wanted to do!

So off we go, and I'll tell some of the stories when we return in mid-November.