Old People Eating While Traveling Together

Hints, tips, and warnings.

Orrin Onken
Crow’s Feet
Published in
5 min readSep 23, 2024

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AI Image, Prompt by Author

I’m in Belize this September, taking a vacation from being retired. I don’t know why I need a vacation from being retired, but I do. I am living, traveling, and recreating with four other couples. Our lodgings are pre-planned, but we must forage for sustenance on our own.

Back at my home in Oregon I either cook, (See My Quest to Duplicate Canned Chili in my Kitchen), eat at an old people restaurant called Heidi’s, or go to Taco Bell. When traveling in Central America there is neither a Heidi’s nor a Taco Bell, so I am stuck with cooking, having someone cook for me, or eating in restaurants. Doing any of these things for too many days in a row becomes tedious, so my group of traveling elders has learned the hard way how to balance the options.

And also, how to manage expectations.

A Chef

The owners or managers of the homes we rent for our vacations often make a chef available at a small extra cost. Sometimes the chef is the owner’s unemployed brother-in-law, but more often he or she is a person on call to cook meals for tourists. These cooks work for little pay but hope for a big tip at the end of the stay — a tip which we always provide. These kindly cooks try to balance our interest in local cuisine against our fear of…

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Orrin Onken
Crow’s Feet

I am a retired elder law attorney who lives near Portland, Oregon. I write legal mysteries for Salish Ponds Press and articles about being old.