What even are Missed Opportunities?

Missed Opportunities – they’re those moments that sting at your heart even years after a trip is in the bag. So much goes into travelling; you’ve gotta think about places to stay, things to do, getting to and fro, and so on. Somewhere in the mix of all that, there’s always a chance for slip-ups. Often they come from hard decisions or unforeseen circumstances. Yet their inevitability haunts us almost as much as the missed opportunities themselves.

Travel can often feel immensely rewarding, so the deflating nature of missed opportunites can shake you to your core. We pour our hearts into our itineraries, just for the itineraries to stab us in the back. It can leave an empty hole in an otherwise spotless trip. It can transform the best vacations to exercises in mid. I know. It hurts.

Fear not, however, I too, have been a victim to logistical or unforeseen midinnings. I shall share my stories today, the most egregious examples of missed opportunities I have encountered.

This is not really to share the locations as much as usual, or even educate you to how to avoid missed opportunities. I just want to share, ike communism, so that if these things befall you, you know at least you’re not alone in the suck. I suck too.

Not Visiting Rome when I was in Italy

This is one of the missed opportunities that I got most ridiculed for. Any time I told people that I travelled to Italy, they would pepper me with grinning faces when I brought up the canals of Venice of the domes of Florence. However, those faces would contort to scorning rage when I let slip that Rome didn’t make a cameo in my Italian vacation.

“How could you!?” the curves of their frowns would ask me, as if not visiting the Italian capital was equivalent to sacrilege. The funny thing is that I never had a very good answer to give. For the other missed opportunities, there is usually a clear reason why the location in question needed to be excluded. But for Rome, it’s a no show. I just didn’t go. I spent all my time in the north of Italy and left before I had a chance to venture South.

For more clarification, the whole Italy trip was spontaneous, caught between a few free weeks I had between WWOOFing obligations in France. I couldn’t make up my mind about places to visit in the North, closer to the French border. I wanted to see Genoa. I needed to see Florence. How could I skip Venice? Milan already got put aside so I could spend more time in the watery latter city. So compromises were already made.

It was just my luck then, when my second WWOOFing gig didn’t turn out at the time I’d expected. I’d already hopped the boot’s borders back to France and began enjoying my sejour in Lyon when I knew it. In other words, it was too late. And now the ghost of Rome haunts me.

It’s one of the missed opportunities that touches me hardest just by the sheer scale of Rome. The Collisseum, the Trevi Fountain, the whole other country inside it in Vatican City. All that could have been mine and instead, years later, it remains a black spot in my European travel pedigree.

Naturally, I hope I will get another chance to travel there. If it comes one day, I can’t refuse it. I’d love to journey all the way down, through Rome, Naples and into the islands like Sicily and Sardinia at some point. Then I can erase this headache but for now it remains the gatekeeper for unfulfilled chances for this broke boi.

When I couldn’t go to Komodo Island

Of all the missed opportunities I’m going to go into on this list, this one has to hurt the most. Komodo Island, always felt like a mythical, dreamlike place to me. As a child, it seemed to represent the end of the world, the way its eponymous dragons curled over the edge of the map. So, imagine my giddiness when I finally bought my ticket to go there. That inner child was about to be let loose, or so I thought at least. What ended up happening breaks my heart.

Okay not really but it was sad, alright!

I was in Java, Indonesia and I was looking for my next travel fix. I’d seen much of Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Bali and Lombok at that point. I didn’t know what to do in Kalimantan so Flores and more specifically Komodo Island seemed like the obvious next step. I arranged it all, a ticket, a tour. All I had to do was sit back.

Or was that all? Actually, this was 2021 and my Batik face mask showed that we were still caught in the clutches of covid 19. To fly it was required to show a negative test. No biggie? I’d always got through it, this about to me 198837th plane ride in Indonesia (rough estimate). Of course it would be negative.

Negative. I came back to my place with no Komodo Dragons waiting for me, just quarantine and solitude. The calls to the tour operator were agonizing. The lack of a refund for my ticket was humiliating. Even my mom’s “I told you so” hit me in the gut. I wanted to vomit. That is to say it felt distasteful.

I left Indonesia before I had another chance to try Komodo Island. It was already near the end of my planned time there. That was supposed to be the perfect cap off. Instead, it sounded like cap my promises of seeing the world’s largest lizards to anyone who would listen. I should have just listened to my mother.

Komodo Island offers more than just the dragons. If I can go one day, i’m aiming for diving opportunities, mountain hikes, picturesque viewpoints and excursions into the other islands of Flores, where traditional villages await as well. For now though, they exist only in my head and in the annals of missed opportunities.

I wasn’t able to fit the Galapagos Islands into my Ecuador Trip

The Galapagos Islands omission ranks up there as well. For a lot of missed travel plans, it’s just an additonal destination to an already stacked line-up of spots to see during the trip. However, when one even imagines visiting Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands rise to the top of the bucket list.

So imagine missing it?

It’s like a gut punch. One of the major reasons most people visit Ecuador is gone. You lose those giant tortoises, picturesque landscapes, water activities galore and one of the most interesting ecosystems on the planet. So what happened?

For me, the Galapagos became the unfortunate victim of logistical conundrums. Part of it was rightfully my fault. I had only given myself 1 week in Ecuador. Then, I would go to Chile, then Argentina, etc. That time constraint naturally limits what one can do. Secondly, I already knew I would be flying into Quito, so it was only natural to spend a good spatter of days over there as well.

Then how to connect the departure flight to reach Santiago, Chile? These unnecessary burdens necessitated sacrifice and turned the Galapagos into one of the great missed opportunities more so by choice than chance.

The simple truth is that the Galapagos are far from the mainland, meaning even flights over there cut into your tme. Then, once there, how much time can you realistically give them? It’s not the type of place you can just visit with your bare feet and hands bruh. You need guides, tours, or at least vehicles. That’s gonna cost you as well. Time and money.

All those things collided for me in my head to deter me from the would-be Darwinian adventure I could have taken up. It’s one of those shames that gives me ever more reason to return to Ecuador one day though. And, on another note, it helps shed light on the other parts of an often underrated travel destination.

If only I could have seen Lake Baikal

My Russia trip may have been cursed from the jump. Again, part of it is my fault, part of it is timing. I could have realistically put other Russian destinations on this list of missed opportunities. Kazan, Vladivostock, and the Golden Ring come to mind. Yet, Lake Baikal towers above all those other heavy hitters.

Russia always a strange aura to it. As an American, I couldn’t really escape that “otherness” we often give it in the West. Traditional enemies, unhinged dictatorships, I had my reasons to be cautrious. So, when I only applied to visit for two weeks and only to see Moscow and Saint Petersburg, I thought I was making a smart decision.

See, at the time, early 2020, Americans had to apply for a tourist visa in advance and we had to express clearly how long we would stay and where, with proof as well. I chose what I figured were solely the safest options out.

I expected a terrifying bureaucratic experience to follow me upon my entry to the country. However, everything went smoothly. Almost too smoothly. I was high at the airport and that didn’t even bother anyone.

The same story followed my time in Russia. Everyone was exuberantly nice and sweet to me. The culture was exotic but inviting in equal measure. Transport was easy. So in the end, I wished I had demanded for more time on my visa. I could have gone to so many places.

Yet Lake Baikal would have been the pick of the litter. The deepest lake in the world is the natural habitat for someone as deep as me. And the pristine forests and beaches surrounding it would have provided me with natural wonders galore. Hell, even the train ride to reach it from the developed west of Russia would have been worth the journey.

But then, you know 2020. Covid happened too. There was no chance I was going to be able to demand more time or chnange my visa. I had to get home and into solitude. So Lake Baikal, welcome to world of missed opportunities.