Jamie Lafferty's mother slept through the first stretch of their Iceland trip. He drove past Reykjavík's plain suburbs and worried about what lay ahead. Their last trip had been two years before, to Dubrovnik. She got through the crowds there on a cane, and she looked small. Now she had a new hip.
Her hip replacement was in February. A few months later, Lafferty writes in the Journal's Off Duty section, they set out to see what the new joint could do. He picked the Westfjords on purpose. The region juts out of the island's northwest corner, and few visitors go there. There are few bridges, so getting from one side of a fjord to the other can take over an hour. She was 74 and, in his words, “freshly ambulant.”
The first test
Day one was all driving, dodging sheep on the road to Hólmavík. Day two was the walk to Valagil, a waterfall squeezed through a narrow canyon. The trail runs 40 minutes each way over uneven ground. He let his mother lead. The walking stick she'd carried for the past three years was gone. She used a pair of hiking poles instead. She wasn't brand-new, he writes, but she showed no fear.
The hard day came at Dynjandi, a giant waterfall that drops in tiers. The trail up the valley was rocky, and for the first time she had doubts. They took it slowly and stopped often. On the way up she told him, “The hip is fine. I just need to start believing that.” At the top, under the roaring falls, he could see she'd won. From there they took the car ferry south, slept in the fishing town of Stykkishólmur, and closed a 600-mile loop under the rainbows at Kirkjufellsfoss. She pointed at the view. He was watching her instead.
Our read
This is a Retirement · M10 story with a Health Costs chapter. Planners talk about the go-go years, the slow-go years and the no-go years. The catch is that the lines between them move. A bad hip put this woman in the slow-go years two years ago. A surgeon moved her back out at 74. That order matters for money. The travel you planned for your 60s doesn't wait for your 70s. And a surgery, with its recovery and its bills, is often what decides which years you get. We'd rather see a client spend on the trip while the hips allow it than sit on the money and lose the window.
The thing in your own plan this story touches is the travel line in your first ten years of retirement, and the medical coverage that goes with it. Original Medicare generally doesn't pay for care outside the United States. Some Medigap plans cover part of emergency care abroad, up to a lifetime cap, so a trip like this one may need a travel medical policy too. This week, open your plan and find the travel line. If it isn't there, or it's sized for the no-go years, that's the fix. Then check what your health coverage pays abroad. If you'd like a second look at both, bring them to your next review.