Thanks for stopping by!

Hola, I'm Sami

I almost didn't make it

I was lying in an intensive care unit in Canada, intubated and on a ventilator, when a doctor leaned in close to me and said quietly, "Ask someone to bring your son to see you for the last time. I don't think you will make it through the night."

I had one request. Desperate prayer, but a focused conversation with God. Let me live long enough to raise my seven-year-old son.

Against every medical expectation, I survived.

What got me there?

Office job by day, fitness coach evenings and weekends, all-nighters to finish what I had started. I believed the hustle was the point, that my energy was unlimited, until my body proved otherwise.

If that sounds familiar, it is because so many of us live it. We treat exhaustion like proof we are doing something right. We keep pushing until something forces us to stop.

For me, it took a health crisis to see what I could not see from inside the hustle. My body had not broken down from bad food or missed workouts. It had broken down because I never let myself rest, not really, not the kind of rest that reaches the nervous system. That realization changed how I saw everything, including how I thought about a vacation.

Then I tried to book one

A real vacation, a getaway to help me recover, turned out to be surprisingly hard to find.

I don't drink. I don't eat at buffets. I don't want to feel sick or drained the next day, I want to know exactly what's on my plate. When I looked at the vacation packages offered. I discovered I would pay for unlimited alcohol and buffet I'd never touch. I was paying for someone else's vacation, not mine!

What I actually wanted was simple. Meals I could trust, made with real ingredients, without having to guess. A kitchen nearby if I felt like cooking something myself. Someone local who spoke my language. And to wake up to the ocean without paying for a long list of things I would never use.

It sounds modest. It was almost impossible to find.

So I build it

Sami Vacation Stays exists because I am the traveler looking for that kind of trip and cannot find it anywhere.

Today I live in Panama, where the ocean, the sea air, the sand and the sun are not a backdrop but part of the overall healing. And I build the kind of all-inclusive I once searched for and never found. Three fresh Mediterranean meals a day, made with real ingredients. If you feel like cooking something yourself, the fully equipped kitchen is yours too. Slow mornings with nothing scheduled over them. Support in your own language from the first question to the last day. An ocean you wake up to, without paying for things you never touch.

If you have ever come home from a vacation more tired than when you left, you already understand why this place exists.

Wishing you the trip your body and mind have been asking for 💜