Journey Interrupted…

Friends, family and followers:

The coronavirus story has been playing out in the background of our trip for several weeks now. For the vast majority of that time it existed as a consideration for our plans to travel in China and Asia next year, then it became a challenge to our Europe plans for the spring and summer.

Suddenly, over the last 4 or 5 days it’s become a very real issue for our immediate plans. By the end of last week, we knew we wouldn’t be able to go to Europe on Sunday April 1st as planned. At the beginning of the weekend it became clear that we would not be able to keep moving to any new destinations and we began to consider how we might hunker down here in Argentina for a few weeks (where there is better weather and fewer cases of COVID-19 than at home).

By the time Monday rolled around, things had escalated to the point where staying in Argentina was no longer an option either. For perfectly understandable reasons we are no longer confident that we can secure adequate accommodation here, or be welcomed at grocery stores and restaurants to keep supplied while we wait for restrictions to ease.

Faced with the prospect of these difficulties and the risks of our travel insurance or commercial flight options being compromised it’s clear that we need to come back to Canada notwithstanding the risks associated with spending time at international airports right now. We arranged flights for mid next-week and then re-arranged them to late this week and should be back in the Great White North very soon. We’ve secured some temporary accomodation where we plan first to self-quarantine and then put our plans on pause until we see whether things will improve soon enough to allow us to continue this adventure later.

Thanks to all for your messages of concern and support and all of the offers of assistance once we return home. We’re still processing how rapidly things are changing and impacting everyone so profoundly, regardless of situation, but are feeling grateful for having the opportunity of the last three months and getting to enjoy many of the highlights of Latin America. For now, our family journey continues in an unexpected direction – like everyone else, we’ll be watching and waiting to see what the future brings.

Until next time.

Image credit to Jared Downing at Frontier Myanmar