Covid 19 Travel

In the past few weeks there are many of you wondering if it is safe to travel during this outbreak of Coronavirus disease.  This is a time of great uncertainty where a typically mundane activity such as shopping for groceries or going outside for exercise has turned into a complex affair.  There are other folks tasked with more agonizing choices like having to decide between staying home or traveling across the world to visit an ill family member or attend to an important business matter. 

The truth of the matter is that it’s difficult to rely on most information we are hearing in the media because news has been breaking so fast.  People are still traveling and airplanes are still flying, but we must remember that even in normal circumstances it’s important to be self-sufficient and mentally prepared for anything that happens when we leave our homes.  A friend of Visa Supply recently relayed to us his story of a family trip to Argentina and the situation they encountered as follows:

This is my little travel anecdote about the last couple weeks and some of the travel stuff I've been experiencing during these very difficult times in the age of Coronavirus. Several months ago my wife and I booked a trip to Argentina with our two children. We were going down to visit family and spend some time with friends and relatives. I used to live there a few years ago so I have my own network and my wife was born and raised in Buenos Aires. So we have an extended network and we go back and visit often. Now my wife is a citizen of Argentina, my kids are eligible for citizenship but don't have their paperwork yet, and I am just a tourist. So I say all that as background of as who we are and what we were getting ourselves into.

In any case we booked a few months ago, well before any of the coronavirus scare started going on. But as we got closer to the trip it definitely got riskier. We decided to go ahead and take the trip anyway, even knowing that there was always the potential for problems. Basically problems with the way countries are dealing with the virus, as well as travel and transport challenges, and all manner of other kinds of risks like social breakdown, rioting, and crime. We recognized these risks but felt pretty confident that we were going to be ok, mainly because South America hadn't been hit hard by the Covid-19 strains at that point. And just like many parts of the world in the warmer climates the virus hasn’t spread as well. So the southern hemisphere which is at the tail end of summer has not been a hot zone, at least not until recently. So we felt really good about our chances.

But after we got there things started changing. The news started getting bigger and bigger, to the point where everyone on the street and our friends and our family all started talking more and more about the coronavirus. So it became clear very quickly that this was not a non-issue. It was becoming a huge topic of concern in Argentina right before our eyes. Keep in mind the dates of travel when we left America to go to Argentina: it was on March 5 and it was a week later when stuff really got bad. So about a week after we arrived in Argentina we got notification that our flights were canceled by Delta. Not changed, not re-routed. Just canceled. So we called Delta and tried to figure out what's going on. Delta said there was nothing they could do. They were shutting down a massive number of international flights to and from a lot of different countries. And they basically told us that Argentina after the 17th of March was taking over all international flights to and from their country. So essentially the nation of Argentina was telling all foreign airline operators after March 17: yo, we’re in charge, and there will be no more flights to and from this country unless we say do. This actually all happened about the same time the president of Argentina came out on national TV and gave an emergency speech essentially shutting down the borders. He discussed how Argentina was going to pull off extreme measures to defend the country, borders, sovereignty, and health of its people by totally curbing International travel.

At this point we were pretty much panicking because our flights got canceled by Delta, the president came out declaring a state of emergency, and it looked like we were going to be asked to self-quarantine. Mind you that this is Argentina, a country that is not known for its stability and reliability. They’re suddenly saying we're taking charge and we're taking control of all movement to and from our borders. So then we got in touch with the American Embassy and this is when things really started getting unpredictable. The American embassy told us that they've been seeing all manner of different things happening with American travelers. They had heard about people still getting into the country, people still getting out of the country, and people getting completely blocked from coming or going. Most importantly they told us that everything the Argentine government had declared was being administered inconsistently. So depending on who you were dealing with at any given time, you may or may not have bureaucracy and red tape. You may or may not be able to cross the border. It was just total uncertainty. Another critical point is that during this state of emergency Argentina also declared that anyone who had been in what they called an affected country (which included China, Italy basically all of the European Union, and the USA) within the past 15 days was required by law under threat of arrest to self quarantine. This introduced another wrinkle because the American Embassy told us in some cases law enforcement, border patrol, police, federal officers, and other authorities were actually detaining American citizens. But in some cases Americans weren't having any problems whatsoever. So it was basically a free-for-all where we had no idea what to believe, what to trust, and we were in good ol’ dysfunctional Argentina.

Thankfully we had family and friends down there and are very comfortable in Argentina. But in truth, all hell was breaking loose in the United States and just reading the headlines, things looked to be getting worse and worse. So my thought was Argentina is probably a few weeks behind the United States and if things are getting this severe in the United States, which is one of the more stable and prosperous countries in the world, what's it going to be like in Argentina, a country that is well known for inflation, street protests, economic chaos, and civil disturbances? I love Argentina but this is basically a schizophrenic country and not exactly the top place you would want to be in during a global Pandemic. It goes without saying that my wife and I started to get really concerned having two small children traveling with us. And that's about when the American government started advising people that they need to get home as soon as possible unless they wanted to spend significant time abroad. In other words: come home now or be prepared to stay wherever you are for an uncertain future. That would have meant my job, my wife's job, our children’s school, healthcare, and everything else we would just be writing off for the foreseeable future. Truth be known it was a difficult decision for us at first. In some ways, we thought it might not be a bad idea to just bite the bullet and stay for awhile. After all, Argentina is a place, as I mentioned, where we have a network and some comfort with the culture. It’s also somewhat well-suited to ride out a virus. It’s very isolated geographically, remote compared to the rest of the world. Deep in the southern hemisphere, Argentina is a self-sufficient nation with a lot of land and open terrain. Great food and wine. Not a bad place to bunker down in the face of a global crisis. So we were sincerely tempted, but we decided it was actually just stupid to stay in a foreign country during a time like this. We needed to get back to our family here, our jobs, our known comfort zone, and the need of our children to sleep in their own beds.

We started making phone calls to Delta, the local airline Aerolineas Argentinas, the US Embassy, etc. We talked to friends and people in the travel industry. We started doing our research reading different websites and news on what kinds of things were going on. We were finally able to make a safe bet that we could get out of the country via Brazil, which at the time was still completely open for travel and business with Argentina. We were able to reserve new flights as it were from Buenos Aires to Brazil, cutting our trip short by a few days.

The day arrived and we went to the airport. The streets were empty. It was a ghost town in a city of 15 million people, which was starting to turn to total quarantine. It was a very eerie and tense scene on the streets. The airport was virtually empty which was one of the more crazy things I remember. Ezeiza is a big international airport and there was no one there. There were no lines and we checked in immediately. We got a little bit of pushback in customs about what we were doing and what was going on, but no one actually looked up the dates on our passports. And no one pressed us on the quarantine issue. So we were able to get to our flights on time. However, when we got on the plane to Brazil several people sitting near us, when they saw our children, jumped up and moved to other seats. Probably about 60% of people on the plane are wearing masks and everyone is tense. There were people who were openly holding her hands out and telling us to keep our distance. Everyone was looking at the children with suspicion, which was really disturbing and frustrating. My wife got in a fight with a Brazilian couple who claimed that we were putting them at risk by bringing our children next to them. To which my wife responds that you know our kids will be the doctors of the future taking care of them on their deathbeds. It was a pretty interesting argument and a case study in social breakdowns and paranoia.

But we made it to Brazil. We flew into Rio de Janeiro and then in Rio we had a long eight hour layover. Again, it was an eerie situation, very tense, not nearly as much traffic, travelers, intensity, and commerce as usual in a major international hub. We made it onto our flight to the states and took a deep breath. However, once we got onboard the airline people came and grabbed us and said they needed to rescan our passports. We thought, oh no, this is it. This is where they pull us off the plane and force us to stay in Brazil because the Americans aren’t gonna let us in. Or, maybe it's the Brazilians that have some kind of issue here. Maybe we’re getting out in a hospital or jail or worse. So we were sweating it out as they took us off the gangway and put us through an extra security check. They frisked us and scanned our bags and then put us back on the plane. I think that it may have been something related to the American government not trusting the Argentinian security screening. Regardless, we made it back to the USA and had a pretty uneventful flight after that. It was not a full flight, which was also surprising because we figured more Americans would be trying to get home.

Nonetheless we made it back home. For some reason, customs was insanely easy. I had been reading for the past few days about how the lines and waits were eternal and how there was huge health risk pushing all these people together in close quarters. But for us it was the exact opposite in the Atlanta international airport terminal. The customs officials asked us a few questions and let us go through. They didn't scan our bags or take our temperature or anything. They barely looked us in the eyes. It was a very quick process which I was a little bit alarmed about. The airport was virtually empty and we took a cab home to mostly empty early morning streets. Then literally a few hours later the Brazilian government announced a total shutdown of the border with Argentina and a severe cut back on all international flights to and from the US and other countries. We made it out by just a few hours.

It wasn't an easy trip by any means. In fact it was a big hassle, and I've barely been scratching the surface of how much of a challenge it was dealing with two 3-year-old children in a 24-hour ordeal like that. But the moral of the story is we had to risk and brace ourselves for an incredible amount of uncertainty to make that trip. And we were very fortunate. To anyone traveling right now in this crazy moment, the reality is that you have to be prepared for anything. Be aware that anything can happen and that there's no consistency in how different countries are interpreting and enforcing different rules and laws. This is a time of emergency. Even first-world, sophisticated countries are having total breakdowns of communication, breakdowns in the chain of command, because they're putting in place emergency procedures that not every person is aware of and knows how to interpret or enforce. So if you're traveling internationally be prepared for anything. You may get lucky like we did and have a stressful but successful experience. Or you may get something way worse, anything from detention to quarantine (mandatory or voluntary). Maybe you make it all the way through without issue. It could range anywhere on the spectrum, but it will be a roll of the dice. These are uncertain times. These are difficult times. No one knows how things are going to play out just yet, but traveling in the age of this virus is certainly a big endeavor for anyone to go through and requires a lot of patience, flexibility, and improvisational skills. Most of all, you’ll need to keep a mindset to be prepared for anything.