The first case of COVID-19 in South America was reported on February 26. A 61-year-old São Paulo man who’d recently returned from Italy had tested positive and was self-isolating at home. Sean and I were in Argentina when we saw the news, and we had exactly two weeks left on our trip, including a grand finale in Brazil. But we weren’t worried. On the contrary—we actually felt better about being on a massive continent with a single case than about returning to the U.S. where new cases were cropping up daily. Plus, the coronavirus still felt very overblown back then. A media sensation. The 2020 version of the anthrax scare or H1N1. Give it a couple of weeks, we thought. The weather will warm up, the virus will die off, and some new crisis will grab the spotlight.
So we stayed the course. As the days went by, we read report after report about new outbreaks and panic-buying in the United States. (Seriously, stop hoarding toilet paper. In the very unlikely event that you run out, you can just wash your stinkin’ rear in the shower. What else do you have to do?) But the vibe in South America was much more relaxed. Sure, we saw COVID-19 warnings at airports and on subways, most passport control agents wore masks and gloves, and Sean anointed himself the hand-washing czar. But otherwise life seemed largely undisturbed: Supermarket and pharmacy shelves were fully stocked, and locals were more interested in our opinion of Donald Trump than any old virus.
A coronavirus advisory at the Brazilian border
We were full of morbid curiosity when we boarded our flight out of Rio de Janeiro on March 11. What post-apocalyptic hellscape would be waiting for us at home? Deserted airports? Mandatory health screenings? Customs agents in hazmat suits? Armed law enforcement officials forcing us back onto the plane at gunpoint? (I watched I Am Legend on the flight; the possibilities seemed endless and very bleak.)
Yeah, no. Absolutely none of that. For all the bluster in the news, the U.S. airports we saw were disturbingly normal. No face masks, no warnings, no social distancing of any kind. Our Brazilian flight attendants covered their mouths and kept a safe distance; our American flight attendants joked about the people who were disinfecting their seats and banged into us as they barreled down the aisles. When we arrived in Chile on February 3, we were interrogated about whether we’d come from a coronavirus-infected country. When we arrived in Orlando on March 11, we strutted through security with our Global Entry papers and no one gave us a second look.
But that was March 11. On March 12, Trump announced the European travel ban. Two days later, U.S. airports started rigorously screening foreign arrivals. The day after that, Argentina closed its borders to non-residents. Last week the U.S. State Department issued a Level 4 Do Not Travel advisory for the entire world. We got back in the nick of time.
Other travelers were not so lucky. Our flight from Brazil to Orlando cost $250/person when we bought it in December; a friend of a friend had to pay $6,000 for a one-way flight to the U.S. from Germany earlier this month. Thousands of Americans are stranded in foreign countries, including Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina. Numerous cruise ships are aimlessly adrift because no countries will allow them to dock. (We met a couple in Buenos Aires that were about to board a month-long cruise to Chile, Peru, California, and Vancouver. Yikes.)
Like the rest of you, Sean and I will be holed up at home for the foreseeable future. We’ve canceled a family cruise to Hawaii, we won’t board our flight from Oahu to Osaka next month, and we won’t go out with a bang at the Olympics in Tokyo. The final leg of our year-long journey is on hold indefinitely. (Relatedly: If you require any freelance writing services, I have a lot of time on my hands.)
I still have a few posts about South America in the queue, but the fate of this travel journal after that is a big ol’ question mark. Hopefully I’ll be able to share stories from Asia in a few months, but who knows. For now, stay tuned, stay inside, and don’t touch your face.
What’s the first thing you think of when I say Colombia? Cocaine? Pablo Escobar? Narcos? FARC? Terrorism? That’s fair. But what if I told you everything you thought you knew about the country is wrong?