I’m writing this in mid-May of 2020, and we are all currently living through the age of the pandemic. Here in the American south, most states have begun reopening their economies (fingers crossed), but leisure travel has been more or less non-existent for two months. There is no telling when we’ll be able to bust out our passports again. And yet, in mid-March we took baby E to her eighth country just as the world as we knew it began to close. Here is the story of a six-day Caribbean vacation that began mere hours before the World Health Organization declared the Coronavirus a global pandemic. This is what it was like to travel during the Coronavirus.
Lead-Up to the Trip
Back in November 2019, we booked a five-night trip to St. Lucia for the Spring using American AAdvantage miles. We then made non-refundable deposits at two AirBnBs and reserved a rental car. We were pumped for a great trip… and then folks started talking about a new virus out of China.
Should we travel during this Coronavirus?
The first confirmed case of the coronavirus in the US was identified on January 20, 2020. Like most Americans, we barely took note. Every election year the 24-hour-a-day news media seems to find a new super bug to fixate on. And yet life continues as normal. Surely this was just another case of the media stirring up a lot of commotion to boost ad sales.
I only started to become concerned about the virus in late February. You may recall that was when Wall Street got antsy, and everyone’s investment portfolios started to take a beating. But that wasn’t what had me worried. No, I got concerned when a friend posted on Facebook that he had decided to cancel an upcoming trip to Croatia because it routed through Milan. That city had suddenly fallen to the virus and many European countries were imposing mandatory 14-day quarantines on anyone who passed through Northern Italy. Our trip to St. Lucia was still a couple weeks away. Could panic over this silly virus force us to cancel?
Sarah and I discussed the vague notion of canceling our trip, but neither of us was that concerned about the virus itself. (This was also before the airlines and AirBnB started offering free cancelations.) At this point we would have canceled a trip to a hot zone like Italy, but I was monitoring the spread of the virus and the Caribbean as a whole seemed pretty safe. Besides, it had been five weeks since the first case in the US and the numbers were still really low here.
A Natural Disaster of a Different Sort
A week before our trip, a tornado tore through Nashville, and everyone’s attention was pulled from the virus and focused on something much more immediate. Our property received only minimal damage, but we were without power for a couple days. Meanwhile, four blocks to the north of us an entire street had been decimated.
In a foreshadowing of what was to come, schools were canceled, and many companies were shuttered while the city reacted to the disaster. Thousands of volunteers, suddenly finding themselves with extra time on their hands, rushed to the disaster zone to help cut trees and pack up the victim’s belongings. Nashville Strong. It was beautiful.
The Coronavirus Lands in Tennessee
Two days after the tornado on Thursday, March 5th, Tennessee reported its first confirmed coronavirus case right down the road in Williamson County. It was one of those folks who’d attended the Biogen conference in Boston. The following day the state’s health officials announced that the risk posed to the public by the virus was low and Tennesseans should not overreact. Over the weekend the first case was confirmed in Nashville itself.
Around that time, Baby E came down with a slight fever and a bad cough. Sarah took her to the pediatrician the following Monday, and the doctor prescribed some antibiotics. She told us that E would be perfectly fine to fly out of the country in less than 48 hours. That same day, Vanderbilt University announced that it would shut down its campus and move toward online courses.
Preparing to Travel
On Tuesday, March 10th, our state was up to six confirmed cases, but things were still moving slow – the government did not seem particularly worried. In fact, on that very day the Republican supermajority in Tennessee’s statehouse was busy debating yet another proposal to make the Bible the official state book, not discussing this virus scare.
I checked the CDC website one more time and saw that there were still only a smattering of cases outside of Washington. This was before New York emerged as a hot spot. St. Lucia had yet to report any cases.
That night Sarah and I checked in with each other again to confirm we were comfortable traveling. As far as we were concerned, the only risky part of the trip would be while we were in the airports and airplanes. The rest of the time we’d be fairly secluded in our rental car, private apartments, and lightly visited beaches. We packed hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes to clean the airplane seats. We’d be fine.
E still had a tiny cough but the pediatrician had just given her the green light to fly. Honestly, at that point my biggest worry was that she’d cough on the plane and someone would overact and assume she’d caught this coronavirus. In hindsight it seems pretty irresponsible, but at the time almost no one in America had started to take this thing too seriously.
Traveling Just Before the Pandemic
Early in the morning of Wednesday, March 11th, we summoned a Lyft and headed to the Nashville International Airport. It was no more and no less crowded than it had been at the start of previous trips. After a two-hour layover in Miami, we were coasting over the Caribbean en route to St. Lucia, another country to check off the list. There were a few more folks wearing masks than we’d seen on our flight to North Carolina a couple weeks before, but otherwise the flight felt normal.
When we landed in St. Lucia the only precaution that we noticed was a sign asking travelers to let immigration know if they’d visited China in the past 14 days. Everyone was still acting under the assumption that travel from China was the main concern. Meanwhile, those floating petri dishes were docking and disgorging folks at the cruise ship terminal.
St. Lucia and the Dawn of the Pandemic
As I said, our only real concern related to the Coronavirus had been the flight. We figured we’d be pretty safe on the island and get a break from the media hype. That break didn’t last long.
Wednesday: We have a Pandemic
We arrived in St. Lucia early in the afternoon of March 11th. As is our MO, we picked up a rental car, struggled to install a car seat, stopped by a grocery store, and then made the 45-minute drive to our AirBnB in Soufriere. It was looking like a normal vacation.
That evening I settled down with a tall glass of St. Lucian rum to catch up on the goings on in the Facebook world. Imagine my surprise to learn that the World Health Organization had declared the Coronavirus a Pandemic while we’d been disconnected.
Suddenly everyone back home seemed to be taking the virus a lot more seriously, including the president. He had switched from a “nothing to see here” stance to announcing a plan to block travel from continental Europe starting in two days on March 13th. That was a quick and unexpected about-face. I was suddenly anxious that our return travel plans might be disrupted as well.
Thursday: Problematic News from the Home Front
While we were lounging on a beautiful beach the following afternoon, Sarah received a text from another mom in our nanny share. E’s nanny is in her 60’s and had expressed a concern about being around E once we returned. Sarah works in healthcare, so that was an understandable stance but it sure heaped a lot of stress on our shoulders.
At this point, Governor Lee had declared a State of Emergency in Tennessee, and Mayor Cooper was pushing for Nashville offices to shift toward a work-from-home format. There were signs that my office might follow the mayor’s suggestion, but nothing solid had been announced. There was a very real possibility that we’d return from vacation only to find ourselves without any viable childcare options.
On the island, everything still felt normal. The locals didn’t seem to be worried about the pandemic, and I was still of the opinion that everyone back home was just over-reacting. It was still stressful, though. I began checking my email every couple hours in anticipation of receiving a schedule disruption notice from American Airlines.
Friday: The Situation Intensifies
On Friday we listened to NPR over our morning coffee. The situation in the north of Italy sounded absolutely horrific. Perhaps this wasn’t just a case of mass hysteria? An hour later we went to swim in the pool of a thermal waterfall. There were three other tourists present when we arrived, and I struck up a conversation. Two were from Seattle. We kept our distance. Washington was the bad news epicenter in the US and I wasn’t sure those two could be trusted.
Sarah received a text while still at the waterfall. Our nanny had decided that she would self-furlough herself. As the day drew to a close I was still uncertain if and when my office would shift to a work-from-home arrangement. We were set to return home in a few days to two jobs and no childcare options.
Of course, that assumed that we could get home. By all accounts, the international airports in the US were falling into a state of chaos. The president, true to form, had been rather vague when announcing the travel ban from Europe. It was only meant to apply to non-US residents, but, given the unclear wording of his announcement, Americans who would have been able to return home after the Friday ban were rushing to rebook flights alongside the Europeans. This unexpected rush of people meant that epic, multi-hour lines were forming at immigration points. Those entry points were already short staffed since the administration had shifted a lot of officers to our southern land border over the past few months.
Saturday: The Coronavirus Infiltrates St. Lucia
For the past several days we’d been stressed about the effect that the virus was having in the United States, but St. Lucia felt safe. There weren’t that many other tourists around, and none of the locals had shown any concern. Still, while I felt relatively safe, I wanted to avoid large crowds in general and cruise ship passengers in particular. Large cruise ships can’t dock in Soufriere, but many cruisers do take day excursions to the area. We planned to visit a botanical garden before leaving town, but E’s nap was running long. As the mini-buses began to roll in mid-morning, I felt a sense of foreboding.
Early that afternoon, we stopped at a local hole in the wall for lunch, and E quickly drew the attention of a couple of school-age kids. They came over to visit with us while they waited on their food. We told them that we’d be heading north after lunch to spend our last two nights closer to the capital. The older of the two kids grew serious and warned us to be very careful…because of the virus. It was the first time that a local had even referenced the existence of the pandemic.
When we got to our new AirBnB that evening, our host also seemed concerned. It turns out that a European tourist had become the country’s first confirmed case of the virus just a day before. Suddenly the island paradise didn’t feel as safe.
We also learned that Trump would extend his travel ban to include the British Isles. Those travelers had until Monday night to enter to the US. We were set to enter the country through Miami on Monday evening and Miami was one of those airports that had been cleared to accept flights from Europe. Would we be forced into a massive line of potentially sick tourists when we reached immigration? It didn’t bode well.
Sunday: Our Return is in Sight
As I said, I was monitoring our flight every few hours in anticipation of a cancelation. None had occurred, but the stress remained.
Aside from flight-related concerns though, Sunday was a pretty good day. We ate lunch at a coastal restaurant, climbed around a ruined fortress, and went for one last round of snorkeling. We kept our distance from others as best we could.
By Sunday night it seemed pretty likely that our flight from St. Lucia would depart on schedule, but I was really concerned about what would await us in Miami. I obviously didn’t want to get stuck in Florida overnight like during our last Puerto Rico trip. I tried my best to research the situation, but the information was scant. The good news was that Miami has two international terminals, and the one that we were scheduled to pass through primarily receives flights from the Americas, not Europe. Maybe we’d avoid that nightmare situation we’d heard about on the news.
That night it was reported that a second European tourist on the island had been diagnosed with the virus.
Flying into the Pandemic
We got to St. Lucia’s airport without issue. There weren’t too many people in the ticketing area, but I started to feel pretty nervous as we entered the departure hall. It was rather full. We slowly circled around the outside of the crowd, killing time, until the airport’s one lounge opened up at noon. It was better in there.
Our Experience Entering the US
We boarded the plane and were pleased to find that American Airlines had blocked the middle seat to give us a bit more breathing room. It was a relatively full flight, though. A complete travel ban would be instituted in the near future – arrivals may have been plummeting by this point, but there were still plenty of people like us who needed to get home from their vacations
When we landed in Miami, I noticed a text from my coworker. The office would shift to a work-from-home format in the middle of the week. I could be home to watch E and the childcare disaster was, at least temporarily, averted. Things only got better when the immigration line was divided so that folks coming from Europe passed through different booths than those coming from the Americas. Good. With our Global Entry we were able to breeze through immigration. Disturbingly the officials didn’t ask us if we had a fever.
The Domestic Home Stretch
The Miami airport was also hopping, and a lot of fellow travelers now sported masks. Granted, about half of them were wearing the masks around their necks, but I guess it instilled some sense of wellbeing in them. We had some time to kill, so we went to an airport restaurant that is part of the Priority Pass system for our free dinner. (At the time of writing, this stands as our last dine-in restaurant experience and the food was crap.) At the table next to us was another young family. I struck up a conversation and learned that they were Germans who’d just gotten off a cruise ship! I slowly inched a bit further away from them.
Unfortunately, our flight to Nashville was entirely full so the middle seat, which was blocked when I checked earlier in the day, now had a ticketed passenger. Our new seatmate happened to be a college student returning prematurely from a semester abroad in Spain. SPAIN, the country that was just behind Italy in the number of European coronavirus cases. She said that they’d been preparing to shut down Madrid when she passed through twelve hours before, and yet when she arrived in the US, the health screening basically amounted to an immigration officer asking her if she felt all right. They had banned travel from Europe, but they weren’t even checking the temperatures of people on those return flights! Naturally, I was a bit nervous about being seated so close to this girl.
My brother picked us up at the Nashville airport. This allowed us to avoid a more risky ride in a Lyft, a ride that really hadn’t seemed risky a few days before. We survived the experience of traveling during the coronavirus more or less unscathed. We’d made it home.
In Conclusion: Was it the right call to travel during the coronavirus?
Looking back, I’m still on the fence as to whether we should have taken the trip to St. Lucia. For one thing, I now recognize that from a health standpoint it is irresponsible to travel during the coronavirus. Clearly it was people traveling from China that spread this thing in the first place. Of course, things didn’t seem as dire a few months ago and we were operating on limited information.
While I was worried about border shutdowns, I really didn’t expect things to accelerate as quickly as they did. In fact, St. Lucia itself shut their boarder less than a week after our return home.
At the time of writing this, no Caribbean airports are currently accepting commercial flights. However, St. Lucia is slated to begin the process of reopening to tourists at the start of June. They’ve only reported eighteen confirmed Coronavirus cases, so that, combined with their dependence on tourism seems to have encouraged them to lead the way in reopening the Caribbean. At this point the virus has popped up just about everywhere, so travel presumably brings a lot more risk then it did back in the first half of March. I don’t plan on flying anywhere again just yet.
I’ve got my fingers crossed, but this may end up being the only international trip that we are able to take E on in her second year of life. So yes, in the end I’m still a bit conflicted about the fact that we traveled during the dawn of the coronavirus pandemic but I sure am glad that we went on this trip. St. Lucia was a fabulous destination, and we were able to make a lot of great memories while still making it home safe and sound.
Wow. This was really interesting to read. It brings home how quickly this started here. Thanks for sharing.