Santiago, Chile |
For months we have been planning a “bucket list” cruise vacation
around South America and through the Panama Canal. We were scheduled to leave for Santiago,
Chile on March 11th. Since
January we have been closely following the political situation in Chile, as
well as the coronavirus news.
As the date approached we were glad to hear that the countries
we were visiting in South America had few or no cases of the COVID-19. We had assurances from Norwegian cruise lines
that everything was still set for sailing on March 14th and the
health reports were good. We decided to keep our plans and left for our trip.
As we flew out of Boston the couple next to me was checking
their email. They found out before we landed in Miami that their trip to
Argentina was cancelled because Argentina had closed their borders. This made
me a little nervous, but we continued to Santiago. Now, remember that last week there were few
cases in Chile. When we landed we were
met with teams of people dressed in uniforms and scrubs with respirator masks who
had us fill out affidavits about our health and travel history. We had to sign
the health forms, which were stamped and examined by other teams of health workers. We
had our temperatures taken by laser at least twice as we walked through
customs. There were gallon sized jugs of hand sanitizer everywhere. We hadn’t seen any hand sanitizer at the airports in Boston or Miami.
Life goes on in downtown Santiago |
Palacio de las Monedas, seat of the Chilean government |
Cable cars in the Parque Metropolitano hills |
View from our hotel room. The cable cars are in the hill right behind the pool. |
We had a wonderful time in Santiago. However, we saw disturbing reports from home
about colleges cancelling classes, CDC reports, flights being cancelled. In Santiago people were enjoying life,
without panicking about toilet paper. It was quite refreshing to be away from
the craziness. It was autumn down there,
with nice weather and friendly people.
We toured the city of Santiago on Thursday, and Valparaiso on Friday with a tour guide in his own car from Chile Private Tours. Julio was a terrific guide, and very friendly. He even offered to drive us to the airport when we found out our vacation had been cut short. The views of the Andes mountains east of the city were breathtaking.
After Valparaiso we stopped at an organic winery. We visited the fields, saw llamas and had a wonderful time in the outskirts of the wine growing region.
This funicular was built in 1902 |
Emiliana Winery |
Upon returning to the hotel in Santiago on Friday we read
our email and saw a message about a flight on Delta airlines returning us to
Atlanta on Saturday. This was a
surprise. Right underneath was a message
about the cruise being cancelled. We
tried to confirm our flight to Atlanta, but after two hours on the cellphone
(at our expense) we learned that this flight had been changed, and to wait for
another email. Before we went to dinner
we had confirmed a new flight to Toronto on Air Canada!
Pueblo de los Dominicos is full of workshops for potters, woodworkers, leather workers, jewelers, weavers and other artisans. It has over 200 stalls. It was a former mission or convent. |
The next morning we visited the Pueblo de los Dominicos and
did some crafts shopping before flying home via Toronto. We had that one last time to say good-bye to Julio, our tour guide. It was a sad, long flight to Canada (almost eleven hours on the plane). In Toronto and in Boston we had absolutely no
health screening, questions about travel history, no bottles of hand sanitizer
available to the public. We just walked off the plane and into public life. With all the hysteria,
why weren’t these two first world countries up to par with Chile on health
screening? No wonder Chile has so few cases!
We are home safe. We
will voluntarily “social distance” ourselves for two weeks just in case we
picked up a virus somewhere in our travels this week. We had quite an adventure but never checked
off some of our bucket list items.
Hopefully we can reschedule our vacation in the future.
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To Cite/Link to this post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "The Cruise Vacation that Wasn’t", Nutfield Genealogy, posted March 16, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-cruise-vacation-that-wasnt.html: accessed [access date]).
Amazing adventure! I love the kitties on the newspaper racks!
ReplyDeleteI had to take that photo! I have two black kitties at home!
DeleteAt least you had a good time in Chile. Looks like a place I would like to visit. HOPE YOUR HEALTH REMAINS.
ReplyDeleteAlthough you missed out on the cruise portion of your trip, the time you spent in Chile looks fabulous.
ReplyDeleteChile looks gorgeous! At least that part of the trip went well
ReplyDelete