Living In Interesting Times

May you live in interesting times

An ancient Chinese curse

I did not expect to be posting another blog so soon after my last one but I have received some concerned messages after my recent Facebook post about being denied passage on our cruise so I thought I would explain.

Franklin and I set aside this time to be footloose and fancy free without any concrete plans. For the past year we have talked about going to Argentina this winter then Japan this spring. With the discovery of the coronavirus in Asia this plan did not seem timely so we decided to book a cruise back to the United States, then go to Europe, probably Italy to hike and dance.. However as you know, this is not a time to be going to Italy anymore than it is a time to be going to Japan. However, by this time we had already booked a cruise up the coast of a South America back to the United States to change our clothes and head to Italy.

If you’ve ever cruised, you know once you book a last minute cruise, there is no cancellation just because you changed your mind. They have your money and that’s it. However, if we were not going to Japan or Italy, there is no particular reason for us to return to the US now. We are having a dandy time in Buenos Aires, there is no coronavirus threat here yet, and while cruising is always fun, this cruise was mostly transportation home.

Then a few days ago we received an email from the cruise line stating that anyone who had been to a specific list of countries or anyone who had come into contact, defined as within two meters, would not be allowed to board. We are tango dancers and Buenos Aires attracts dancers from all over the world, with lots of Asians and Italians. You get a whole lot closer than two meters. We basically violated the guidelines several times a day for the last month. In fact, that very night I sat next to two tables of Chinese dancers. We got close to someone from all but one country on the list through tango. The one remaining, Iran, we encountered in the elevator of our hotel. A straight flush of violations. We explained this to the cruise company and they said we definitely would not be allowed to board their ship and they would refund our money.

For many people this degree of disruption would be catastrophic. For us, it is just substituting one fun activity for another just as fun.

As far as I know there has been no coronavirus in South America, except possibly in Brazil but I’m not really sure the Argentines are monitoring the situation. In any case, we are safe, we are fine, and we are staying another month or longer in Argentina. We will do some more dancing and then will do some touring. While we have no firm plans yet, there is plenty of rural Argentina to explore.

As far as returning to the United States, we now have no return ticket. Frankly I am in favor of shipping our luggage and re-creating Che Guevara‘s motorcycle ride up through South America but I think that will be a tough sell to Franklin. We both do know how to ride a motorcycle so maybe he’ll surprise me. I’ll keep you posted.