FLIGHT TIME: TRAVEL IN THE ERA OF COVID-19
Police roadblocks, eerie silences and a passenger smuggling loo roll … writers share their stories of scrambling to get home as the planet hunkered down
Cape Town to London, via Addis Ababa
It was obvious we were about to board a half-empty plane. The lady at check-in wasn’t remotely fussed that our four bags were all 3kg over the normally strictly enforced 20kg on our London-bound flight. Stranger still, we breezed through security and had our passports stamped by officials hidden behind protective masks and gloves.
Cape Town International was the quietest I’ve ever seen it. There were, it seemed, more bored shop assistants scrolling through their smartphones than international travellers. Hand sanitiser was non-existent.
The plane was in fact just a third full. Most passengers had a whole row to themselves. But microbial paranoia was already setting in — you couldn’t clear your throat without a shifty glance from someone in a nearby seat.
Addis Ababa — where we had a four-hour layover — felt chaotic. But luckily we were only in transit and could sail unimpeded to our departure gate. Sullen travellers attempting to enter Ethiopia, meanwhile, were being subjected to extensive medical screening. Thousands of them, horded together in tight, unventilated queues. — Simon Parker
London to Normandy via Paris
My journeys this week have been both familiar and utterly strange. I took the 1.31pm Eurostar from London to Paris. It was like it always is except for the face masks, from the straightforward paper models to those advanced plastic ones with some sort of ventilator, worn by people watching, say, Homeland on their phones. I got back to my apartment in Paris and packed a suitcase, which I’ve done many times before but never without knowing if I was going to be gone for two weeks, three months, or even longer.
My girlfriend and I loaded up the car and set off. Earlier that day we’d started hearing rumours that movement was to be restricted as early as the following morning: “If you don’t want to be stuck, go now.” Cars were fleeing the city for whatever bolt-holes their passengers had access to. As we approached BoisGuilbert, the village where my girlfriend’s mother grew up and in which, by some fortunate twist, there was a house in which we’d be able to self-isolate, we listened to French President Emmanuel Macron on the radio. As we hurtled along a dark country lane, he repeated the phrase “we are at war” over and over. By now roadblocks have been put in place, so we are here indefinitely, in a village we are not allowed to leave. The countryside is beautiful and it’s a sunny spring day, but the silence is made eerie by its contrast with the relentless barrage of news. — Seb Emina
The Algarve, Portugal, to Porto and back
Iflew up to Porto from my home in the Algarve to head out to the Douro. Friday morning brought sunshine and a tranquil landscape of budding magnolia trees, grazing donkeys and the mesmerising flow of the mighty Douro River beneath me. But after lunch at a tiny rustic restaurant, the e-mails started. The person I was due to meet was in quarantine; the Quinta da Côrte hotel where I was due to stay had closed; my Sunday lunch date said the police had set up roadblocks near him. And so I returned to Porto, to empty streets and an impending sense of panic. Warned that lockdown might come at any minute, I hurried to the airport to catch the next flight back to Faro. There, a sea of purple-latex gloves greeted me, with people clinging to each other, masks swathing their faces. Everyone was on a mission: get out and get home. Luckily I managed to do both. — Mary Lussiana
Morzine, France, to London
Aneon sea of waterproof-fabric-clad bodies greeted me as the doors swished open into the ski-pass ticket office in the French resort of Morzine. “Pourquoi la foule?” — “Why the crowds?” — someone yelled angrily. Neighbouring Switzerland had closed its ski lifts due to coronavirus, and rumour had it that it was about to shut its borders too — which meant a mass exodus of skiers into France. As a travel writer, I don’t often take holidays, but this time I’d treated myself. The first few days had been quiet — I’d had some runs to myself — then on the final day, word came that the area was about to close. I needed to get out.
My bus back to Geneva airport was full. The driver told me most tourists were leaving, no new bookings were being made, supermarkets were being manned by security and 65 members of her team had been laid off that day.
At the airport, hundreds of people were crammed into departures, some wearing masks and most clutching hand sanitiser. This was maybe the last holiday that I — or anyone — would be taking for quite a while. An off-piste journey lies ahead, full of turns far more scary than those on the slopes. — Phoebe Smith
Bangkok to Koh Phangan
As closures and panic-buying set in in Bangkok, and temperatures began to soar, I decided to escape my apartment and self-isolate on Koh Phangan. The domestic airport terminal was busy, mostly with Thais returning home, including a group of Buddhist monks, their orange face masks matching their robes. Almost all Thais wear masks when in transit because of the pollution — and there’s an expectation, reiterated by Thailand’s health minister, that foreigners should follow suit. At security we had our temperatures checked, and then again upon landing in the southern town of Surat Thani.
The car ferry to Koh Phangan was half empty — a few small groups of foreigners and Thai families social-distancing on deck, enjoying a sunset over the Gulf of Thailand, momentarily removed from the pandemic. The journey’s final temperature check on the pier brought the virus back to mind.
Koh Phangan is coronavirus-free. March’s Full Moon Party has been cancelled, and so has Songkran (Thai New Year) — but the island remains lively, the night market is busy (food stalls all offer hand sanitiser), and travellers continue to race scooters mask-free. — Tom Vater
San Francisco to LA on the Pacific Coast Highway
We were on the terrace of a seafood shack in Cayucos, a tiny beach town halfway through our Pacific Coast Highway adventure, when my husband Seb and I heard the news. “The NBA [National Basketball Association] is suspended ... And Trump has banned flights from Europe.”
Less than a week before, when I’d arrived in San Francisco, getting through the airport had been smooth — not even a temperature check. We started with two blissful days in Big Sur, hiking and whale-watching, disconnected from the world. When we left, the heavens opened. Maybe it was the uncharacteristic rain, or the lack of tourists, but the winding roads were eerily, enchantingly quiet. We had Route 1, and its magic, mostly to ourselves. But as we moved south, things went south.
As we left Los Angeles without seeing the Lakers game for which we’d bought tickets, the city was on the brink of lockdown and Seb was displaying coronavirus symptoms (since tested; results negative). Driving back, we heard all flights from the UK had been banned. All our friends’ trips were cancelled. To think I’d been moaning about the
rain. — Jade Conroy
Madrid to the US via London
‘When did you book this flight, bro?” At 4.30am on Thursday, March 12, the two US college students in the queue ahead of me at Madrid airport were bonding: to their bleary-eyed delight, they had both secured tickets out of there within the past 10 minutes. Arriving for my Heathrow-bound flight — having heard talk of lockdown in Madrid — I saw queues of US tourists snaking nervously throughout departures. A family of seven from North Carolina; a New Yorker celebrating her 60th birthday — they had all been woken during the night by friends and family alerting them to Trump’s suspension of travel from Europe (but not from the UK, at that time), so they were heading home to the US by way of London. It felt reminiscent of the flashbacks from The Handmaid’s Tale — but with a sense that we were the lucky ones. — Fiona Lister
Ibiza to London
Iflew from Ibiza to London to get home before the borders closed. The Spanish airport was tense; even the tiniest throat clear went off like an atom bomb. The man in front of me at check-in was clad in a face mask and rubber gloves. He was young and fit — if sick, why was he travelling; and if not, why the get-up? All became clear when he was asked to reveal the contents of his luggage. It was stuffed with loo roll. Here was a man prepared for the apocalypse. I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed, but it was comic relief for us. — Cleyenne Lazzarotto
Miotto
Paris to New York via London
Frantic calls from our parents about the US travel ban woke my friend and me around 2.30am in Paris. We booked a flight to the UK and huddled at the airport with a crowd of travellers, eating limp croissants. While waiting to board, we snagged tickets to Boston from London the following day for $3,000 (about R54,000).
Our flight landed at Gatwick, we took the train into London, then on to Heathrow to see if we could catch an earlier plane. When the ticket agent waived the $2,000 change fees so we could make a flight leaving for Boston in 50 minutes, we started crying and the people next to us cheered. One sprint to our gate, a seven-hour flight and a five-hour bus ride from Boston to New York City later, and we made it to our apartment at 3am on Friday morning — 30 hours after the initial phone calls. — Hannah Martin © The Daily Telegraph