We are done with the Mexico trip and flying back to the USA Today. Traveling during COVID had been interesting to say the least. On the way to Mexico my ears felt like they were falling off due to the mask we need to wear in the airports.
On the plus side the flight attendants look like ninjas from Mortal Combat which is really cool. For the most part everyone seemed cool with masking up and we saw no incidents.
For traveling back to the USA we had to stop at a laboratory yesterday and get a COVID test. It took about 30 minutes in total and we both received negative results. This means we are able to fly back to the USA.
If we had gotten a positive result then we would have had to stay in Mexico until we have a negative test result. Since the probability for that happening was high we did purchase COVID travel insurance. That would have paid for lodging if we had tested positive.
One member of our group has tested positive and will need to stay until she tests negative. We aren’t sure how we didn’t contract it from her but suspect it is due to us not riding in the same van to and from the river.
On our way down to Palenque there were a lot of flight cancellations from Aeromexico due to staff getting sick with COVID. We were fortunate and avoided any delays but some of our group had a less than ideal experience. Eventually everyone got to our destination but not without some colorful stories about navigating airports and airlines.
Heading home we seem to be in the clear. Our initial flight was cancelled but we were able to rebook without much hassle.
Flying is a lot like rafting: you gotta go with the flow. The airlines are gigantic machines with complicated and inflexible systems. Things may go wrong and change and the best you can do is accept them and keep a cool head. Stay in the boat or plane and get home.
Such a great trip. Definitely ready to be home after two weeks away. Rafting on a jungle river was a new experience and it presented a number of challenges both physically and mentally. I took a lot of video and hope that I can put something together that captures some amount of what we experienced.