With enormous sadness but resolution we are on our way home. Our 31day holiday, travelling through 5 states and playing 16 rounds of golf has been suspended.
The escalation from mindfulness to widespread shutdowns has been swift. When we left NZ on the 8th March the USA was still safe to travel to and we followed all advice, registered with safe travel and kept watch on the latest news.
The first sign of trouble were emails from the tour operators for our Memphis to New Orleans leg, outlining an offer from the American Cruise Lines for passengers to defer our trip to April 2021 with no additional costs. However, being already in the States and by then leaving Houston to commence the RTJT in Mobile we decided to wait and see, hoping that things might calm down or at least not get worse.
48hrs later the Memphis to New Orleans trip was cancelled by ACL. The media reports had become highly emotive and non-stop and the golf courses and hotels were telling us they were having unprecedented levels of cancellations.
We decided, after hearing from friends & family in NZ and reading the updates from NZ about all returning travellers needing to self-isolate for 14days, that we should make a decision whether to continue the RTJT up to Memphis or turn around and go home asap.
It came a bit of a nightmare from there. Getting in touch with our travel insurer took 1 ½ hours on hold and we could not get through to our rental car & domestic flight agents. AirNZ was genius though, they proactively sent an email to all travellers saying that they had made all flights manageable via the website, no need to call.
Plus, I cannot say enough great things about the RTJT service. We contacted our agent Melissa, told her we wished to pull out after the Grand National in Opelika and return home. They refunded the entire balance of the trip that day.
We finally got hold of the car people and with only a $200.00 difference we altered our drop off location from Memphis to Houston.
So after just 9 days we are running for the border.
It’s a surreal feeling really. Tonight, we are in Baton Rouge as our rest stop on the 11hour drive from Opelika, Alabama to Houston. The city is like a ghost town. We arrived around 3pm, checked into the Marriott and then walked down to the Mississippi River and around the down town area. Everything bar one supermarket and a couple of hotels are closed. There were no more than a dozen people we came across and our Hotel is only offering room service.
We are making the most of things and have stocked up on tonight’s beverages to enjoy with room service dinner. Although we are not convinced enjoy is the right description.
I’m not certain how I feel. I’m disappointed that this fabulous holiday has come to an abrupt end but I’m happy to be heading home to familiarity even if we face self-isolation upon return.
I’m happy we’ve had a taste of what this trip could have been because it makes us want to complete it next year. But at the same time, I don’t feel like we’ve had a holiday, we’re not rested. We’re worried and tired from the driving and reworking of our plans.
In summary though, we are fortunate to only have our travel plans affected. All around us we see the worry on the faces of all the people we have met in the tourism and hospitality industries who face an uncertain period. We see Trump making announcements that once this passes, he believes the USA will be in a recession and we live in a country that is reliant on tourism and export. These are indeed uncertain times.