Coronavirus and our travels

Given the hot topic in the news at the moment, I thought I’d write a short post about the novel coronavirus and how it may be affecting our travel plans.

Morocco has announced only one case of infection, but they are taking further steps to try to contain the spread. We learned that the beloved Almond Festival held each year in Tafraout has been canceled. It usually draws a large, international crowd. The person identified as infected is an Italian citizen who lives in Morocco and recently returned to the capital city of Rabat from northern Italy. We learned all this from a pharmacist, a well-spoken young man in a small mountain village in the Middle Atlas. We stopped in there to see if he had N95 masks but he was sold out!

To be honest, I’m not really sure if he was sold out of masks in general, or if he really even had the N95 variety. In any case he said the price for him to restock has gone sky-high, so the global scramble for masks is truly happening everywhere. There is a pharmacy in Chefchaoun selling paper masks for nearly $1 each. He wanted 50 bucks for a box of 50. We said no thanks.

Once out of Morocco our plan is to travel to Croatia. The only way to get there is through Italy. If we drive, it would take a couple of weeks and we would have to go through northern Italy. We do not know which communities will still be in lock down mode, or how that might affect our route. The second option is to take the ferry from Barcelona to Civitavecchia just north of Rome. The ferry trip would take about 20 hours, drastically cutting travel time. Best of all, we’d miss the northern regions entirely. Five days later we catch a ferry to Split, Croatia from Ancona in eastern Italy.

We had made the decision to take the ferries a while back and have already purchased our tickets. We could change our minds and get a refund, as we also purchased trip insurance. After thinking it over (and over and over) we decided to just stick with the plan. So, in this regard, we took Venice off the table. We thought about visiting Rome instead, it’s tempting given the thinned crowds, but ultimately we decided not to go there.

This is why we were seeking masks, not to wear all the time, but just to get us on the ship and into our cabin and until we could get it disinfected as best we can. I am not looking forward to traveling on ferries, but we have several ferry trips planned (but not yet booked!) in the near future, so I guess I’m going to be doing some cleaning. We did get an email from the ferry company with a document attached that we have to sign. It gives them permission to screen us for the virus.

It’s true Italy is a hotspot and prudent care must be taken. However, one reason Italy is such a hotspot is because they have tested tens of thousands of people. It stands to reason the number would be high the more testing is carried out. As of March 3, the CDC numbers showed less than 500 people in the States have been tested. You can bet once testing becomes widely available the number of people infected will go sky-high. Under these circumstances it is impossible to say whether or not Italy is any more of a hotspot than the U.S. It’s comparing apples to oranges.

Steven and I have had multiple discussions about the virus. In theory, we could travel to anywhere in the world and hunker down for a while to avoid the virus, but where would that be, exactly? We can’t think of any place, so we might as will carry on here. What will we do should one or both of us become sick? Living in a teeny tiny camping car is practically a guarantee if one of us gets it, the other will too. The best thing, of course, is not to get infected at all.

In taking precautions, water is our limiting factor. We can only carry a maximum of 100 liters in our water tank, which is 22 gallons. It would be impractical for us to use this source to constantly wash our hands unless we are at a place where refilling is available. So we stocked up on hand-sanitizer and will use this to supplement our hand-washing and also to carry with us when we are out and about. For drinking and cooking we have a Brita and we’ve also bought a few liters of bottled water to keep on hand.

For food, we already stocked up with a couple of dozen packages of beans and rice, some mashed potatoes and a few other packaged items which we brought with us from the States after the holidays in preparation for our trip to Norway. Food there is quite expensive. If need be, we’ll break into that stash. We have a few tins of tuna and some pasta, rice and so on.

We stocked up on toilet paper, lol. Having suffered through a few days of stomach upset in the second week of our trip in Morocco, we know how important it is to have extra onboard. We also improvised a paper towel holder for our bathroom for drying hands. With limited water, using hand towels that need frequent washing isn’t practical as we travel.

We have an ample supply of medications onboard. Ever since I had a kidney stone out in the big middle of nowhere (Twentynine Palms, CA) we are now prepared to treat everything short of a severed limb, at least until we can get help.

Another hot topic we discuss is whether or not we should use campgrounds or whether we should wild camp. Our preference is a combo of the two, but in the event of illness, it would be better if we were already registered at a campground with services (water, cassette dump) where we could more comfortably self-isolate. Checking into a campground after becoming ill would be difficult. We’d feel a moral obligation not to expose others, and they probably wouldn’t let us in anyway if they knew we were sick. Such a dilemma. If we were wilding and became seriously ill, we’d make a call to emergency services, same if we were in a campground. So ultimately I guess we’re just going to wing it and see how it goes.

At the end of the day, we are not scared to travel or worried that we will become infected. It would be foolish not to be prepared, of course, but we intend to take the best precautions we can and simply carry on doing what we love to do. Should we become ill, Europe has some of the finest healthcare systems in the world. Of the 191 member nations of the World Health Organization, Italy is ranked #2. France is #1. Spain is #3. Croatia is #43. As a comparison, the United States is #37. And unlike in the U.S., if we get sick here, it won’t bankrupt us. (We might die, but we’ll still have some money left over.) And yes, we have health insurance.

So that’s it! In the near future, our plans haven’t changed much. Beyond that, who knows. Like all of you, we’ll stay informed and make decisions when we need to. In the meantime, everyone be careful out there and may the odds be ever in your favor! 🙂

NEXT UP: Back to our regularly scheduled program.

…