“Because I am an entitled, self-centered American.” 

That was the only legitimate response I could imagine giving the immigration officer when they asked me why I traveled to a country the U.S. State Department said I shouldn’t travel to because of the ongoing surge of the Delta variant.

Two years ago, Glenn and I decided to experiment with taking separate vacations. Walking the Camino de Santiago across Spain was at the top of Glenn’s vacation list and seeing the mountain gorillas and doing a walking safari in Africa were at the top of my list. 

We split up and set forth on separate adventures. We discovered there are many pros and cons to traveling separately, but one of the cons is that we were jealous of the experience the other person had and wanted to go do it for ourselves! 

In September of 2020 we were set to travel to Tanzania so that Glenn could go on a walking safari in the Serengeti – the same one I had done the year before. COVID happened so we canceled and rebooked to September of 2021, which seemed like a go, especially after we were able to get vaccinated. 

However, as that date started getting closer, we decided to postpone for yet another year (to September 2022) given the complications Tanzania has experienced managing – or rather, not managing – COVID under their previous president. We didn’t want to inadvertently contribute to the spread of the virus in Tanzania, even if things were starting to turn around under their new president.  

Glenn was eager to do another “long walk” and I wanted to give that experience a try after hearing about how much fun he had in Spain. {If you haven’t had a chance to read Glenn’s Camino de Santiago blog yet, you should. It’s very amusing!}

Glenn had his eye on a few 80 to 100-mile town-to-town walks in Ireland, so we decided to make that a go. One thing led to another and before you knew it we had lodging booked all along the Wicklow Way trail in Ireland and the West Highland Way in Scotland.

We spent months planning and gathering supplies for our upcoming walking adventure. Glenn planned to replicate what he had done for the Camino de Santiago in terms of gear, but I didn’t have some key pieces (like the Goldilocks sized pack that wasn’t too big and wasn’t too small). We had what we called the “Ireland Box” in the office where we’d toss our supplies. Everything from new wool underwear (a first for me) to a pair of repaired rain pants found their way into the ever-growing staging area. 

Things were looking promising. In early August Ireland, Scotland and other places in Europe started opening to vaccinated tourists from certain countries – including the U.S. – by allowing entry without quarantine requirements. Restaurants and various tourist sites were opening to full capacity as well. Everything seemed to be improving and we were getting more and more excited for our trip. 

Then, the bottom dropped out.

We saw in the news that the surge of the Delta variant caused the U.S. State Department to issue new travel advisories that moved several countries from Level 3 “Reconsider Travel” to Level 4 “Do Not Travel.” Unfortunately, Scotland was one of those countries.

We typically purchase travel insurance for our international trips. Not so much for the protections against trip cancellations or lost luggage, but more for the emergency assistance and medical coverage should something major happen to one of us while traveling. 

Our understanding of our insurance policy was that traveling to a “Do Not Travel” country would void our policy…meaning, if one of us fell and broke our leg we’d be footing the bill. So, we decided to cancel the bookings for Scotland, and instead do two long walks in Ireland by adding the Dingle Way to our itinerary. We’d visit Scotland some other time.

Then, a couple of weeks later, Ireland moved onto the “Do Not Travel” list. We were devastated at the prospect of having to cancel our trip entirely. We decided to confirm our understanding of the travel insurance policy fine print.

It turns out we were wrong. Apparently, if the policy is for residents of the U.S., traveling to a “Do Not Travel” country would not void our coverage. In addition, any costs associated with canceling our trip due to “fear of travel” (like a surge of COVID) would not be covered/reimbursed.

Well shit. Now what?

We spent several days trying to rationalize why it was acceptable for us to still travel to Ireland to do our hiking tour. “We’re vaccinated.” “We’ll be in rural areas rarely coming in contact with others.” “We’ll wear our N95 masks and be extra careful.” “They need our tourist dollars.” “It’s actually safer there than here in the U.S. in terms of COVID cases/hospitalizations.”

We were so desperate to travel internationally that we were clinging to this trip with a death grip. Traveling was, after all, the impetus for us to quit our jobs a year ago!

In the end, it was imagining what it would be like coming back into the U.S. after our trip and having an immigration officer ask us why we went to a country experiencing a COVID surge and for which our government had advised us not to travel to.

There wasn’t a single honest response we could think of that didn’t boil down to “because we wanted to” – and that was a response that just made us feel like selfish assholes.

So, we moved into phase two of our meltdown which I liked to call “Dial a Country.” We started scouring the State Department’s website looking for countries we could travel to that were in the Level 3 “Reconsider Travel” category, or better yet, Level 2 “Exercise Increased Caution.” 

“Anguilla? Where is that? Or maybe Montserrat?” 

“We can go to Romania and walk past Dracula’s castle. They’re at Level 1!!” Only to later discover they have a mandatory 14-day quarantine requirement still in place, which is probably why they are being so successful with COVID. 

Doing a walk through the Julian Alps in Slovenia has always been high on our list of destinations. We started actively booking a trip there…with maybe a little jaunt over into Croatia to see some of the things we missed on our last visit. But even the owner of the adventure travel company we like to book through (BikeHike out of Vancouver, B.C.) basically told us to hold our horses about traveling right now. Everything was still too uncertain.  

Eventually we realized we were being ridiculous. There are so many reasons it wasn’t wise for us to travel overseas during the middle of a big COVID surge. Once we could see past our disappointment, we were able to be more rational, mindful, and compassionate in our decision-making. 

It became less about answering the question “where should we go?” and more about asking “should we go?”

I’m not saying that others who make the decision to travel overseas right now are wrong or unethical. Every individual and every situation and every destination are different. 

As for me and Glenn, we had to calm our emotions, process our disappointment, and get into a collective “we, not me” headspace. We are fully vaccinated, which has made us feel like we can move more safely through the world because we are less likely to contract and spread COVID. But every day we are learning more about the role vaccinated people may play in transmission of the Delta variant, so being vaccinated may no longer be enough.

We are, however, most certainly less likely to require hospitalization if we do catch the virus. Even so, we knew that the locations we were planning to travel (Ireland and Scotland) were in the middle of a surge and experiencing high case counts and hospitalizations. We needed to be mindful about not making a bad situation worse by either getting and/or spreading COVID ourselves while visiting, or by having some other medical emergency that put further burden on an already strained healthcare system. 

So, even though we could legally go to Ireland and Scotland (“Do Not Travel” is only an advisory, not a mandate; and they are still allowing vaccinated Americans in without quarantine requirements), it felt wrong to do so right now.

We are desperate with longing to travel internationally, but we are trying to keep things in perspective (Glenn wrote about his disappointment here). One need only turn on the TV or read the paper to know that people here in the U.S., and around the World, are experiencing much greater tragedies than having to cancel a fun vacation.

We’ll get on with our adventures at some point. In the meantime, I’ll continue pilfering goodies out of the “Ireland Box.” I must say, I’m really enjoying the new wool underwear.