When you don’t have a lot of need for communication, being in a remote place can be great. You can unwind, disconnect, relax. But when a pandemic is occurring, information is changing by the hour, and you’re trying to look at flight options, it can be hard.

Coffee Bay

Coffee Bay, a remote location on the Wild Coast of South Africa, was not the best place to be trying to deal with changing flights, calling travel insurance etc. The internet was lacking, to say the least. I had bought a sim card and loaded it up with 4g, but of course, being so remote, it didn’t seem to work. Unless I climbed a steep and slippery hill in the rain. Until my last day of course, when it worked everywhere.

There was free wifi, which required logging in every time you wanted to use it, with a new code, and so every morning you could find half the travelers huddled in the spot with the best reception.

Usually at some point in the night I would get 4g, so I would wake up to about 200 messages. Sign of the times.

Anyway, it all felt a bit surreal, especially as Covid hadn’t hit Africa yet. But when I started getting messages from family and friends advising me to come home, and then from the Canadian government, I started looking at options. It was now March 16, 2020.

Being a 3 hour shuttle and overnight bus away from the Johannesburg airport, I couldn’t exactly just leave. And at this point, it still seemed we had time. My sister tried calling my travel insurance, who hung up on her, twice, without answering questions. Nice. The airlines were doing the same thing. Besides, there was no point in making changes to the flights as even without change fees, the new flights were prohibitively expensive.

World is Shutting Down

The other problem was that countries were shutting down, even for transit passengers. The other problem was that airlines were cancelling flights left, right and centre. It had just happened to one of my friends at the hostel, who arrived at the airport to find her flight cancelled, after she had checked in online. But you didn’t know when they would or if they would cancel it, so you had to bank on it going. I eventually booked a flight for Sunday, about 5 days away, which seemed pretty quick and gave me time to get to Johannesburg. It was through Hong Kong, still open to transit passengers.

I grabbed the shuttle and waited about 4 hours with a few others for the overnight bus to Johannesburg. I then had 4 nights to wait for my flight, where I planned to meet up with Calesta, as we would no longer be traveling our last two weeks together, and pick up a few souvenirs. By the time I reached Joburg though, things were changing rapidly. More flights were being cancelled and more countries were closing down. Knowing I had a refundable flight on Sunday, I started to look at other flight options. It was overwhelming, with so few flights on offer, and no updated, clear information as to whether I would be allowed through to transit. I soon had about 5 friends helping (thank you!).

After about 5 hours, I finally settled on an Emirates flight through Dubai, one of the few places still open, scheduled in 2 days time. The day before my flight, the UAE closed its borders. It was unclear as to whether or not I could transit through. The morning of my flight however, it seemed I could. At this point, Johannesburg was starting to shut down, with restaurants allowed to be only at half capacity and stop serving alcohol by 6pm. The number of cases were creeping up in the country. It was time to leave.

Flying Home

I headed to the airport and breathed a sigh of relief as I was checked in and got on my first flight to Dubai. I was initially in a row with two girls going home to Ireland but they soon found empty rows and we laughed that now was not the time to be polite and socialize!

My next flight I was not so lucky, but at least I was heading to Canada. 17 others were not so lucky, who had to disembark the plane. Apparently travel restrictions had changed in the time they had gotten on the plane! This delay made me miss my connection for my next flight to Vancouver, but at least I was on Canadian territory. 

I had expected a lot of screening coming home, but not once was my temperature taken in any airport. Interesting.

Anyway, I finally made it back, jumped into a grocery and beer-packed car thanks to Cheryl, and drove 2 hours up an empty highway to my Dad’s empty condo in Whistler, ready to self isolate for 2 weeks.

And just in the nick of time, as Emirates stopped flying 3 days later, Dubai stopped allowing transit passengers and the whole country of South Africa went on lockdown a week later, including the airports. I was very lucky to be home in a country with decent healthcare and a place I could self isolate.

Trying to get home was beyond stressful. I’ve never seen anything like it. But everything is unprecedented right now. And I was very fortunate.