Comments on: We’ve Been Cruising

By: Penelope Rice

Penelope Rice — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 10:43:57 +0000

Yes. It is. At least your equivalent of the CDC isn’t filled with xenophobic twats. If the consequences of the current US policy for re-entry weren’t so dire for travellers, I’d find it amusing. Here we are, the biggest generator of covid variants in the world, save for India. There are no covid tests people have to pass to get on a domestic flight; they don’t even have to show proof of vaccination (although that may be coming). But Americans coming back from less covid-wracked places abroad have to get a swab up the nose before we can come home, even if we’re vaccinated. We could be coming from fucking Antarctica and we’d still have to get tested.

Because, I don’t know, reasons. SMFH. You’re lucky you live in the UK. I can’t *wait* until Hubby and I can expat out of this madhouse.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 19:47:43 +0000

In reply to Penelope Rice.

Nah, you can swear as much as you like on my site; no worries there.

Gutted for your cruises, of course. Gutted for anyone losing out on any holidays. We’ve been far more conservative with our cruising plans purely because we just had so little faith in the quarantine/testing requirements remaining stable. Everything we’ve booked so far has been based out of the UK, hitting few if any foreign locations, requiring fully-vaxxed passengers, but only needing a pre-boarding lateral flow test, and even still that’s been stressful. Hopefully, your plans for next year will work out and we fully support being quarantined somewhere in the Pacific if that’s the way the cards fall. Should be cheaper than Iceland at any rate. Your plans have some reliance on people not being twats, and twatty people are the weak link in all sensible people’s plans, mind. And yet it’s still illegal to garotte them all. Such an unfair world.

By: Penelope Rice

Penelope Rice — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 18:17:58 +0000

All cruises we’d had scheduled this year (the Nov one to South Asia with Crystal Cruises; the one to Greenland/Arctic Canada with Nat Geo; the one to French Polynesia with Nat Geo) ALL got fucking canceled by the cruise lines. Nat Geo offered us a shorter August, 2021 cruise to E. Greenland/NW Iceland. We initially booked it, then we had to cancel *that* one due to a toxic combination of my fucked up Agency’s fucked up IT policies of not allowing employees to bring their work laptops on personal overseas travel, combined with Iceland’s and the US’ draconian anti-COVID policies for travellers entering the countries from abroad. All people boarding flights inbound into the US have to have a negative covid PCR test taken 3 days prior to boarding. Even fully-vaccinated passengers. If you pop positive on the PCR test, you can’t come back home. Period. You have to stay in the foreign country of departure until your PCR test comes back clean. And quarantine in Iceland means quarantine. They don’t fuck around. You’re stuck in a hotel room, with only one short break a day for a little outdoor exercise. You can’t go anywhere. You have to have food delivered. In addition, we’d have had to have a negative PCR to board the plane to Reykjavik AND to board the cruise ship in Reykjavik. The way covid is spreading here (thanks to all the anti-vaxxer fuckwads) the chances of my husband and I popping positive on PCR are quite high, even though both of us are fully-vaccinated and take all recommended precautions (masking in public, social distancing, etc). The chances of getting stuck over in Iceland, with me unable to work for an additional 2 weeks, were too high for comfort. Also, the tour was a faint shadow of what we’d originally booked; we’d already been to Iceland; and the ship was not really in Greenland for much time at all. So, the trip was not worth the risk, and we canned it. We got a voucher from Nat Geo that we are using on a trip to the Channel Islands in Cali in Oct. Since that trip and cruise are entirely within the US, we don’t have to worry about passing a PCR test to board the flights to and from Cali, only the PCR test to board the boat itself. If we fail that one, we can at least tour around Cali itself. Unlike Iceland, we won’t face mandatory quarantine.

We’ve got 2 cruises with Nat Geo booked for 2022 (Indonesia/Papua NG in Nov; the rebooked French Polynesia one in April). We’ve decided that, as long as Nat Geo doesn’t cancel those cruises, we’re going; if we get stuck overseas, so fucking be it. I’m done being grounded by this virus.

Sorry about all the f-bombs. 2021 has just thoroughly sucked for us in many ways.