The world is not the same place it was during our last trip. To be honest, I feel a little bad that we can finally relax and catch a breath of fresh air when so few can’t. Quite literally in many cases.
But it’s shaping up to be a trip worth sharing. Too much has happened in the past 24 hours for me to relegate it to just a couple of snapshots.
This trip started as a wild idea, and only got less likely as time went on. After the first wave of COVID-19 cases settled down last summer, our friend, Dean, pitched the idea of going to Turks and Caicos a year later (after the pandemic had died down, we hoped). Dean is big into fishing, and wanted to explore some super unique sites out there. We just like vacations. It was a match made in heaven.
Dean booked us all a rental house, and I used some frequent flier miles to reserve some seats for Aimee and me. Everything was cancellable, so we figured it couldn’t hurt to try. Fast forward through two more waves of cases, a worldwide pause on international travel, and in our case, a move across the state. With each major event, we became less and less confident that this trip would happen. It kind of became a punch line around our house that we'd never actually see Turks and Caicos.
As the trip got closer, more and more pieces fell into place. Most importantly, the CDC gave their blessing for vaccinated people to travel. And locally, cases slowed enough on the Reservation that staff was again allowed to take leave. Turks and Caicos put a robust screening program in place and again opened up for tourism. This might actually happen. “I’m cautiously optimistic” became the new way we talked about the trip.
All we had left to do was get ourselves tested a few days before we departed. We were scheduled to leave on Monday, so we got tested on the preceding Thursday. But we still hadn’t heard about Aimee’s test results by the time Aimee's parents arrived on Saturday night (bringing kids to Turks and Caicos would have defeated the purpose). We were starting to sweat it a bit. We needed negative results to get on the airplane, and were quickly running out of options. The mood was a sour resignation. We all had the perpetual feeling that this trip wasn't actually going to happen, and missing (or negative) test results just kind of felt like the natural conclusion to all this build up.
But in an amazing coincidence, Dean actually happened to know someone who works at the major lab company that was running our swabs. The friend was able to get us in touch with after-hours customer service who let us know that the result was tied up by a small issue with how Aimee’s name was spelled in their system. A couple of key strokes later, we received our results online and submitted them to the super-impressive Turks and Caicos tourism website. Our documents were reviewed by someone in their health department, and we were emailed our approval about 3 hours later. Our cautious optimism just got a lot less cautious!
The next day, we had a nice morning with our kids, and got out the door with a surprisingly limited amount of tears. Having Ya Ya and Pop Pop around certainly helped.
We met up with Dean and Jill at their house and packed everything into their SUV. Between the snorkeling gear and an entire suitcase full of food (it’s quite expensive on the island), we could barely close the doors. And that was before we loaded up Jill and Dean's dog, who was getting dropped off at Jill's parents' house for the week.
The drive down to Phoenix was easy (no kids, after all), and vacation started early with beers in the pool at Jill’s parents’ house. Our flight left at 5 am the next morning, and we were spending the night there. So after what would have been insufficient sleep if we were trying to do anything beside go on vacation without kids, our alarms went off at 2:30 am. But we couldn’t complain.
Security was a breeze, since there weren’t many people flying at 3:30 in the morning. But it was still slightly jarring to be back in an airport, and there was more activity than I would have expected. That said, it felt infinitely better than the last time I was in an airport, deploying to Detroit in the early days of the pandemic.
As Aimee and I waited for Jill and Dean to clear security, my phone chimed an alert. American Airlines was informing us that weather in Dallas (where we had a layover) had cancelled all flights in or out. The message continued “We are unable to reschedule you at this time, please see an agent.” That tracks.
An avalanche of emotions followed, but none of us were even remotely surprised. This trip still felt like an impossibility, and the message was only confirming our suspicions.
Our next stop was the gate, where at least 40 people who had received the same message were waiting in line. I recalled the advice of my frequent-flier dad, “Never wait at the gate when your flight gets cancelled.” Every one of those 40 people would be competing for the same few remaining seats on other flights. Until a few years ago, I would have only been able to call an 800 number and cross my fingers. But I now could rely on one of my favorite military perks, the Admirals Club. After dropping our bags and making a first pass at the coffee bar, we went back up to the club's check-in desk to see if they could work any magic. This was a much better option.
As we waited, the agent’s furrowed brow and continued keystrokes slowly chipped away at my optimism until I was convinced that we were--at best--days away from sitting on the beach. But she suddenly brightened up, hit enter on her keyboard a few times, and said, “Oh great! There you go!” She was able to find seats for Aimee and I, and would now check for Dean and Jill. But given the difficulty in finding the first two, we were all still holding our breath. Aimee and I would have passed on our seats if we weren't all able to go as a group. It would have felt really bad to leave them behind, especially since Dean was the driving force behind this trip.
Speaking of driving force, were all a little embarrassed about being in the first wave of post-pandemic tourists, especially for such non-essential travel (although after a year without childcare, that definition could be debated). For the months leading up to our trip, we could only reply with a meek and mumbled, “Turks and Caicos” whenever anyone asked where we were going. Aimee and I would follow that with, “But it’s our friend’s idea. He works for a rafting company and is a professional outdoors person.” Similarly, Dean and Jill would replace that with, “But we’re going with a doctor and a nurse, and they say it’s fine.”
Whatever the justification, it looked like we’d all be going. The agent found seats for all of us on the same red eye flight through Miami that night. So we took one more pass at the Admiral’s Club buffet while she worked on getting our luggage sent down to baggage claim. An hour later, we had our bags in hand, checked in for our redeye, and were ready to go. It was 6:00 in the morning.
So Jill called her dad, and we went back to their place. Aimee and I took a mega nap well into the afternoon, setting a precedent for the rest of the trip. Then came more food, more beers in the pool (peppered by Dean calling out, "Let's get this vacation back on track!" every time he brought out another round), a second nap, and then back to the airport. With our thoroughly upset sleep cycle, no one slept great on the airplane. But again, it didn’t matter.
We spent a couple hours in the Miami Admirals Club, fighting through an overtired haze.
As we boarded the flight to Turks and Caicos, we ran into a couple we met in the Phoenix Admirals Club. We had been talking about the steps required to travel to the islands right now, and they asked us if we got the VIP customs package. We most certainly did not (and didn’t even know it was a thing). Dean later looked up the hotel they were staying at, and rooms started at $1,000 a night. That explained why they asked us if we wanted to go in on a chartered flight together after our first leg was cancelled. We had presumed they were joking, and were likely wrong.
I quietly wondered if we were traveling way outside of our league. In addition to people who can even fathom paying $1,000 a night for a hotel room, T&C is apparently a popular celebrity hangout. And as my little sister pointed out when I told here where we were going, “Oh, nice, that’s where all the hipsters go on their honeymoons now.”
She was proven correct when we got off the airplane and made our way to the customs line. There were two very distinct demographic groups: Instagram super users 20 years younger than us, and Botox super users 20 years older than us. But we took a bit of solace knowing that our suitcase full of food would prevent us from having to interact with either group very much.
Immigration and Customs was a breeze, as was the impressive health screening station. They did the usual temp checks and symptom screenings that we were used to seeing at daycares and hospitals. But the real accomplishments were the mandatory pre-travel testing, universal mask enforcement, and hand sanitizer stations everywhere. It’s clear that their entire economy is dependent on a continued influx of visitors, and they take outbreak prevention very seriously. Turks and Caicos only had 18 deaths from COVID throughout the pandemic, with a comparably small overall infection rate. The country's very professional public health operation deserves every bit of their recently downgraded CDC travel warning.
There you go, Dean. You’re welcome. A doctor is weighing in and thinks it’s reasonable to travel to Turks and Caicos.
And, wow, were we happy about that. The charmingly rustic airport gave a great first impression. The palm tree-lined and perpetually damp tarmac was straight out of a 1960s travel brocure.
From there, we made our way to the car rental agency. Each island in Turks and Caicos is quite small, but still too big to walk or bike around. Aside from inter-island ferries, there isn’t much public transportation to speak of, so car rental is essentially required. Unless you get the VIP customs package, and a driver from your $1,000 a night resort takes you everywhere. That’s not us. This is us.
There were very serious conversations about taking multiple trips back and forth to our rental house, but our comically small car managed to fit all four people and six suitcases. Thankfully, our house was close to the airport (everything is), so we made it without permanently bending the undercarriage.
Prior to our trip, we had all tried to avoid looking at too many photos of the area. We didn’t want to get our hopes up if the trip didn’t pan out. Plus, it’s nice to arrive somewhere without knowing everything about it. That sense of discovery is a lot of the charm for a place like this. Well, that and the perfect weather, turquoise waters, and silky beaches.
Our rental house is named “The Lighthouse,” named for the three story lookout tower built above one of the bedrooms. We could view nearly half the island from there (see above), but we couldn’t get past the white sand beach about 50 feet from our front door. So we went there. We had no plans, no kids, and nowhere to be. We could just do that sort of thing.
We kept walking along the beach to one of the more famous beach shacks on the island for some rum drinks and perfectly cooked snapper caught earlier that day. It was a delightful evening, even if the eye-popping tab reminded us why we had packed a suitcase full of food.
But that didn’t slow us down. We budgeted out the rest of the week, the sting buffered by another round of rum drinks, and couldn’t have been happier to be there.
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| Photo by Jill Knuth |
This vacation was definitely back on track.
