Where to start? As we were flying back from the US to Puerto Rico news of the corona virus was just starting to become serious to the point where we wiped everything down on the airplane and were happy that the middle seat wasn’t occupied.
As we waited a few days at the marina at Palmas del Mar we kept tabs on what was happening. The decision was made to leave, overnight near Ponce, again at Pesquaderia and then on to the DR, all the while monitoring social media and the news, checking with PR, DR and Bahamas to keep up to date on developments.
We arrived at Cap Cana after a brutal crossing from PR to find out that PR had basically closed the door behind us. After two days in Cap Cana we were notified that DR was closing borders to all travel at least until early April.
So here we are at Cap Cana Marina and Resort for the foreseeable future. We played golf the other day and hope the courses stay open so we can do it again in a few days. There is a wonderful grocery store 15 minutes away that is open and fully stocked. We have access to a rental car. Although the restaurants are closed they do pickup/delivery so today we went to Wendy’s drive up for lunch. We also have phone numbers and menus for local restaurants when I get tired of cooking.
The resort and marina are both ghost towns. We periodically see a couple people here and there but we are fairly isolated which is both good and bad. Good because it’s easy to keep distance from other people, bad because there is no one to socialize with even from a distance.
Although we’re in a good place and probably safer than if we were in the US it’s difficult to be so far from friends and family during this crisis. We’re doing our best to query everyone regularly for status updates, knowing there isn’t much we can do to help from so far away.
We’ll have to adopt a wait and see attitude about how we get the boat and ourselves back to the US from here. If we leave this marina and cannot stop anywhere else in the DR we face a 48 hour run to the Bahamas. That only works if we get a good weather window and the Bahamas allows us entry. Of course we could just fly our quarantine flag and anchor out all the way back thru the Bahamas but we face the same issue arriving in Florida as so many marinas are closed there. And then we have the whole “need to be north of Georgia by June 1st” insurance issue.
Meanwhile we keep reading about shortages of toilet tissue, various foods and any sanitizing material be it wipes, gel or alcohol stateside. Through social media and internet news we see the amazing good of people as well as the selfish dark side of some.
Oh well. This is really a case of “control what you can, adapt to what you can’t and enjoy the scenery along the way.”
Wash your hands everyone and practice social distancing.