I Traveled to a ‘Do Not Travel’ area during the Pandemic

Was that title to click-baity? Because it actually wasn’t dangerous at all. Normally when I’m about to come home from an international trip I don’t want to leave - I know I’ll miss all the awesome things that the country has that the US doesn’t and imagine myself living there. Not that I exactly wanted to leave on this last trip but, as I’m always reflective upon returning to the US, I was even more so this time. And I’m still thinking about it which is why I wanted to put my thoughts here. This trip made me see us, as Americans, as well as how we view other countries differently. And most often these views are formed by the American media and government, not by actual experience.   

So, yes, I traveled internationally during the actual height of the current pandemic. The trip was planned pre-Covid and a lot of thought, deliberation and anxiety went into whether we would go or not. I really kept thinking it would get canceled and we wouldn’t have a choice but, our destination - Mexico - never put any restrictions on traveling and we felt we could do it safely. I only told my family and work that we were going. Basically for the same reason I didn’t tell people when we first went back to Disney last July - because I wanted to enjoy it without hearing people’s judgement. And, TBH, going to Mexico wasn’t much different than going to Disney. But I also know that I do my best to stay safe whether I am traveling or not. I wear my mask, I have bottles of hand sanitizer everywhere and I keep my distance as much as I can. At any time, if I became sick (or knew I was exposed to someone who was sick) I would 100% quarantine myself and ESPECIALLY not travel. Some of the people who are traveling these days aren’t like that - there are countless stories of hearing people who flew when they knew they were sick and of people being kicked off flights for not wearing masks. 😞 

So off to Manzanillo we went. We forked out the money to fly first class which ended up making me feel much more comfortable on the plane than I did flying in November to Disney because I wasn’t next to strangers. We had to fill out a Covid questionnaire before being allowed to enter the Manzanillo airport as well as get our temperature taken. Side note, this did NOT happen coming back into the states. We also were staying in a private home with a staff. We had our driver pick us up from the airport and take us right to Villa Blanca. The staff was ‘ours’ all week - they went to the store for us, they cooked all our meals, prepared our drinks and frequently cleaned the house. We spent all of our time at the home’s pool and the neighborhood’s private beach. We only left the house twice - once for a tour of downtown Manzanillo and then a second time to take a sunset boat tour. Very few tourists were there so the only time we were around larger crowds was on our layovers in the Houston airport. And it turns out, I was better off there than at work as 5 people came up positive while I was gone. 😷 The fact that there were very few tourists was good for us in terms of Covid exposure but bad for Manzanillo as 40% of their economy is from tourism (the other 60% is from import/export due to the large size of the port there) so they have been hit especially hard by the pandemic. Aside from visitors via plane, they also normally have a consistent stream of cruise ships arriving. When we took our tour of downtown and got out to take some photos along the water, we were literally the only tourists around. In fact, our driver told us that our week there was the first time he had worked in EIGHT months. Hearing these things made me actually glad we went in spite of the pandemic. Yes, our small amount spent compared to what the regular number of tourists usually brought in wasn’t much but as we got to know our house’s staff and learned about their families, we know we made a difference for them. 

The empty port area of Manzanillo

I’ll be honest, aside from the pandemic I was nervous before the trip because, in US media, Mexico is portrayed as a dangerous place. As in there is a general travel warning about crime and kidnapping. In fact, the travel.state.gov website in particular says “Do Not Travel” to the state of Colima which is where Manzanillo is. Now I’d never heard of Manzanillo before this trip but who hasn’t heard of Cancun, Tulum or Cabo? Not even a mention of those on the government website...and...where do most Americans end up going? To those places possibly under the assumption they are safe. Because the US government wouldn’t steer them wrong, would they? 😒 A favorite travel blogger of mine, Alyssa Ramos, lived around Tulum during part of the pandemic last year and wrote a blog post about staying safe there. So despite seeing zero government warnings about that area, it’s obviously one where you need to be paying attention to what is going on around you. The people in Manzanillo know the warning exists for their state and say that it was affecting their tourism even before Covid as it was put in place in 2018. They are obviously bothered at the warning because they don’t feel it was a just decision by the US government. Because you know where else has a ‘Do Not Travel’ warning? Afghanistan. You literally can’t get a flight from America to Afghanistan so I don’t know how they could possibly be put at the same level. 

I’m not saying there isn’t any crime in Colmia but I felt 100% safe in Manzanillo and all the people were very friendly. And apparently there is an ironic reason why there actually isn’t a lot of crime. I mentioned that 60% of the economy there is from what goes in and out of the port. But not everything that goes through it is legal. 🙈🙉🙊 And those who manage that don’t want any extra attention drawn to the area that could potentially mess with their business. AKA, commit a crime and risk those in charge of said goods coming to have an, um, discussion with you.

A typical street in downtown Manzanillo

Our driver was fluent in English and while I knew the most Spanish of anyone that went, it wasn’t enough to talk as fast or as accurate as he could in English. So, we all were all able to ask him lots of questions about the town and the people who lived there. Some questions were about normal life, some about how the pandemic has affected them. Being in another country and seeing people in the exact same situation as us in the states really hit home that it was global. I mean, of course I’ve seen it in the news but seeing it in person was a lot more impactful. While we were there the announcement was made that anyone coming to the US would need a negative Covid test. Honestly, IDK what took so long for us to do something like that. (Oh, wait, yes I do, we had a President that was pretending that it wasn’t happening). The House Manager spent two days while we were there trying to determine what was required and how they could help their future guests abide by this. They got it figured out and would take them to all be tested at the appropriate time which was good because people were already contacting them to postpone or cancel. 

A Manzanillo local in his fishing boat

One of the particular things we talked about with our driver was in regards to the house that was under construction on the street below the house. The construction workers arrived around 8am and there until 6pm, Monday through Friday. They worked until 2pm on Saturdays and had Sunday off. The construction site had barely any heavy equipment. I was particularly fascinated by watching them work due to this. They used shovels instead of backhoes, a hammer and chisel instead of a power tool and were literally carrying buckets of cement on their heads from the cement mixer and across the construction site to pour it where it needed to be. Instead of tall ladders or lifts, they scaled scaffolding and put boards across the top to stand on. The house, once finished, will have some amazing views as it is perched on the side of a steep hill which left little room for errors on the edge of the site. All of this for ten dollars a DAY. Yes, you read that right. A day. After watching them work and learning this, it became very clear to me why so many leave their homes - not to mention oftentimes their families - and risk their lives to come to the US to work. And while I’m not sure of the going rate here for construction, I know it’s not much for American standards. But it is FAR better than $10/day. It made me think about how our prior government thought building a wall would keep Central American immigrants from coming to the US. And while I didn’t approve of that before, this made it more obvious to me that is not the answer because it isn’t fixing the actual problem. Because a wall won’t get them higher pay in their own country which is why they are leaving in the first place. Our country promotes the ‘American Dream.’ But apparently some people think that it only applies to you if you were born American. And didn’t America start as a melting pot of people from all over the world who wanted to make a better life for themselves? Why would anyone want to deny that of someone now?  

All these thoughts obviously had to do with what I was experiencing IN Mexico but also we were a week out from the Capitol riots (does anyone else think Hunger Games when they hear that?), about to swear in a new President and I happened to pick Barack Obama’s newest book to read on this trip. Some quotes in his section about his experience with foreign policy resonated with me in regards to this trip and my thoughts around it all. His experience as a boy living in Jakarta showed him a different set of stories than what the American media portrayed. He said they were “different though not contradictory - about what America meant to those living in the world beyond it, the symbolic power of a country built upon the ideals of freedom.” So, while not everyone agrees with us they still look to us that way. He also shared that after visiting his father’s side of his family in Kenya, their thoughts on America taught him to see the country through the eyes of others - as this trip did for me. He said that “I was reminded of how lucky I was to be an American, to take none of those blessings for granted.”

Please note that the views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.