A new trip is like a new life. I hate when it starts with a night flight and I have to leave home when it is dark and snowy outside, when all I want is to crawl into bed and sleep. Instead of that, I shoulder my backpack and take the bus to the airport.
This time, I was going to Dominica. Actually, no, my destination was Martinique where I was supposed to board a catamaran but all April flights to Martinique were cancelled and I bought another ticket Dominica to be as close to Martinique as possible.
I will tell about the trip itself later provided that I will eventually get on board of the said catamaran. At the time of writing this, I am at the hotel in Dominica, The other person who was flying to Dominica for the same purpose was Anna who I never met before and with whom I was going to fly the last leg from Puerto Rico.
The arrival protocol during the COVID times required a negative test done within 72 hours and approval to travel from Dominica Ministry of Health. I did a COVID test on Thursday, got the result on Friday afternoon, filled out a health questionnaire and uploaded the test result right away.
There was no immediate response from the Ministry but I did not foresee any issues with getting approval. So, I flew from Denver to Puerto Rico via Miami on Saturday morning without it. By the time I landed in San Juan, a nice “welcome to Dominica” email was sitting in my inbox.
Anna only received her COVID test result in the morning and had no time to upload it before flying out of New York. We frantically tried to download her test result and to submit the questionnaire using our phones and eventually succeeded when our flight was already boarding but there was no response from Dominica and Anna could not fly without it.
A passenger noticed that we were having a problem and offered help. At first, we did not understand what she meant by that and brushed her off. Eventually, she got out attention. Cindy was a godsend. Her sister works at Dominica Ministry of Health; it was her job to review these questionnaires and approve them. That was an unbelievable stroke of luck that out of 20 passengers on that small plane we happened to fly with someone whose sister worked at that very place we needed.
It took a while for Cindy to contact her sister. When the approval finally came the gate was closed. Thankfully, the flight attendants reopened it and let Anna to board.
Processing of new arrivals in Dominica was slow. First, it was the document check. Next, a rapid PCR test. then immigration. Everyone got a wristband – green if the rapid test was negative, red if positive. A 7-day quarantine was mandatory for all. The whole thing took almost 3 hours. We were tired after the flights and hungry.
Cindy did not leave our side and was helpful beyond measure. We did not have a place to stay in Dominica. She booked a cottage for us in Portsmouth , the same place where she was going to quarantine. We shared a taxi to the hotel and had dinner together. Cindy talked about life on the island. She seemed to know everyone on the island and made many phone calls to get the necessary information for us.
We would not have made it to the Dominica without Cindy. That shows how much our lives sometimes depend on the kindness of strangers.
You really had luck! What a nice place to do a quarantine:) My eldest son was stuck in Kyiv with a positive test and had to self-isolate in a rented apartment in a high-rise building in one of the overpopulated residential districts left from Soviet times. He said it was the worst time of his life.
An apartment is the worst place to quarantine. How many days did he have to stay in it? Was it free?