Life doesn’t always go according to plan.

After spending four years living and working in LA, my husband and I decided in the Summer of 2019 that it was time to move back to Canada. We always knew we wanted to take time off of work to travel. The timing felt right, we would leave our jobs in early 2020 to travel, and relocate back to Canada once we were finished. We’d been saving money and had enough for an extended trip. We knew we wanted to include a North America roadtrip. Neither of us had been to the East Coast of Canada and it felt like a perfect opportunity to visit all those American cities we’d always wanted to see.

The plan was to spend seven weeks in SE Asia – leaving in mid-February and returning to LA in early April. We would move out of our apartment and park our vehicle at a friends’ house. Once returning to LA we were going to start a 2-3 month roadtrip of North America. We’d mapped out our route but didn’t have an exact itinerary as we wanted to have the freedom to stay in one place for as short or as long as we’d like. The roadtrip would end in Vancouver where we would assess our financial situation and determine whether we wanted to continue traveling. Ireland and Iceland were a couple spots we had in mind.

In January we started to hear about the coronavirus. It sounded like it was mostly contained to China and didn’t seem to be of much concern to us since we were flying into Vietnam (through Taiwan) and then planned to make our way through Cambodia and Thailand. However, a couple of weeks before we were set to leave cases started popping up in Vietnam and Thailand. The case numbers were so low that we still didn’t really want to change our plans but our families were getting more worried.

There was a specific conversation that made me want to change our plans… we had lunch with some family friends who had actually cancelled their SE Asia trip a few weeks prior. They were supposed to be there around the same time as us. He said they decided to cancel because they’d experienced traveling before under a “dark cloud” and we dicussed how it can taint the whole trip. He said they didn’t want to be checking the news every day and worrying friends and family back home etc. That really sunk in.

We started researching other places to go. It’s difficult to switch from SE Asia to anywhere else because SE Asia is SO cheap. We knew our road trip was going to be expensive so we were hoping for a cheap overseas trip first. We almost settled on Spain and Portugal (WOW thank goodness we didn’t after seeing their covid outbreak). Eventually we ended up booking a 6 week trip to South America. We’d leave a week later than we had planned which would give us time to do some shopping for cold weather clothes and hiking gear. Luckily our landlord hadn’t rented our place out yet so we were able to stay in our apartment an extra week as well.

Our trip was booked. We would fly into Buenos Aires on Feb 25 and leave on Apr 08. Our families were relieved and we were looking forward to exploring Argentina and Chile and especially the Patagonia region which has been on the top of my bucket list for quite some time.

We spent 3 wonderful weeks in Argentina and Chile (and a short stay in Uruguay) and in the beginning gave very little thought to the coronavirus. That changed on March 03 – we were in Iguazu Falls having dinner and I still remember seeing the news report that Argentina had it’s first case. A man had returned from Italy – a pandemic hot spot. We still didn’t think it was very serious, it was just one case, we awkwardly laughed and didn’t think too much about it. Fast forward to a couple of weeks later… cases started to rise all over the world but also in Argentina. We were in Puerto Natales to visit Torres Del Paine and the text updates from friends started rolling in. Cases were now popping up in the States, in Canada, basically everywhere. Every day was a bit stressful wondering what we should do; but the case count was so low in all of South America that we still felt we were safer in rural Chile than anywhere else in the world. However that all changed when Argentina announced they would be closing their border to foreigners. We had planned to cross back into Argentina in a week or so to start heading back up North. Everywhere you went it was all you heard people talking about in the streets. We met a traveling couple from New York city who had just arrived. I asked if they were concerned and thought about going back to New York but they said their trip had just started, they’d subletted out their apartment and they had also quit their jobs to travel. They didn’t really have anywhere to go back to and they felt safer where we were. I believe it was the next day Chile announced it was closing its national parks. They wouldn’t even be able to visit Torres Del Paine.

Argentina closing its borders was the tipping point for me. I remember telling my husband that I think it was time for us to book a trip home. On March 14 we booked our return flight to LA for a few days later. While it took hours to figure out the logistics of our flights I still feel that we made the decision at the right time. I think we were 1-2 days ahead of other travelers in frantically trying to book flights home. It was just 2 days later that Chile announced they too would be closing their borders.

As we were leaving from the southern most point of Chile, our adventure back to LA essentially took 3 days and 6 flights. On March 16 we took a bus from Puerto Natales to Punta Arenas. By the time we got to Punta Arenas I was broken. The Canadian Prime Minister addressed all Canadians and told them it was time to come home. I had to turn my phone off because I could no longer handle the texts from concerned family and friends. I know they just cared and were worried we might get stuck abroad but at that point we were making our way home, doing the best we could, and everything else was out of our control. When I sat down on our hotel room bed in Punta Arenas I broke down. I remember telling my husband “I just want to be home. I want to be home.” That said, I didn’t really know where home was.

From March 17 to March 18 we flew from Punta Arenas to Puerto Montt to Santiago to New York City to Phoenix, Arizona to Orange County, California. We couldn’t even get a flight to LA. Fun fact – there were flights to LA but they were insanely more expensive. We tried to see if we could get on one of them in New York. The gate agent even told us the flight was nowhere near full but she couldn’t help us.

When we landed at JFK we expected strict coronavirus screening, large crowds of people making their way back home. However we landed in an empty airport and were greeted by a customs agent who only said “You guys alright?” “Good trip?” It was all very surreal. If I had to guess I’d say 50% of staff were wearing masks. When we were in Chile, every single airport employee was wearing a msak. The flight attendants wore masks and gloves. They were literally spraying lysol through the air and all over peoples bags. Landing in New York felt like I was landing in a third world country.

We landed in OC in the late afternoon and since we had nowhere to stay in LA anyways, we spent the night at a hotel close to the airport. Being picked up by our Lyft driver we had our first taste of this new coronavirus world. He told us how happy he was to see us as we were only his third ride of the day and he had started driving that morning. It was heart-wrenching to immediately see how people’s lives were being already being affected.

In the morning we picked up our car. I didn’t even get to hug my friend goodbye, not knowing when I’d get to see her again. We stopped by our other friends house to pick up our mail they’d been collecting from us and started the drive back to Vancouver. Never ever did I imagine we’d be leaving the place we called home for the last 4 years in such a frantic state. We had planned to spend a few days in LA before starting our roadtrip visiting our favorite spots and the last few places on our LA bucketlist. We’d planned to start the roadtrip in Yosemite where we never had a chance to visit.

We drove to the halfway point between LA and Vancouver, Yreka, CA. I booked a hotwire reservation which ended up being the worst hotwire experience I’ve ever had. I sat in the room for 10 minutes and then made us leave. We went across the highway to a Holiday Inn.

The texts from friends and family were still rolling in. I was stressed but calming down knowing we were getting closer to where we should be. Canada and US announced it would be closing the border at midnight the night we were arriving. How dramatic. That said, we are Canadian citizens so we wouldn’t have had any trouble crossing anyways but since we’d been living in the States I did have some concern.

We finally reached the border crossing, and one of the first questions the border guard asked me was “Where’s home?” I started bawling my eyes out. I told him in as condensed form as possible our bizarre situation – that we didn’t really have a home at that moment. At one point he asked me “Why are you crying?” I believe I responded through tears “It’s been a long 4 days… I’m happy we’re finally here.” I’ll never forget his words when he let us go through.. “Welcome home, it’s a good place to be.”

It’s pretty crazy to wrap my head around. To be planning something for as long as we did and have it not come to fruition still feels a bit surreal. We are in a good place now, and things could have been much much worse. We are grateful for our financial situation and grateful for our health but thinking of what we were supposed to be doing at this very moment still hurts like a knife in the heart.