‘Well, that’s you shafted,’ said one friend kindly at the start of the worldwide lockdown. ‘Not a good time to be a travel writer.’
Yes and no. Obviously there’s not much actual travel possible at the moment. But the ratio in ‘travel writing’ between ‘travel’ and ‘writing’ has always been grossly disproportionate — too little time spent traveling and far too much time having to write about it when you get back.
In my case, I only did just get back. I was writing a piece about the sunny beaches and boho resorts of northern Uruguay — one of those gigs which leads to envy and resentment, particularly in March — when they introduced the sudden guillotine on air travel. I was traveling with my girlfriend, and for a moment we thought of just staying, as there are worse places to self-isolate than a low-rent beach hut in the sun. This sounded fun for a while but if the lockdown continued for months, it would have become restrictive and complicated. Wiser counsel prevailed, and we slipped over the border to Brazil for one of the last flights back to Europe. Which is lucky, as otherwise we would still be there.
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