In between worlds, an islander faces realities of pandemic

R.J. Cooper navigated the emerging COVID-19 crisis from Antarctica.

Editor’s Note: This is a story about an islander’s odyssey at sea in the time of COVID-19.

By R.J. Cooper

For The Beachcomber

We’re walking down the long stretch of cracked concrete that serves as the dock to the world’s southernmost city, Ushuaia, Argentina. With gray skies overhead to match the gray water underneath, my sister and I approach the ship that will carry us to our seventh continent, so naturally, conversation turns to therapy.

“I told my therapist this trip was going to be life-changing and serve as a line in the sand in my story,” she said. “That life on the other side of it was going to be drastically different.”

It’s March 9. While COVID-19 has been invisibly circulating through U.S. cities for weeks now, we still exist in those last few days of blissful ignorance when we think the virus is a China problem. Or a South Korea problem. Or an Iran, Italy, or anywhere-but-here problem. Another SARS that will make headlines but not waves in our communities.

Warnings in the Seattle and Buenos Aires airports momentarily grabbed my attention; yet, few people wore masks, and travel continued under the auspices of normalcy. People packed outdoor cafes of Buenos Aires’s Recoleta neighborhood, and tourists spilled off the sidewalks in Ushuaia.

So we walk up the gangplank of our ship, the Plancius – ready for a life-changing trip. Nearly three weeks later, my sister’s prediction would prove unnervingly prescient in ways we could not quite grasp on that dock in Ushuaia.

***

Montevideo, Uruguay appears as a blur of beaches and apartment buildings. Three police motorcycles yo-yo past our windows, zipping in front of the bus to close approaching intersections, waiting until we’ve passed, and then repeating the maneuver again and again for 45 minutes. People on the street stop to stare, and I feel like some combination of celebrity and pariah.

It’s March 27, and there’s no more pretending the world we left at the gangway in Ushuaia exists any longer. Our Uruguayan police escort hurries the last of us to disembark from the Plancius through the “corridor sanitaire” to the curb of Montevideo’s international airport. We step off the bus with our fellow masked-and-gloved passengers. The consulates – adorned with orange vests and laminated flags from their respective counties and armed with clipboards – descend on us, making sure to cross each name off their list. No person left behind.

And then the whirlwind last leg of this strange journey sweeps us away. Through security in Montevideo; then takeoff to Brazil; then briskly through the Sao Paulo airport to catch a flight to the United States, navigating a sea of Mormon missionaries in dress shirts and ties to be the last people on board; then past customs in Atlanta where we’re the only international plane arriving in the world’s busiest airport, our voices echoing in the emptiness; then to the goodbyes with my sister and mother for who knows how long; then onto a Seattle-bound flight with 103 empty seats; and then off the plane into this brave new world.

The journey home whittles down 114 Plancius passengers to two. We stand side-by-side at the SeaTac ride-share pick-up – normally a chaos of Priuses, luggage, and jet leg – surveying the silence of empty curbs and parking stalls and wondering what remains of the life we remember.

***

Antarctica may as well be a different planet during normal times, but this sense increases as a pandemic ravages the rest of the world.

Each day we gear up, feeling like astronauts preparing to walk on the moon. We pull on muck boots, waterproof shells, life vests, buffs, glacier glasses, two pairs of gloves, and fleece-lined hats. We descend the gangway and board zodiac rafts that transport us to this other world. We stand in penguin rookeries, as hundreds of Gentoo penguins waddle all around us, the smell of their waste overwhelming our senses. We watch 50-feet humpback whales swim right under our zodiac and then surface 20 feet away, mouths open to feed on krill. We see leopard seals hunt. We walk on ice colored pink and red by algae. We stand in awe as huge chunks of ice calve off glaciers and crash into the Southern Ocean. We peer into icebergs the size of large houses that contain every shade of blue you can imagine and some shades you couldn’t before arriving in this wild land. We wander around the skeletons of the whaling industry, rusted-out tanks and dilapidated buildings that nature slowly reclaims in the black sands of a volcano crater. We charge into the water in our underwear, scream at the shock, and then bounce with the rush.

And then each evening we tromp back up that gangway, shed our gear, and gather in the lounge for updates from the expedition staff. At the beginning of this journey, these meetings educated us on Antarctica and prepared us for the next day’s adventures. As the days pass on a ship with no cell service and limited Internet access, these gatherings become our window into a changed world, and the tone shifts.

The virus is spreading. Borders are closing. Cities are shuttering. People are dying.

***

I sit on a narrow stretch of rocky beach in Yankee Harbor. Waves clatter the round stones and then recede into the ocean. A glacier and volcanic mountain provides a dramatic backdrop, as six penguins meander behind me. In the harbor, a lone fur seal makes its way through the small chunks of ice that have started to accumulate as summer ends.

It’s March 17, and the Shetland Islands are our last stop in Antarctica before setting back across the Drake Passage. I try to hold onto these last minutes of beauty and tranquility before returning to whatever the world is now, these last moments before we cross over that line in the sand into a drastically different future.

But time is relentless when you try to squeeze it, and soon enough we are back on the Plancius, churning across the Southern Ocean toward Ushuaia.

Two days later, we learn that Ushuaia has shut down. There are no flights. So rather than disembarking, we are sailing north an extra seven days to try our luck in Buenos Aires. We channel the energy of this uncertainty into constant activity. The Plancius becomes a floating summer camp in the middle of the ocean with euchre and chess tournaments, daily exercise and yoga classes, scavenger hunts, singalongs, costume contests, dance parties, and movie nights.

We see waves so tall they top the third-deck windows of the dining room, rocking the ship 40 degrees and sending dishes crashing to the floor. We look at the window one night to see the horizon illuminated by fluorescent lights as far as we can see – squid boats fishing 200 miles off the Argentinian coast. The next evening, the water behind the ship glows green with phosphorescent plankton and squid that managed to avoid the fishing boats. We wake up to dolphins swimming along the hull of the Plancius, jumping out of the water inches from the ship and playfully escorting us into the unknown.

Someone onboard says it is International Hug Day, and we attempt to hug as many passengers on board as we can each day, knowing human contact may be a relic in the new world.

We exist in this surreal state of limbo between a world that no longer exists and a new one that we have yet to encounter.

***

Now it’s March 21. We learn Argentina has shut its borders, both from tourists trying to hop on a flight as well as Argentines just trying to get home. The expedition company has opened talks with the governments of Uruguay and Brazil, and the Plancius continues north.

Three days later, the expedition guide interrupts dinner to inform us that Brazil is no longer a backup option. If negotiations with Uruguay fall through, the Plancius will return to its homeport in Holland with all of us aboard. No one knows what might happen after that, as the United States has canceled all incoming flights from Europe. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department emailed travelers that all flights out of Montevideo, Uruguay had been canceled. While Delta and the other airlines assure panicked passengers that their scheduled flights remain viable, the summer camp vibe quickly evaporates, and the passengers begin preparing themselves for the possibility of at least another month on board the Plancius.

***

“Good morning, good morning.” The familiar wake-up call of our expedition leader sounds over the ship’s intercom. But the porthole view has changed from expansive glaciers and sprawling oceans to the expansive concrete and sprawling shipping containers.

It’s March 25, and we’ve arrived in the Port of Montevideo. Today we’ll learn whether our futures lie in the “corridor sanitaire” or in Holland.

Every passenger has managed to book a flight out of Montevideo on either the 25th, 26th, or 27th, and the plan is to sit in port until each of us disembarks. But we still have no guarantee that Uruguay will, in fact, let us leave the ship or stay in port for the full three days. As the daily updates from home get bleaker, the idea of sailing in safety for another month to Holland starts to hold some appeal.

The morning begins with the staff extending a pole with a bucket on the end containing the passports of that day’s departing passengers over the side of the ship – the fates of 32 passengers dangling above the water. The Uruguayan officials receive the bucket from the dock, cross-checking names and flights before later returning the bucket of passports through the same precarious method.

The departing passengers don their government-issued masks and gloves and wait, but the departure time comes and goes without a bus.

Then two hours later, a charter bus rolls up beside the ship with the phrase “¡El major viaje de tu vida!” scrolling on a screen above the windshield – “The best trip of your life!”

We’re standing on the ship’s rail, sending our newfound family from the safety of the ship into the unknown, and are on the verge of tears. But we cannot help but laugh at the bus slogan. Laughter escalates when a lone ice cream vendor emerges, weaving his cart between the fleet of black sedans and accompanying government officials lining the dock in suits and masks. The juxtaposition emphasizes the absurdity of this scene. Yet, somehow, when everything is strange, nothing seems that surprising anymore. This ice cream cart gliding through the middle of multi-government repatriation effort in the face of a global pandemic seems as reasonable as anything else going on, I guess.

Finally, the first 18 passengers make their way down the Plancius’s gangway, show their travel itineraries and passports to the officials, receive clearance, and make their way to the bus as a fresh round of cheers erupts from those of us leaning over the ship’s railings. It feels like those videos from the 1940s of soldiers shipping off to war. At dinner that night, someone receives a text that the first round of passengers is in the air. Applause erupts across the dining room.

We will repeat this routine four more times in the next 48 hours until only 20 of us remain.

There will be audible gasps when three passengers are turned back by Uruguayan officials and stranded on the deck as the captain orders the gangway lifted (the captain later allows them back on the ship). There will be hands over mouths when the police return to the ship with one Argentine passenger whose flight was canceled (those officials later took that passenger to a hotel rather than risk exposing those of us still on board). But ultimately, every passenger (save the Argentine who finally arrived home nearly two weeks later) who walks down that gangway makes it to the Montevideo airport and home.

***

Finally, it is our turn. It’s the afternoon of March 27.

Masked and gloved, we each take our turn down the gangway, phones out to document this last leg of our strange, surreal journey. A few of the Uruguayan officials take their own photos and videos from the dock. This is uncharted territory for all of us.

Weeks of changing plans, government negotiations, and worrying about when we will step off the ship resolve in a matter of seconds. The official looks at our papers and checks our names off a list. Ten steps later we’re sitting on an unairconditioned bus, sweating under our masks and gloves and speeding through the streets of Montevideo with our police escort. It feels like a dream.

***

The sun slips behind the Olympic mountains, streaking the sky orange and pink in its wake. A ferry hums across the Puget Sound toward the Southworth terminal. The sight is comforting. No boat PTSD for me, apparently.

It’s April 11th, and I’m walking down a ridge on Vashon on my nightly circuit from my house to the west side of the island for sunset. My quarantine ended a few hours earlier, and as far as I know, all 114 of us navigated the gauntlet from the Plancius home without contracting COVID-19. Gratitude and relief well in my cheeks and descend through my chest and into my feet as the color from the sky fades to make way for the night.

I think back on the strangest month of my life, that feeling of being safe on a ship with all of my needs met while reading about the world elsewhere disintegrating. I remember how hard those two things were to reconcile.

And then it strikes me that Vashon has turned into a larger version of the Plancius for me. I wave at my neighbors from across the street every day when I walk. I get nearly everything I order online from the grocery store. I eat the pad see ew from May’s Kitchen weekly. I feel safe. My needs are met.

And then I sit at my computer and read about the thousands of people dying daily in this country, the sirens wailing at all hours in our cities, the pleas for ventilators, the healthcare workers running out of protective equipment and then succumbing to the virus themselves, the growing sense of desperation in hotspots around the world.

But outside my open windows, the sun shines through the towering pine trees, birds serenade each other, deer snack on my backyard, and kids race their bikes up and down the street. I’m more than 8,000 miles from the Antarctica peninsula, but I still cannot reconcile my immediate life with this world on the other side of that line in the sand.