3-15-20 - Some dreams die hard

We are supposed to wake up at 5am to fly from Cairo to Aswan. In Kyle’s latest incarnation of the itinerary, he has been working to get us from Egypt at the end of the week to Jordan to Cyprus to Albania. He hasn’t booked it yet because he can’t find a reasonable configuration of the flight prices and times.

Kyle is up at 2am checking the latest Coronavirus data and statistics when he gets an e-mail that Jordan has suspended all flights into and out of the country.  “Ugggh!” he groans. It’s just a damn good thing he hadn’t bought 7 tickets in and out of Jordan.

There is the whole matter of whether the Egyptian government is covering up the severity of the Coronavirus in the country.  In late February, foreign nationals returning back from Egypt to their countries, which included the US, Tunisia, France, Canada and Taiwan, tested positive for the Coronavirus casting doubt on Egypt’s self-reported claim of only having 1 case.  On Feb 28, the Egyptian Cabinet officially denied rumors of a COVID coverup. 

On Mar 2, the Middle East Monitor reported 20 lab confirmed cases of Coronavirus for people who are being detained in military hospitals which were inaccessible to the Egyptian Ministry of Health which reports Egypt’s cases to the WHO. A little too conveniently, the next day, the 20 cases are included in Egypt’s numbers.  No cover up, eh? 

Then we learned yesterday of an American who had a false positive test but was still stuck in an Egyptian military hospital. After getting off a Nile cruise and going to Luxor to fly out, he was grabbed at the airport and brought back to the ship where he tested positive and put on a military airplane to Alexandria.  He is chronicling how the horror story of being stuck in the hospital where no one speaks English.  He had tested negative 5 times since but they still won’t release him from the hospital.  Hmmm, maybe that’s because if they release him, he’ll tell the public about how many people are really in the hospital with the Coronavirus?

On March 12, the Egyptian Ministry of Health announces the 2nd death from the virus. Yesterday’s tour guide, Adrita, told us a story of how an Egyptian man was married to an Italian woman living in Milan.  Her husband passed away and she brought his body back to Cairo for the funeral a few weeks ago.  Since then, a whole host of people have gotten sick and three people she knows have died from the Coronavirus.  “Don’t believe Egypt’s Coronavirus numbers, they are all lies,” Adrita counsels us.  

John has also brought to our attention an article he found about panic in Luxor as it is suspected that Luxor has turned into an epicenter of Egypt but that the government is pretending everything is fine in a bid not to frighten away tourists. Of course, we are scheduled to be in Luxor for 2 days and nights. 

The microscopic enemy that we have been trying to manage around, protect against, defeat and outrun, the dreaded Coronavirus, has become just too big an obstacle for the Huebner World Tour to overcome.  We’ve tried every maneuver under the sun to avoid this fate because some dreams die hard, some dreams die really fucking hard and this is one of them.  So after a year of planning and 9 months of executing against the perfect master plan, it is with a heavy heart that we pull the plug on Egypt and cancel the rest of the trip.

It looks unlikely that we are going to be able to get out of Egypt today, especially since we don’t even know where we’re going to go, so we call up our tour company and explain the cancellation.  Reem doesn’t seem all that surprised as she says 80% of bookings are being cancelled as we speak.  We extend the hotel for another night and are left to struggle with the question of where do we go now?