After a promising start, 2020 turned out to be a bust for travel. In January I took a three-day trip to see the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in eastern Michoacán, with two nights in Morelia and a stop in Pátzcuaro on the way home. And in February I had the chance to visit Cuba with my friend Cathy on a tour with Charter Club. Then later that month I drove with three visitors to Tequila.
And then it was March, and the world came to a screeching halt.
I had plans for a tour to Jordan, Israel, and Palestine this fall. Like everyone else's travel plans, they went up in smoke.
But a vaccine is on the horizon, so I'm ready to make plans for 2021. I may be able to get vaccinated as early as February, or maybe a bit later in the spring. Once that happens, I'll be ready to start going again.
I rescheduled my Middle East trip for this fall. I'm planning on heading across the pond a few days early and starting the trip in Istanbul to acclimate to the time change before the tour begins. It will be my second tour with Overseas Adventure Travel; in 2017 I went with them to South America.
That leaves about six months open this spring and summer, so I hope to fill that time with other travels. I'd like to get back to Seattle, maybe to play in the August regional ACBL tournament. But I also want to see more of Mexico, so I am considering some of the tours run by Charter Club. The dates listed above are mostly unrealistic, unless I can get vaccinated right away in February. And some of the trips are doable on my own, though I am a little more reluctant to set out on a car trip by myself in Mexico than I would be in the United States. Plus traveling with a group is a nice way to get to know other people.
I'm interested in pretty much all the trips to places I haven't yet been: Guanajuato, Colima, Chiapas, Querétaro, Oaxaca, Zacatecas, and Copper Canyon. In addition, there are a number of day trips or short getaways I'd like to do: Mazamitla, Tapalpa, San Sebastián del Oeste, Lagos de Moreno, and plenty of others I have yet to learn about. Possibly I could take Taco with me on some of these getaways.
So those are some of my plans for 2021. I'm trying to be optimistic about the opportunities to travel in the year ahead. Of course, hope is all we can do right now. Whether we're talking about travel or anything else, we've mostly put our lives on hold this year. There's no certainty about when life will return to normal.
Here's hoping!