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| Tom engaged in power lounging in our outdoor living room in Diani Beach, Kenya, in 2013 while searching for future cruises. Tom wasn’t naked. He was wearing shorts. |
Today’s photos are from the post in 2013 while spending three months in Diani Beach, Kenya. For more, please click here.
The more time we spend in lockdown, the more distant our recent travel memories become. Even the almost two months we spent touring India from January 31 to March 24, 2020, feels as if it happened a long ago. COVID-19 became more and more of a concern in early March, causing us to lose interest in visiting crowded venues.
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| Although very hot and humid, these flowers against the blue sky were refreshing. |
What was planned as a 55-night tour of India, after our seven-day expedition on the Maharajas Express train beginning on February 2, 2020, we ended up being cut short by no less than three weeks. We knew then that it wouldn’t be safe to continue a day longer than we did.
In essence, we’ve been “locked down” since around March 12, which is 12 more days than we’ve been in lockdown in this hotel since March 24. In total, we’ve been locked down for a total of 184 days. To keep it simple, we count the total days in lockdown from the date we arrived here at the Courtyard by Marriott, Mumbai Airport, the exact date India officially locked down.
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| These flowers, known as Plumeria, also known as Frangipani, also grow in Hawaii, where we were 15 months later. |
Ironically, when we review our three months spent in Kenya in 2013, a full seven years ago, those memories are more at the forefront of our minds. Perhaps, like for so many of you, the time we’ve all spent in confinement has been but a blur of days and nights rife with worry, concern, and confusion over what is yet to come.
More ironically, most of the world has felt this same anxiety and worry about what the future holds for themselves and their loved ones. Will COVID-19 impact not only their financial security and, for many, their ability to put food on the table, as well as the risks of being impacted by the virus itself and the possibility of losing loved ones and friends?
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| The small white flowers grow within these larger Bougainvilleas. |
We continue to hear that many have not personally known a single person with COVID-19, not a relative, friend, or neighbor. In the realm of the total of the world’s population, 7.8 billion souls, to the number of total cases, as of today at 28,328,131, it is less than .03% of the entire world’s population.
With these numbers, it’s not surprising that many do not know a single person who either had the virus or had the virus and sadly lost their lives. No doubt, these numbers are considerably lower than have been reported. Imagine how many people have had the virus and didn’t report it, didn’t take a test, and went through the process at home (or not) independently. Imagine how many have been carriers, never testing, with their cases unreported.
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| Shards of glass are embedded into the top edge of this stone wall protecting the property from intruders climbing over the wall. Surprisingly, this enchantingly noisy bird lighted atop the glass, seemingly comfortable. |
Anyway, on to Kenya, which, as mentioned, is as prevalent in our minds as if it happened a few months ago. Those three months were some of the most challenging living we experienced in our eight years of world travel. The heat, the humidity, the lack of air-con, the venomous insects, placing our shoes in the bed with us each night, having no indoor place to sit and lounge at night, the mosquitos, the risk of crime, and constant need for security with a red panic button next to the bed, being searched at the grocery store and on and on.
But, somehow, that challenging time primed us for the almost two more years we later spent in Africa, making us stronger and less inclined to fuss over uncomfortable situations. Accomplishing this early on in our travel journey made all the difference in the world. We became seasoned travelers.
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| Aren’t these breathtaking? |
And now? What lessons do we learn here in lockdown all of these days and nights? I wish I could say it made us more grateful. But, we were already thankful for our lives, for space, room to breath, friends in our midst, readily available food, dining in a restaurant, cooking our meals, enjoying “happy hour,” reveling in the scenery and wildlife surrounding us, and having the opportunity to see more and more of the world.
So, what will we take away from here? At this point, I’m not sure. We already felt blessed for every day of our lives. We already appreciated the treasures that Mother Nature and God (or whatever your faith beholds) bestowed upon us. Our enthusiasm level was already “over the top.” when stumbling across a fascinating insect, an animal in the wild, a pretty flower, a kindly person, or an ocean scene.
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| Could Mother Nature be more perfect in creating this well-shaped hibiscus, a common flower in many warmer parts of the world? |
I know this for sure…at some point, we’ll see this answer, and if the only solution is that we avoided becoming another COVID-19 statistic, the time will have been well-spent. There is no way either of us was ready to “throw in the towel” and end this usually exciting life, whether it was a life of world travel or not. We carry on.
Stay healthy. Photo from one year ago today, September 11, 2019:
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| We visited the popular town of Port Isaac, Cornwall, England, known as Port Wen in the British TV series Doc Martin. This was one of our favorite ocean views in Port Isaac. For more photos, please click here. |