Thursday 25 March 2021

I can’t remember my passport number any more

Wow. One whole year since we all got this alert, NZ went into Level 4 lockdown and everything changed for what still feels like forever. My diary for 2020 is mostly completely blank, apart from a few crabbily crossed-out booked events, which include a still-mourned Seabourn cruise to Greenland, and a Viking one around Japan.

I wonder if I'll ever get to those places now? The news about international travel is so glum - not just the ongoing drama of Covid-19, though of course that's massive, but also the low rumble of sustainability/climate change/environmental degradation affecting airlines, cruise ships, hotels, tourism operators, all that. It almost feels as though we're going back to the fifties, when only the rich could travel overseas and the rest of us had to keep it domestic.

It's important to protect the planet as much as we can, and stop messing it up thoughtlessly and stupidly, no argument. It doesn't actually belong to us humans alone, and we've been very selfish for a long time now. That has to stop. But it's really hard to adapt to not having the right to travel as we please any more - and also, so tough for all the towns, businesses and employees who depend on tourism for their livelihoods. In the face of which genuine hardship, I hesitate even to mention the deep disappointment of us travel writers...


2 comments:

the queen said...

Now is the time to go into the planning mode. Plan the dream vacation. Later, modify it, but for now plan the ultimate, with flash cards.

TravelSkite said...

Lots of people are not only doing that, but actually booking things like cruises. I wish I could be that optimistic, but it just seems so far away.

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