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Ken Haley

Auteur de Emails from the Edge: A Journey Through Troubled Times

4 oeuvres 19 utilisateurs 1 Critiques

Œuvres de Ken Haley

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The One That Got Away, Travelling in the Time of Covid par Ken Haley
There must be thousands of Australians whose travel plans went awry with the arrival of Covid in 2020, but few can have turned an accident of timing into an extraordinary adventure the way that Ken Haley did.

Haley's plans were to do island-hopping through the Caribbean, and then explore Central America. In February 2020, three weeks before his departure date, Covid had emerged in Australia with 21 infections. But nobody had a clue about what was in store, Australia's borders were still open, and so he flew out to Canada, that being the cheapest option to get to Cuba.

Each chapter is prefaced by a brief summary of the Covid situation in the relevant country. Canada, on February 21st 2020, had 9 infections and no deaths. There was no curfew, no quarantine and everything was open. Needless to say that the situation was entirely different when, having accomplished two-thirds of his journey, he flew back into Toronto in November 2020. Then, there were 297,390 infections, and there had been 10,953 deaths. No wonder he writes in his final chapter:
Closer to home, Australia's death toll was 909, rising to 910 in April 2021. As a spreader of death, that constant companion on my tortuous route through the Caribbean littoral had met its match in very few parts of the world. Although a belated and comparatively slow vaccine rollout lay ahead, the Australian people had shown a maturity and collective will that might have surprised them and certainly impressed my overseas friends. (p.310)

But though Haley calls Covid his constant companion, (even nicknaming it Covey), this is not a book about the pandemic. It's about how, with a mixture of chutzpah, stubbornness, luck and courage (sometimes crossing over into foolhardiness) he managed to negotiate ad hoc variations in travel restrictions, quarantine, closed hotels and eateries, plus the constant threat of flight cancellations and closed borders, to have a surprisingly great trip. Reading about it in this book, we learn all kinds of interesting things about the Caribbean, its colonial past and its hurricane-ravaged present.

An inveterate traveller and travel writer (see my review of Europe @2.4km/h), Haley had wanted to test the stereotypes of the Caribbean:
...we have vivid pictures in our heads of places unvisited long before they get replaced by pictures on a handheld device.
The Caribbean: cool daiquiris. Central America: rank sweat.
The Caribbean: rich. Central America: poor.
I already perceived how simplistic my notion of these imaginary worlds must be. Everything I had ever seen in two-thirds of a century told me that for a few, or a few thousand, to be wealthy in any economy, most of the population must be worse off. So the underside of the Caribbean and the opulence that sustains the Spanish inheritance in that region between North and South America were going to be worth travelling halfway round the world to see, if only to correct my vision. (p. x)

But Haley does more than address the stereotypes. If the Caribbean has never been on your bucket list, you will discover from this book that there are historic city centres to rival what's in Europe.

To read the rest of my review please visit anzlitlovers.com… (plus d'informations)
 
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anzlitlovers | Nov 11, 2021 |
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Statistiques

Œuvres
4
Membres
19
Popularité
#609,294
Évaluation
½ 4.5
Critiques
1
ISBN
9