No paranoia here, Lesley, but we still had and have serious concerns but we also felt the mental need to get away and where better than here?

But it’s been a very different kind of trip for us - no hugs for long time friends; no indoor dining choosing open air situations instead; no getting together with larger groups of friends and actually staying very much to ourselves this trip. Fortunately, BSV is on its own beach where we have our own chairs and close access to our own bathrooms as needed; and the use of a very under-used pool here on site. We’ve mostly limited our dining out to dinners and at places we’ve felt comfortable with so I don’t really think of these measures as paranoia but more as the opportunity to enjoy our lives as best we can under these circumstances but still try to be as personally responsible as the times will allow. The airports and planes are probably cleaner than they’ve ever been and that’s a plus as well.

And I guess, we are fatalists in that we believe in the end, what’s meant to be will be. Ques sera, sera? We practice within reason all the safety measures at home but life has to go on.

And for us and perhaps for others as well, the hardest part of coming was the testing and entry requirements involved and while I’m not advocating doing away with any of them, I think the SXM government needs to be clarify and simplify so all potential visitors can get through these processes without the involved stress we and so many others had to cope with.

Edited to add: and in our case, after having four other trips this year cancelled, we had to make this one happen or it would have broken our personal streak of 47+ years of consecutive annual trips. Now 48 and holding......and waiting for April and year 49.