Ruralcarrier,

What a great post and your points are all well taken.

No paranoia here and no lack of flexibility either as we were right there with you jumping through all those hoops and dealing with all the confusion that came our way. We had the changed and cancelled flights although not to the degree you did but we are geographically situated where we have four major carriers to choose from and five airports as well which gives us a degree of flexibility most don’t have along with generally, although not always, better pricing, too.

When all was said and done we were able to finally make our trip happen but were it not for the perseverance of my daughter, I would have given up, too. Did all the testing but trying to utilize the SXM website was a four day three ring circus for me and after submitting the same test results three times each one being denied, and making two calls to the SXM government the fourth submission was the charm. And we would never have been able to get clearance if we had to contend with the three day approvals. Thanks again, Kim, because without your assistance those tears of frustration I shed would have ended our trip plans completely.

And yes, in the end, being in SXM was lovely but it was most definitely NOT our usual island trip. We wore our masks everywhere except the beach and pool, we submitted our temps daily and dined out less and in mostly open air venues and we shopped not at all. But we were the lucky ones in that we were there.

We have friends currently on island who are dealing with all those issues now in trying to get home and comply with the same restrictions and they are experiencing many of the same frustrations - no paranoia and they made all the sacrifices to be there but now they’re feelings those same frustrations trying to get home.

Thank you for taking the time to write your non-trip reports. I get what you’re saying and I appreciate what you’ve written and the time it took you to say what needed to be said.