Coronavirus (COVID-19) is Changing Things

🗓: 15 Mar 2020 | ✏️: Travis Gill

It’s been an interesting week. If I had to sum it up in one word it would be CORONAVIRUS! It has hit Europe especially hard including France, and Spain – the two countries we’ve been traveling through this past week.

Although Chantil and I have discussed the virus daily, it really didn’t effect us until two days ago. We first noticed it when we arrived at a gas station and the attendants were not letting customers into the main store area. All transactions had to be from the security window with items being passed between a large metal drawer. The attendants all had gloves on for their safety. Today, this was the norm for every gas station we visited.

We’ve also been reading a lot of news and it seems Spain is starting a lock-down of the country starting tomorrow (Monday, 16 March). No travel except for work, groceries, hospital, or emergencies. So we will have to do our best and just do as the locals are doing – stay in their homes and avoid all contact with people outside their immediate families.

We were able to find a quite AirBnB in a rural farming community with a wonderful host named María. She has a wonderfully good heart because she is taking a risk letting strangers come live next door to her and her family. I think we will get to know them much better over the next month…

Enough of the negatives, let’s focus on what we enjoyed this week in France and Spain:

• We spend a whole day in Mallau, France and enjoyed taking pictures of paragliders and dirt-bikers.
• Rode over southern France’s Millau Viaduct – the tallest bridge in the world.
• Enjoyed an incredible rainbow over the French town of Lodève.
• Spent a wonderful night in Port Lligat, Spain. This really is a beautiful part of the Spanish coastline.
• Got to learn more about the life and artwork of Salvador Dalí by visiting his home in Port Lligat and the museum in Figueres, Spain.
• Were amazed at the tiny sculptures of the The Museo de la Miniatura in the small country of Andorra.
• Made our way to Borja, Spain to see the legendary “monkey-Jesus” that was made famous by a severely botched restoration in 2012.
• Walked the narrow streets of what I feel is one of the most beautiful cities in Spain – Albarracín.
• Enjoyed taking pictures of the airplane graveyard at the Teruel Airport.
• Revisited El Cañón – a small but beautiful canyon where we camped for a day and two nights.
• Found refuge from the Spanish travel lock-down near Cartagena in a quite, but beautiful, farming community.

As you can see, we’ve had a great week!

So what do we do over the lockdown period? I will be busy downloading and organizing the last two weeks of video footage so that I can start putting together some episodes for our YouTube channel. We both will focus on our health a bit more by doing exercises and yoga more regularly. In addition, we’ll spend some time looking at other places we want to explore in Spain and Portugal once the lockdown is no longer in effect. Oh, and Nintendo will release a new Animal Crossing game on Friday (20 Mar) for the Switch! Plenty to do.

Until next week…

Thank you for following along,
Travis and Chantil Gill
http://www.viajarMOTO.com

*This blog was originally written on 15 Mar 2020. If you would like access to posts as soon as their published, please consider joining our Patreon page.