Looking Up

I wish I could start out this week’s update with incredibly beautiful pictures of southern Spain, Morocco, and Portugal! This, simply, is not the case as we continue to be part of a strict country-wide ban on non-essential travel.

Spain was especially hit hard with the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of new cases has continued to climb over the past 12 days since the travel ban was put into place. However, yesterday offered a glimmer of hope – the number of new cases went down substantially and the number of new deaths has been tapering off over the last few days as well!

The capital city of Madrid was especially hit hard with nearly 1/3 of all of Spain’s cases. We are currently in the area of Murcia which has a substantial small portion (1.1 percent) of Spain’s COVID-19 infections.

The AirBnB, we were fortunate to have found, is in a quiet countryside. It it very relaxing, with the sounds of baaing sheep, an occasional barking dog, and teenage children playing next door. Our hostess, María, has been an incredibly generous neighbor, and friend. It’s a wonderful place to weather the uncertainty of the next few weeks.

Although things are currently great, we still have the nagging question in the back of our minds – “When will life return to the normal we had just a few weeks ago?” To be honest, I have no idea. The travel ban, currently in effect, is until 11 April. We’ll see… I personally feel that we won’t be able to travel again until early May and then it will be limited based on how each individual country chooses to deal with COVID-19.

I guess we’ll know more next week. Until then…

Ending on a positive note – we saw a wild hedgehog this week!

Cheers,
Travis and Chantil Gill

🗓: 28 Mar 2020 | ✏️: Travis Gill