COVID did it to us again

 No, we are not sick.  Our whole ship is healthy, or at least free of COVID and Norovirus.  However, Latin America does not believe that

We were scheduled for a whole day of tours in Montevideo, Uruguay.  However, the authorities there decided that everyone on the ship from the Captain down to the lowest crew member and all the passengers needed to take their version of a COVID test before anyone could go ashore.  It did not matter to the authorities that everyone had tested negative on every day of the cruise.  They needed their own test.  That meant that each deck was given an hour during which each passenger must report to the Theater to have two swabs stuck up their nose.  This took from 6:00 until 1:00, so all tours were moved to the afternoon, and, since we had to leave the port by 5:30, all tours over 4 hours were cancelled.  That included my tour.

We survived that, but it was disappointing for those who had never been there and had booked longer tours.

Then came the next news in the form of a letter from the Captain delivered to each stateroom.  Argentina will not let anyone into the country who had been in Africa within the last 14 days.  Well, that should not be a problem, since both of our stops in Africa, Morocco and Senegal, had been cancelled.  But, no.  Cape Verde, hundreds of miles off the coast of Africa is still considered to be Africa, so we could not land in Buenos Aires until December 7, 2 days after we were supposed to leave Argentina.

This meant that All tours in Argentina were cancelled and Viking had to decide what to do with us for 3 more days.  If you booked your flights through Viking, they had to reschedule all those flights.  If you booked your own flights, it was up to you to make those changes.  With all the Viking staff on the internet making arrangements, individuals had trouble getting on to make the changes.  We, fortunately had booked through Viking.  Darrell just confirmed that we have the same flights, just 3 days later.

Well, as one of the captains said, "It is what it is."