The Painful Side of Traveling

Three weeks from today and the adventure to South America and Antarctica begins. OR...maybe sooner if the weather decides to throw a wrench in our plans. You can be sure we will be keeping an eye on the forecast and will be on the road to Minneapolis earlier than planned if we hear any mention of the “B” word. (That would be "blizzard" for you southerners!) It is over a 3 hour drive to MSP so we will be spending a night...or two...or three with one of our kids who live in the area before our flight. 

Now that the holidays are over we have begun to count down the final days. The lists are being made and checked, the final Amazon orders are going out, and piles are starting to show up in our guest room staging area. Today we marked off the last of one of the more painful parts of planning for this cruise...our final vaccine!  

When we first booked this cruise, Iguazu Falls seemed like a perfect add-on to our itinerary...just a short flight away from our final port of Buenos Aires. The falls lie on the border between Argentina and Brazil but after a little research I discovered that visiting the Brazilian side required a visa for U.S. citizens. Although the view from this side appears breathtaking, the few hours that we would spend there made it hard to spend the $160 per person to get the visa. I also noted that visitors to this area were encouraged to get yellow fever vaccines whereas the Argentina side was not included in the CDC warning area. 

After much deliberation, we booked a package tour to Iguazu Falls...but only the Argentina side. Fast forward a few months and Brazil announced they would now offer an e-visa. Available online, getting the visa no longer meant having to apply at a Brazilian consulate and...the cost was less than $50! At that point it would have been too expensive to change our plans so we made peace with the fact that we would only see Iguazu Falls from one side. 

Now...fast forward a couple more months. The CDC changed their map and the Argentina side of Iguazu Falls was also in a warning area for yellow fever. ☹️

Current CDC Yellow Fever Warnings

I could think of several good reasons why we shouldn’t get yellow fever vaccines. The chance for serious side effects is greatly increased in people over 60 years old, the shots aren’t cheap, and for gosh sake...we are only going to be spending one day at the falls! But... contracting the disease could be a death sentence and that ultimately led us to make an appointment at a travel clinic. 

The yellow fever vaccine is in short supply, but the clinic was able to substitute a vaccine that is currently not approved for use in the U. S. Hence it is considered “experimental” and required us to sign numerous consent forms. We spent a long time visiting with the travel nurse and she gave us all sorts of helpful information about the countries we plan to visit. Oh...and we each were "given" a travel adapter as our reward for getting poked! (Although when we each paid over $200 for the shot we essentially bought the adapters.)

This framed photo of Iguazu Falls was hanging on the wall of the travel clinic!

We left the clinic with prescriptions for the oral typhoid vaccine (4 pills containing the live virus taken over several days) and also for antibiotics to take with us “just in case.” Locally we were able to get the hepatitis A vaccine...a series of two shots which we finished today. Although not travel related, I’ve also recently gotten my flu shot and a series of 2 shingles vaccines. 

I would like to say the vaccines were the worst part of preparing for this cruise...but that would be a lie. The most difficult part is just beginning. Packing. We will be experiencing winter to summer to winter to summer and finally back to winter...all within about four weeks! Yikes!!! How in the world does one pack for so many seasons???!!!