Garrett and I are home, back in the United States. I have never been so relieved to write ten words.

This month has been hard. Full of uncertainty, stress, fear, and anxiety. It started out with hope. We had purchased a flight that would bring us back to the States on May 7. Shortly after, it was canceled. All commercial flights out of Nicaragua were postponed until at least June.

Garrett and I then found ourselves at a crossroads: should we sail the three days back to Mexico or wait for the potential of a repatriation flight out of Managua? I reached out to the embassy with our predicament. The window for us to sail back to Mexico was closing; lightning season was fast upon us. If we were going to sail, we needed to go. Quickly.

But, for a number of reasons (that I outlined in this post), Mexico just didn’t feel like the right option. When we got the below email from the U.S. Embassy, we decided that we would stay in Nicaragua. A repatriation flight seemed like it was just around the corner.

Thursday, May 7, 2020, 8:08 AM
From: Managua, ACS
Subject: RE: Question re: May 21 Avianca flight out of Managua

Hi Audrey,

 I just wanted to give you a quick update, as I know you guys are weighing your options this week.  It looks like we may be able to arrange a repatriation flight to Miami next Wednesday, May 13.  It’s not confirmed yet, but I’m feeling cautiously optimistic the government will authorize it.  We’ll let you know as soon as we have anything definite.

After receiving this email, Garrett and I packed our bags and cleaned and prepped Thisldu for our departure. We hope to be able to return in November, once the stormy season has passed, and relocate her to Costa Rica. To be as diligent as possible in preparing to leave our sailboat in the tropics for six months, we moved ourselves off of the boat and into a nearby Airbnb. A couple of days later, we received this update from the embassy:

Saturday, May 9, 2020, 11:16 AM
From: Managua, ACS
Subject: Re: Following up on May repatriation flight

Hi Audrey, 

The airline submitted a request yesterday to fly May 15 rather than May 13. We hope to hear back today or tomorrow whether the government has approved it, and will send out information on how to purchase tickets. They approved a US government flight on May 20, so that will be a backup option if they don’t authorize this commercial flight for some reason. In either case, we’ll be in touch soon with more information.

Our hearts dropped a little with the news, but two more days didn’t seem too bad. May 15 was right around the corner. It’s just that, well, our time in Nicaragua had been full of these delays. First with Costa Rica closing its borders until April 12, then April 30, then May 15, and now June 15. Any time something gets pushed back these days, I become wary of it never happening at all. Two days later, we were informed of yet another delay.

Monday, May 11, 2020, 1:13 PM
From: Managua, ACS
Subject: Re: Following up on May repatriation flight

Hi Audrey,

I wanted to give you a quick update.  The airline needs a few more days to get their crew tested, so they are now targeting Wednesday, May 20 for the flight to Miami.  We are still feeling pretty confident that the government will authorize the flight once the airline gets their documentation completed.  The government has also approved a DHS flight for May 20 and said we can transport U.S. citizens on the return flight, so that could be a backup option for you if the commercial flight is further delayed for some reason.

Eventually, waiting for news confirming a flight out of Nicaragua consumed my every thought. I’d wake up every day and check my email, hopeful for an update, and go to bed every night defeated, having received no good news. It became an obsession. Why can’t we get out of here? I would cry. We had a lot waiting for us in the United States; an apartment, Garrett’s new job, access to good healthcare…and the pressure to return was building. When we hadn’t heard anything from the embassy for a few days, I gave them a call and was told that they should have confirmation of the flight by the end of the week, by Thursday or Friday, May 15. Thursday and Friday came and went. We called and emailed the embassy on Saturday morning. They responded with this:

Saturday, May 16, 2020, 10:20 AM
From: Managua, ACS
Subject: Re: Following up on May repatriation flight

Hi Audrey,

It’s no bother and I’m sorry we haven’t been able to confirm either of these flights yet. It’s been difficult to coordinate with the airline and the government but we’re still hopeful one or both of these will go forward. We’ll let you know as soon as we know.

Now, both Garrett and I were nervous. What had seemed to be a sure thing was now back in the realm of uncertainty. Knowing that the embassy was closed on Sunday, we prepared ourselves to wait for news on Monday. None came, so we called the embassy ourselves. We’re still working on it, they told us. It could be very last-minute, they warned. We’re three-and-a-half-hours away from the airport, should we move to a hotel to be closer? We asked. Not yet, they said.

It was hard to combat the stress. A challenge to stay positive. I just felt so…left behind. Forgotten. Without any rights or control over our situation. Over the past few months, the U.S. had carried home 5,500 citizens and residents on repatriation flights to America from El Salvador, and none from Nicaragua. The numbers were disheartening.

It’s not that the American government wasn’t doing anything. Clearly, the staff at the embassy was doing all that they could. But our chances of returning home were entirely in their hands. All of the senators and governors and representatives that we and our family and friends had called could do nothing for us but contact the embassy in Nicaragua, and all the embassy could do was wait for the Nicaraguan government’s approval on a flight plan. It was all just so discouraging.

We were fine, where we were, in the tiny seaside village of Aserradores, but the fear of what was happening around us sat heavy on our shoulders. The fear of getting sick while there, and the chance that it might impede on our chances of returning home, was an ever-present concern. (See: ‘Express burials’ raise fears that Nicaragua is hiding a coronavirus tragedy.) We were also running out of food, eating a diet of rice and beans to finish off our foodstuffs on the boat, avoiding going into the nearest city to procure more groceries if we were going to be leaving. Add that to the discomfort brought on by the infestation of ants, beetles, and scorpions in our Airbnb brought on by the rainy season, and the feeling of being trapped started closing in on us even more.

And then, at 1:17pm on Tuesday, May 19, my phone rang. It was the embassy. The flight had been approved.

I could have fainted.

We were one of the first calls that the embassy had made—the flight, operated by Eastern Airlines, wasn’t even listed online yet. On top of that, the WiFi in our area was down and our cell signal was weak, so Garrett called his parents to ask for their help in booking the flight. After about ten minutes, our WiFi kicked in. I hit refresh on the browser every minute for a half an hour. Eventually, the flight popped up. My heart was in my throat as I entered our passport information, Garrett hovering over my shoulder, both of us thinking but not saying, would the flight sell out?

It didn’t. I booked it. Twenty hours before the flight departed.

It was perhaps the most expensive flight I have ever purchased (see: This is why stranded U.S. citizens have to pay so much for repatriation flights), but it didn’t matter. It was our only sure way of getting home.

We had a driver ready to take us to Managua should the flight become available, and a room booked at the hotel across the street from the airport. I didn’t want to leave the three-and-a-half-hour drive to the morning.

So we threw our bags in the back of our driver’s truck, swung by the marina one last time to say farewell to our quarantine companions and do a final check on Thisldu, stopped by our friend’s house to drop off a borrowed yoga mat and say a socially-distanced goodbye, and finally began our trek to Managua.

The hotel that we stayed in was fine, but staying in a new environment didn’t help with my anxiety. Have they properly cleaned this room? Are we risking contracting the virus here? Garrett and I didn’t leave the room; we showered and crawled into bed, waiting for our 6:30am wakeup call as we drifted into sleep.

We got to the airport at 7:15 the next morning, just under three hours before our flight. A queue of seventy-five people or so had already lined up in front of us outside. Everybody that I saw wore masks, but nobody was practicing social distance. Eventually, hundreds of people showed up and got in line, making me wonder, how big is this plane? We were the only flight going out that day. The only flight that had gone out of Managua in over a month.

The airport staff shuffled us around a few times, making us line up this way and that, but didn’t start checking people in until 9:15 AM. Our own bags were checked by 10:45, forty-five minutes after the flight was scheduled to depart, and our hand-written boarding pass was issued five minutes after that. The printers were down; every single boarding pass issued was hand-written and reviewed by one woman. And not only did the staff have to deal with checking people in, they also had to turn away the hundreds of people who showed up hoping to buy a seat on the plane that morning. The whole thing was a disaster.

We got through immigration and security easily enough and were at our gate by 11:10. There were no health or temperature checks. No announcements were made; when we asked an official what time the plane was going to leave, they only said, “when everybody is checked in.” The plane started to board at 12:44.

Wary of sitting too close to other passengers, Garrett and I had paid for pre-booked seats. But when we looked at our boarding pass, it read “open seating.” When we got on the plane and asked the attendant about it, she looked straight ahead and repeated, “open seating, open seating, open seating.” She was positively delightful.

“We please ask you to wear your mask throughout the flight,” another flight attendant said over the speaker. The problem was, though, that not everybody had masks. Most people did, but not everybody.

The plane finally pushed back at 1:41pm, nearly four hours after it was supposed to.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please be seated, we are number one for departure,” the pilot announced. Garrett threw back his head and laughed.

The flight itself was fine, easy. Just over two hours to Miami International Airport. It was crowded, every seat taken. But it got us home.

At 4:00pm, Garrett and I landed in the United States.

Tears welled in my eyes over my mask. We made it, we’re home, we made it. I was so relieved.

I cried as we walked off of the plane, after we got through immigration, as we waited for our bags. After two months of waiting, we were finally home. I could have kissed the ground.

You’re probably wondering, so now what? And I’ll get to that. I’ll share our life updates and our future cruising plans soon. But right now, we just need the time and the space to not only quarantine ourselves but also process everything that we went through, not in just the past two months, but over the past year of travel. There’s a lot to unpack. It was a hell of an adventure.