F2 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022
Editor: Nicole Arthur • Deputy Editor: Elizabeth Chang • Art Director: Talia Tr ackim • Photo Editor: Monique Woo • Staff Writer: Andrea Sachs
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TRAVELdisrupted because of the
coronavirus, but you’ll want to
read the fine print carefully. If
you’re traveling somewhere
expensive, you’ll want at least
$5,000 worth of coverage to pay
your extra hotel bills.
Planning ahead can also help
you avoid an unnecessary
confinement in substandard
accommodations. When I
visited Abu Dhabi recently, I
learned that the government
had designated several
properties as official isolation
hotels. The hotels are locked
down tight, with only infected
guests allowed in and out. When
my son got infected, I also
learned that all hotels are
obligated to keep you if you test
positive; they can’t just kick you
out and tell you to fend for
yourself. So a hotel like this may
not be your only option when
you fail a coronavirus test.
Some hotels set aside an
entire floor for infected
patients. They’re typically low-
key about it and offer reduced-
rate rooms with room service
and laundry services at a
reasonable price. When I visited
Qatar earlier this year, I found
that Qatar’s Ministry of Public
Health published a list of
approved quarantine hotels
online.
A skilled travel planner can
ensure that you’re booked in a
hotel that accepts infected
travelers or is designated as a
quarantine hotel. If you’re
planning your trip on your own,
you’ll need to do some research.
If you book through a site such
as Hotels.com, for example, you
can find information about
quarantine hotels in the listings.
The site’s messaging feature also
offers a direct link with the
hotel, so you can ask about
these facilities.
To avoid an unpleasant
confinement, create an airtight
plan in case you get infected.
Tim Hentschel, CEO of
HotelPlanner, says the State
Department’s resources should
be part of any Plan B. He
recommends signing up for the
Smart Traveler Enrollment
Program, which lets the U.S.
government know your
whereabouts.
“Also, research the covid
protocols on your destination
country’s government websites,
and sign up for email alerts to
monitor changes,” he advises.
Many of the experts I spoke to
recommend carrying a self-test.
That way, if you think you might
be sick, you can test yourself
right away and exercise your
backup plan.
If you have insurance that
includes a medical evacuation,
self-isolate immediately and call
the company to ask about next
steps. Let its medical experts
guide you. Remember: Once
hotel or cruise ship staff
members find out you’re
infected, they must follow a
strict protocol. And those rules
might land you in a
government-run hotel or a
lower-deck inside cabin,
without any hope of getting out
until you’ve completed your
isolation.
It takes a little extra effort
and planning to implement
these strategies, but that’s the
burden of traveling during a
pandemic.Elliott is a consumer advocate,
journalist and co-founder of the
advocacy group Tr avelers United.
Email him at [email protected].Maybe you’ve
seen the stories
about
coronavirus-
positive travelers
getting trapped in
third-rate,
government-
approved
isolation hotels or
in cruise ship
“red zones” with
tiny cabins and substandard
food. And maybe you’ve
wondered whether there’s a way
to avoid an involuntary
confinement if you test positive
for the coronavirus on vacation.
There is — to a point.
“If you test positive for covid
in a foreign land, you don’t have
many choices,” says Rajeev
Shrivastava, CEO of
VisitorsCoverage, a travel
insurance marketplace. “Most
commercial flights will not
board passengers who can’t
provide a valid negative test for
covid.”
But you can avoid a costly
isolation. Doing so requires
careful planning, buying
adequate insurance and having
a solid backup plan, just in case
your trip goes sideways. As the
coronavirus slowly loosens its
grip on the world and
Americans begin to plan more
international trips, they’re more
likely to need these strategies.
Buying standard travel
insurance or a medical
evacuation plan may be the best
way to avoid an unpleasant or
unwanted confinement.
Carolyn Paddock, a travel
adviser and founder of In-Flight
Insider, has been
recommending Covac Global or
MedjetAssist to her clients
lately. She recently told clients
headed to St. Lucia about these
policies, which cover medical
evacuations in case you fall ill
while you’re abroad, and they
took her advice.
“With that coverage, they had
peace of mind that they would
most likely be able to depart St.
Lucia if they tested positive,”
Paddock says.
Note that she said “most
likely.” Both types of coverage
have important limitations and
don’t work in every country. As
always, experts say you should
read the fine print.
And don’t forget standard
travel insurance. Geoffrey
Millstone, a travel adviser with
Clarksburg Travel Service, a
travel agency in Clarksburg,
W.Va., has had two clients test
positive on vacation recently.
Between their travel insurance
and the coronavirus policies at
their respective hotels, they had
no additional expenses.
One client on vacation at the
Excellence Playa Mujeres in
Cancún, Mexico, tested positive
for the coronavirus. The resort
provided accommodations, food
and nonalcoholic drinks for his
eight nights of isolation, and
insurance covered his airline
ticket charges, Millstone says. A
second client tested positive at
the Riu Palace Tropical Bay in
Negril, Jamaica. Her partner did
not get sick.
“The hotel allowed both to
stay, upgraded them to an
oceanfront room and fed them
with excellent room-service
menus,” he recalls.
Without insurance, they
might have had to pay for 10
extra nights of isolation, plus
meals and laundry expenses.
Virtually all major travel
insurance companies cover tripsTesting positive abroaddoesn’t have to be costlyThe
Navigator
CHRISTOPHER
ELLIOTTThis sign was spotted by Cindy Ross of Reston while passing through
Losantville, Ind., on a bike trip. Have you seen an amusing sign in your
travels? We want to feature your photo in this space!
Here’s what to do: Email your high-resolution JPEG images to [email protected] with
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or republish them in any form. No purchase necessary.CINDY ROSSSIGN LANGUAGEanxiety and virtual school.
Lake Morey seemed to offer
freedom from worry. All over the
country, if winter is biting
enough, ponds, rivers and lakes
will freeze and become skateable
for a time. But Mother Nature’s
sheets are uneven and unpre-
dictable. At the lake, the ice is
evaluated daily and maintained
by a fleet of plows and motorized
brushes to streamline it and
make skating possible.
The fleeting season when the
trail is open for ice skating makes
those days more magical. It usu-
ally opens by Martin Luther King
Jr. Day in January and closes
near the end of February, al-
though it has opened as early as
New Year’s Day. Like any outdoor
venue, it is subject to the vicissi-
tudes of nature: Earlier this
month, the trail was temporarily
closed to skaters after a pair of
storms left slush and standing
water on the lake. This year, the
unusual weather patterns have
meant the resort has been unable
to open the four-mile perimeter
trail, but it has opened a half-
mile loop and cleared “rinks” on
the southeast part of the lake
next to the hotel.
When we looked out at the
lake from our hotel room on our
first morning at the resort, crews
were already brushing snow
from the ice, and skaters were
moving on cleared stretches and
on the shorter loop.
As much as I had loved having
the 547-acre lake mostly to our-
selves the evening before, I de-
lighted in the morning energy.
There were college-age hockey
players ribbing each other, a
small child living his best hygge
life while nestled on a sheepskin
on a sled towed by an adult
skater, people propelling scoot-
ers made with two skis, dogs
galloping alongside skaters,
three generations of a family
meeting friends, and preschool-
ers on an outdoor playdate. Prac-
ticed Nordic skaters zipped
around the loop, bent forward
with hands clasped behind their
backs.
My daughter told me to look
where I was going instead of
down, but I was fascinated by the
navy-gray lake’s texture. The icewas etched by blades and natu-
rally occurring cracks; it looked
to me as if we were skimming
across pavement instead of a
freshwater bowl averaging 24
feet deep. She briefly tested the
Nordic skates, too, but quickly
switched to experiment with
hockey skates.
By the afternoon, as more
clouds set in, I was starting to get
the hang of the Nordic skates and
had settled into a rhythm, lifting
my feet off the ice and hearing
the metallic thwunk as the skate
blade extended. I was concen-
trating on sustaining my pace
when my daughter pointed out a
hot-air balloon sailing above the
lake. The yellow-and-red color-
blocked canopy, powered by hot
air, seemed incongruous in the
white winter landscape. “It’s go-
ing to land on the lake,” she
predicted, and she was right.
Next, two seaplanes — one red,
one yellow — swooped over us,
touching down with their skis on
the lake’s northern tip, as skaters
paused and pointed.
After a day of skating, we
wanted to take advantage of all
the gear at hand and try a sport
we had never attempted. We
chose the cross-country skis, and
the woman outfitting us directed
us to the lake. It was a Monday
morning, and we were the only
people on it.
On skis, we sought the thick
stack of snow untouched by
plows or human tracks and head-
ed north, paralleling the shore-
line and what seemed an early
pass at plowing the longer pe-
rimeter trail.
Farther north on the lake than
we had found passable with
skates, I tried to internalize the
views my dad must have seen
when he trained here in the
late-aughts for a long-distance
Nordic skating race in Stock-
holm. His passion for skating
had skipped a generation, to the
granddaughter who was 2 when
he died. A pond hockey player as
a boy and a longtime outdoors-
man, he pursued Nordic skating
when the Vermonter who initiat-
ed the Lake Morey trail began
raising the sport’s profile state-
side.
My dad and my daughter nev-PHOTOS BY ANNE KENDERDINE/THE WASHINGTON POSTBY ANNE KENDERDINEThe sky was sliding toward
periwinkle and the skate rentals
had closed for the day, so there
were few witnesses when my
daughter pushed off onto the
frozen lake. She had brought her
own figure skates, and she
stroked away decisively. In my
boots atop a thin layer of snow, I
watched her, as I’ve done so
many times at skating lessons for
five of her 14 years. Except
on Lake Morey in Fairlee, Vt., in
the January twilight, there was
no wall to lean on, no high-pow-
ered spotlights, no pop songs
pumping from speakers and no
reason for her to have to turn
around.
I couldn’t see my daughter’s
face in the distance, but I tried to
gauge her reaction to the lake’s
organic expanse, so different
from the gated, manufactured
ovals she was used to skating on.
She pivoted, played with foot-
work and whirled in a scratch
spin. She finally whooshed to a
stop where I stood. “I feel like I’m
flying,” she said.
Maybe, I hoped, this crazy trip
was worth it.
When my daughter shared her
wish to skate on natural ice, Lake
Morey Resort seemed an easy
answer. Just off Interstate 91
along the New Hampshire bor-
der, it is known for maintaining
one of the longest groomed and
monitored skating loops in the
country, about four miles follow-
ing the lake’s perimeter. Al-
though longer U.S. trails have
been created by volunteer-run
organizations during the pan-
demic, this one has a toasty
hotel, as well as dining next to
the lake. I wouldn’t have to spend
any time outdoors in Vermont’s
single-digit temperatures unless
I was exercising.
And there were plenty of ways
to do that. The resort offers so
many kinds of gear that guests
inspired by the Winter Olympics
in Beijing can try several of the
sports played in the Games. Fig-
ure skates, hockey skates and
sticks, cross-country skis, and
fluorescent-colored sleds that
can be pulled on the lake or used
as a pseudo luge at a sledding hill
on the resort grounds are on
offer. The Nordic skates, ideal for
stability over the small bumps
and natural fissures on wild
surfaces, are like skis in the way
the boot and long, wide blade are
separate pieces that clip togeth-
er. The blade only connects to the
boot at the toe with a hinge, so
when skaters lift their foot, the
back of the blade releases and
swings free. There are also snow-
shoes, ice scooters (to be used
with provided crampons for trac-
tion), and a bicycle with one fat
back tire and two yellow skis in
lieu of the front one.
At home, my daughter spends
hours at rinks indoors and out,
but she prefers to skate in the
elements once our local outdoor
rink opens for the season. During
that first pandemic winter, the
routine and endorphin-generat-
ing vigor of skating at the out-
door rink were critical in lifting
our family’s spirits, giving us
purpose and a place to see
friends. I wanted our late-Janu-
ary trip to be a supersize infusion
of that joy, an emotion that was
in short supply during months of
Gliding on natural ice in VermontTOP: Figure skaters stroke westward on the half-mile-long skating trail on the frozen Lake Morey in
Fairlee, Vt., in January. ABOVE: The Lake Morey Resort maintains the skating loop, and it offers
sports equipment for rental. Guests can use some gear for free.er skated together, and he never
saw her camel spins and toe
loops. But their shared yearning
to skate in nature drew us here,
and the landscape connected us
to his experience, the same exhil-
aration of being able to flow
across the stilled water.
Hills of hemlock and white
pine sloping eastward toward
Morey Mountain cast triangles of
shade on our course with points
far beyond us; the only way to
eyeball our progress was to keep
shuffling and skidding toward
their tips when we would emerge
into the sun.
When we did, the crystallized
crust on the snow sparkled dizzy-
ingly. I could hardly hear my
panting over the crackle of skis
and poles. We glimpsed ice fish-
ers walking in the distance, but
otherwise, we were alone with
the brilliant cover above, the
pristine, glittering frost below.If You Go
Lake Morey Resort
82 Clubhouse Rd., Fairlee, Vt.
800-423-1211
lakemoreyresort.com
This lakeside resort in the Vermont
Hills above the Connecticut River
has maintained the skating loop on
Lake Morey since 2011, taking over
efforts started by volunteers in- Ice conditions are updated
on Facebook, Instagram and a
phone line. Access to the lake is
free to all; rentals of figure and
hockey skates, cross-country skis,
snowshoes and sleds are free for
hotel guests. Hotel guests can rent
Nordic skates free for two hours.
For day visitors, figure and hockey
skates rentals $17; Nordic skates,
$30; helmets, $10; hockey sticks,
$5; and kid skate trainers, $10.
Kickspark scooters, $40 for a full
day and $30 after 1 p.m. Classic
room, two double beds with garden
or golf-course view, from $1 79 per
night. Hotel restaurant is open
5:30 to 8 p.m. Fr iday and Saturday,
and 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Saturday and
Sunday. Clubhouse Bar &
Restaurant is open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Fr iday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday,
and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.