Our Moz family blog has been quiet for a while. Partly because we haven’t been in Mozambique. We’ve been back visiting friends and family in the UK. And getting new passports as the UK passport office made it impossible for us to renew them while abroad (see the last blog for more details). With COVID restrictions, lack of travellers and Mozambique being a red list country, just getting to the UK is not an easy task. The UK has banned all red list countries from having direct flights to the UK. That knocked out all the major hubs we can normally fly through except Portugal. TAP already owed us for one lost flight when they refused to let my parents board in the UK back in December. So we were not keen on risking them owing us even more money. That meant adding a couple of stops to the route and flying Maputo to Johannesburg to Paris and finally to Birmingham. That meant we could avoid Heathrow as the stories of 8-hour queues did not sound pleasant or very COVID safe. It was very ironic coming from a country with almost no COVID into the UK and us having to quarantine. It seemed it was to allow us to acclimatise to the levels of COVID in the UK, which were well above what we were used to.
The UK rules (not just the crazy passport ones) take some beating. We had to book ourselves into hotel quarantine in the UK. That had to be done before we arrived. Luckily we got help from the travel team at Zoe’s work (as with the flights). That was great as booking is almost impossible. You can book on the website if there are one or two of you. If not, you must phone. We never got through to the helpline, but the general consensus on Facebook was that the wait was normally 4 to 5 hours before you would get through. And slightly less when calling at 2am to shorten the wait. Then you have to hand over vast quantities of cash for the pleasure of being locked in a hotel room for about 12 days. The costs cover your food, board, security, transport from the airport and 2 COVID tests. To make life easier for everyone, they refuse to let you know where you will be staying (they have a range of hotels at each airport). To prepare for travel we had our COVID tests a day or two before the flight and went to fill in the passenger locator form. Another form from the British Government to tell them which countries we had been in for the last ten days. That was fine until it got to the part where you have to say where you will be staying in the UK. We couldn’t fill that in as the UK Government quarantine system would not tell us where we were staying. Not filling out the passenger locator form or filling it in incorrectly can mean a fine up to £10,000 or several years in prison. Luckily for us, the travel people at Zoe’s work were able to find out which hotel we were to stay in. But, for most people entering the country that’s not possible. The quarantine system is forcing visitors from red list countries to lie on their passenger locator forms, as they have no clue where they will be staying, and risk a jail sentence for doing that. Welcome to the UK!
The hotel quarantine was a weird experience and one we could have done without. We came from a country with, at the time, almost no COVID into the UK with a much higher base level and at a time when rates (in the UK) were rising very quickly due to the Delta variant. It’s supposed to be a 10 day quarantine but they don’t seem to count your first or last day, so in reality it’s longer than that.
When we got through passport control in Birmingham there were people waiting telling us where to go. We got directed to an unused area of the arrivals hall and sat on a luggage belt, waiting for the next instructions. Twenty minutes later we were lead out by a lady in a luminous jacket (it felt slightly like a school trip) through security, out of the airport and to a group of coaches. We then loaded our many bags onto the coach, got on and waited. As our hotel was almost next to the airport it would have been quicker to walk, but we got taken around the endless one way roads, roundabouts and junctions, almost back to where we had started and our hotel.
They then wanted to unload groups one at a time, so we sat waiting on the coach for about fifteen minutes while one group at a time were taken into the hotel. It was finally our turn. We were taken to the desk and they explained a few things about how the hotel worked, what we were allowed to do and handed us a menu for the duration of our stay, from which we had to make some choices. The security guards then took our bags and showed us to our rooms. We had two adjoining rooms, so we decided that could be one for Zoe and I and one for the kids. The kids’ room was fine but ours had had a smoker in. Not that surprising that smokers end up smoking in their room during the quarantine process. A quick call to reception and another wait and they found us another couple of adjoining rooms. Very similar. These were to be our home / cell for the duration. They were average sized rooms. We had a double bed, a desk along the opposite wall with a TV and work area. And a small table and a couple of comfy chairs. Not massive, but it could have been worse. The kids had roughly the same. The first hour or so was filled with admin, sorting the menus, unpacking clothes, moving the beds to make the rooms as spacious as possible. It became obvious very quickly that if one of us was going to find the first stage of quarantine hard, it was going to be Zoe.
Once roughly unpacked, we called reception to see what our outside visits would be like. We had to wait in our rooms until a security guard arrived and knocked on the door. We then got shoes and masks on and headed into the corridor where a security guard led us to the stairs. As we headed off we could hear the security guard we had left radioing down to warn that room 220 was on the way down. The hotel reception had a good few security guards in, and one of them checked our room number and took us outside to the car park. It was a warm sunny day and our expectations of being frozen in the UK were unfounded. I was even beginning to wonder if I should have packed some shorts for the trip. The car park was very large (for a hotel car park). I had heard stories of exercise areas being simply loading bays at the backs of hotels, unavailable half the time due to lorries making deliveries. The car park had two separate areas, the far one car free, and as we later found, ideal for games like quick cricket and street hockey. The other area was larger but had some cars in. Mainly those of the security guards. There was also a small sloping patch of grass with a few trees on. The girls found that one part of it, at the top of the slope, was flat and so the gymnastics training area for the girls was found. Then we were called (by our room number) by the security guard and taken back to our room via the hand sanitisation station on the way in.
Our first dinner was a pleasant surprise. Firstly, it was plated which seems unusual among the other hotels doing quarantine. It was something like chicken tikka with rice. They also provided cans of drink and a desert to go with it, so we seemed well looked after.
We soon settled into a regular rhythm during our stay. We got up and went straight to work / school (online). School starts early in Mozambique and they are an hour earlier than the UK so the kids needed to start at 6:40. Harriett had full online lessons, so always had plenty to do. Imogen was sent work, which was a bit more sporadic. The internet connection was fast and Zoe and I had plenty to be getting on with. Breakfast officially arrived somewhere between 8 and 10. But usually around 8:30 breakfast would arrive. There would be a knock on the door and 4 paper bags of food and four take away containers would be left outside the room. Every day involved both a large cooked and large continental breakfast. We certainly couldn’t complain about the food. We very quickly arranged an Ocado order and I had brought the Aeropress with me, so Zoe and I had good coffee and I would also make hot chocolate for the kids.
The rest of the morning after breakfast was usually then spent with school and work. Again, lunch was officially 12 until 2 but usually arrived between 12:30 and 1 and again was usually enough food for two (and that’s coming from me!). It would often have soup, sandwich and a salad. We usually then tried to get out after lunch and play some games. We brought a plastic cricket bat and ball with us to play quick cricket. And we had a street hockey set (again plastic sticks and balls) delivered, so we usually played one of those games. Usually Zoe joined us, but sometimes she got stuck on calls. The time outside was supposed to be twenty minutes, but we often got a good amount more. Often by the end of a hockey game I was hoping it would be time to go in soon as I was getting exhausted.
it was then more work for Zoe and I and the kids would relax, read books, watch TV and that sort of thing. We usually then headed out again at 5ish and had more of an exercise time. Harriett got into having a run every time. Usually she ran with Zoe, but I joined them some of the time, lapping the car park in an endless loop. Imogen thought jogging was slow, boring and pointless. So, she sometimes did bits of sprinting, but mainly did some gymnastics. Once we were back, dinner was at some time between 6 and 8, which was augmented with the beer, wine and j20 we’d had delivered from the supermarket. We then did something for the evening; watch a film, play a game, do a quiz. Then bed and the whole thing started again. This gave us plenty to do and keep sane with during our incarceration.
The hotel, I believe, looked after us as well as they could. The security staff were friendly and one or two of them got to know us quite well as time went on. The food was good, almost always hot, and certainly plentiful. They did some washing for us, gave us new bedding and towels when we needed and checked most days if we needed more tea, coffee and water. Also helped with things like posting our passports and directing our many deliveries from Ocado, Amazon and Deliveroo fish and chips up to the room efficiently. I could hardly say it was an experience we want to repeat, but the hotel tried their best to make the most of a bad situation.
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