Vernon van dwellers self-isolate in Mexico amid COVID-19

Canadians abroad have been rushing home due to the COVID-19 pandemic in past weeks, but one Vernon couple has found safety in the mountains of Mexico.

Braden Taylor and Lyndsay Fillier were on their second winter retreat through Mexico in their camper van when Canada began issuing alerts to citizens abroad to make their way home, followed by a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

That advisory has since become more firm.

Those abroad are instructed to return to Canada “as soon as possible,” according to the federal government’s travel health and safety webpage.

But for Taylor and Fillier, who live in their van year-round while spending the winter months in warmer climates, coming home would entail spending days on the road through the U.S., and the two decided they’d have a better chance of avoiding exposure to COVID-19 by staying put.

“It’s so cheap for us to buy food and water and find a free place to stay up in the mountains, instead of spending all this gas and food money trying to make it back to Canada, where it might not be any better,” Taylor said in late March.

“We don’t have a house to go back to in Canada either, we just live in our vehicle. So we figured we’re kind of used to this already, so we might as well just stay and see how it goes.”

The two had driven from the City of Mazatlan to Durango in middle of March.

The people they encountered seemed fairly relaxed about the pandemic at that time — roughly the time when toilet paper panic-buying was reaching its peak in Canada — but after seeing enough red flags in in the news and from Mexican agencies, they decided to avoid city centres and head for the mountains.

The two were at an archaeological site around March 18. As they were leaving the full parking lot, an employer passed on word the COVID-19 situation was getting more serious, and they should search for less crowded areas.

Fillier said changes in attitudes towards the pandemic threat happened, in some cases, overnight.

“We were just outside the city of Durango in a little town and we were staying next to a really beautiful park, and the groundskeepers were kind of joking about it,” she said. “The next day we woke up and they had put coronavirus signs on all the park bathrooms.”

As of March 31, Mexico has 1,225 cases of COVID-19 and 29 reported deaths.

But for now, at least, the couple is sticking to their plan.

“We’ve been thinking about it, but to me it just seems like now is probably not the best time to be sitting at the border and trying to B-line it back to Canada and maybe put ourselves at risk of getting sick.”

“Now that we’ve decided to stay, we kind of have to live with that decision,” Fillier said.

In the mountains a couple hours west of Durango, Fillier and Taylor said they’ve found a picture-perfect place to stay isolated — one that even reminds them of home.

“It’s a lot like the Okanagan actually,” Taylor said. “We’re in a really dry pine forest at quite a high elevation. It reminds us of being in Kal Park.”

The couple said they also have great cell reception on the mountain, allowing them to keep abreast of the latest coronavirus news while hunkering down.

As Taylor puts it, the two are spending COVID-19 in a “prime-time self-isolation area.”

“We haven’t seen a soul so that’s also reassuring,” Fillier added. “We’re just kind of hanging out here by ourselves and we feel pretty safe up here.”

While Taylor and Fillier aren’t moving around much these days, they have documented some of their earlier travels on Instagram.