Montauk Pioneer - May 1, 2009 - A Health Spa Vacation?

It's never the things you expect to happen that actually happen, but the things you don't expect to happen that take you by surprise.

After hearing about all the recent violence on the borders of Mexico, I was a bit apprehensive about booking my trip to Mexico City on April 20, before carefully checking with the State Department and travel websites. I was told by numerous authorities and fellow tourists that it was safe to fly to Mexico City, where I would be picked up by a hotel van taking me another two hours south into the Sierra Madre Mountains to a health retreat called Ixtapan Spa Hotel & Golf Resort.

People who had vacationed at this resort said this small mountain village of Ixtapan de la Sal was far from the drug wars in the border towns of Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Nogales and others, so I after a long, cold winter in the Hamptons, I packed my summer clothes and flew to Mexico City. After spending a wonderful, relaxing week at this beautiful spa and resort, I was packing my bags on April 24, to fly out the next day, when I heard something about a pig virus on the TV in my hotel room.

The English-speaking station I was watching had the latest news about 70 suspected deaths in Mexico City from swine flu, which so far had no preventive vaccine available. At the time, it wasn't clear how this weird disease had been transmitted into Mexico. The next morning at 10 a.m., my friend Phyllis and I were picked up by a hotel van and driven to the Mexico City airport, right in the heart of this outbreak.

I didn't know quite what to do, but my flight back to JFK airport was scheduled for 2:40 p.m. on April 25, and I figured it would be better to leave the country than to stay there for worse news. Plus, I thought, considering there are like 22 million people in Mexico City, what are the odds I'd be catching something from one of them while flying home?

My friend and I boarded the van, sorry to have to leave this gorgeous hotel and spa, where everyone was friendly and where we could actually drink the water and eat the salads. We were leaving a place in Mexico where we had come to GET healthy- to walk on the golf course, swim in the pools, learn Salsa dancing, eat gourmet cuisine, and take numerous spa treatments with natural products. And now, after a full week of dieting and exercise, were we driving right into what could be, potentially, a global pandemic?

As it turned out, authorities were denying this over the car radio, but suspected cases of swine flu were beginning to show up in the United States and Canada. As we neared the border of Mexico City, we were suddenly stopped by a Mexican authority who handed our driver about a dozen blue face masks for us all to put on.

"What do you think, should we wear these?" I asked Phyllis, who answered, "It couldn't hurt."

As the Mexican driver explained how to hook these strings around our heads, we looked out the van windows to see if anyone was wearing them, and sure enough, we started to see people wearing them in the streets of Mexico City.

When the driver let us off at Delta, we wore our masks into the airport, finding it a bit hard to breathe through them in the warm, stale air. Being the first time I have ever worn a mask, I felt rather self-conscious, but I figured better safe (and alien-looking) than sorry. We waited in long lines through security and customs, as we began to notice other people, including whole families, wearing blue masks.

We still had a two-hour wait before our plane left, and during this time, airport authorities started handing everyone a white form to fill out regarding any possible health symptoms we might be feeling. We were asked to check off if we had any symptoms including: high fever, cough, headache, limb or joint pain, eye redness and nasal flux.

"We are facing a new strain of flu virus which constitutes a possible outbreak," the form read. "We ask you to please answer this survey which will help you find out if you are sick. If you have all of these symptoms we recommend you to postpone your trip and visit a doctor."

"I'm getting on that plane," I said, thinking about how it would be to get stuck in a Mexico City hospital.

We were starting to get hungry, but we wondered if it would be safe to eat in the public restaurants and concessions at the airport. I remembered what the news announcer had advised on TV-"keep washing your hands at all times, to help stop the spread of germs."

We stopped in the restroom to wash our hands, and Phyllis also took out her hand sanitizing liquid, as an added precaution. We decided to buy the already-wrapped sandwiches in Starbucks, and some coffee. Then we had to decide how to eat while wearing a mask, and tried to maneuver the things up toward our noses so we could eat from our mouths. This was beginning to feel like a sci-fi flick.

But we were determined to avoid the chance of picking up this virus at all costs, and what's a little eating and breathing inconvenience compared to getting sick or dying?

"I think it's actually more important to wear these masks on the plane, since it's an enclosed space with dead air, where it's easier to pick up germs," said Phyllis. I dreaded the thought of wearing this hot and uncomfortable mask another four hours on the plane. I felt embarrassed to be one of maybe a dozen people on our plane of over 200, who were wearing these masks. The stewardesses and pilots did not even wear masks, but perhaps they did not want to scare the passengers.

I wore mine through the movies, the reading, the sleeping, and the Bloody Marys, for all four hours. And we washed and sanitized our hands about five more times during our trip.

Finally arriving at JFK, we practically ran off the plane to the air in the United States, where we felt germ-free, and ripped off our masks as we went through customs. But back in New York City, we learned the next day that the swine virus was already spreading into the St. Francis Prep School in Queens, and that it had spread to five states and several countries, from Canada, to Spain, and possibly New Zealand. By press time last Monday, the death toll in Mexico City had risen to 103, and the U.S. Center of Disease Control had issued a public health warning, but insisted that it was still not a "global pandemic."

Governor Patterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg were on TV, saying that this disease had probably come into the NYC area from a spring trip to Mexico by the Queens students, earlier this month. So far, 200 kids were ill, and the school was closing for a few days last week. The swine flu has a 24-48 hour incubation period, so at press time, other people were waiting to see if they felt sick. Although there is no known cure, there are four kinds of medicine to fight the swine flu, but the current strain is resistant to two, according to the CDC. And as of press time, Phyllis and I fortunately felt fine, but we'll never forget our unusual escape from Mexico City.