It seems that since March 2020 the world has stopped and no one travels out of fear anymore. My reality is the opposite, in the last 12 months in a pandemic I have traveled more, I have visited more countries and I have taken more planes than any other year in my life and my next year will be nothing different from this.

5 Steps to follow to travel with peace of mind and guarantees in times of Covid

Perhaps your case is fear, lack of information and I will try to give you visibility and tricks of what the reality is and how to travel clearly, easily and safely outside your country.

The reality when you move a little and start traveling is very different from what you see in your daily environment and it will help you develop your own critical opinion and compare different measures and freedoms that each country or region is adopting in its own country.

You will realize that not everyone is experiencing this pandemic in the same way, that countries advocate being more lax, strict and how this situation is being experienced in each place and how much of the world population is living in relative normality .

1-Understand where you can travel

The main thing about traveling is enjoying and being able to be in a country that allows you to know and visit. It will be useless to be locked in Barcelona or Amsterdam and go to a destination that will be the same or worse than in your own home. Skyscanner’s Covid-19 map helps me a lot.

You can choose your country of origin and if you have a full vaccination certificate

Seeing the reality that we are living, this map has come to stay, by far from my point of view the most useful and complete of all.

It works very easily with a traffic light color code. Green: You can travel with almost no restrictions, orange: some restrictions apply (although if you go into detail they are sometimes insignificant) and red: the country is probably restricting tourist visas and entries to non-nationals.

2-Understand what you need to travel

Once you have decided your destination or have reduced your list to a few options, you should understand what requirements you are going to be asked to enter the country or get on the plane for your final destination.

You can do it by the old method of searching in google or government pages what are the entry requirements according to your origin. The reality is that this method can be useful for Europe, but if you want to go to Kenya, Tanzania or countries with less infrastructure, you will see that the information is rather scarce or limited. For this reason I always use the traveldoc website even if it is to complement the information available.

They will give you in detail the regulations of all countries regarding test requirements, vaccination, visas and other visas that you must take into account for your trip. Even if you are making a stopover in another country, you can enter it on this website so that you do not miss out on reaching your final destination.

3-Understand local restrictions

It may be that your nationality is authorized to fly to the destination you want, that you have the corresponding vaccinations, but you still have the third variable: knowing what local regulations are in your destination.

For that you will have to do a little research on your part through google, I recommend that you search in google for the following entries “curfew” “quarantine” followed by the name of your destination to find the local restrictions and schedules that there is in your destiny. Most websites tell you about the entry requirements, but local restrictions cost more to find them. Although in this other section of traveldoc you can find information about the use of the mask and quarantine.

4-Understand the reality that exists in other places

It is undeniable that there is a global pandemic, I am not a denier or anything like it. What I am is very critical of the way in which we’ve been forced to live in Europe and they want to continue making us live in the coming months.

I have seen the reality of various countries, developed, underdeveloped and points in between and experiencing it first hand has helped me build my own vision. You may or may not agree, but the reality is that it doesn’t matter whether your name is the Netherlands, Mexico or Kenya, everyone has suffered from this pandemic and each country has approached it differently and the reality in mortality and expansion of the virus is the same in all of them regardless the measures taken.

Throughout the 365 days of this year I have received comments from friends / family / acquaintances that I am unconscious, how can I go without a mask in a certain country, which variant I have taken this time, you are going to bring us the covid home Before seeing us you have to quarantine etc … Anyway, there is no more blind than the one who does not want to see and spends the day listening to the truths that are sold to him every day in his circle of truths and information.

I encourage you to go out, to regain the desire to travel, the desire to discover and if you want to go to your hometown, go to your hometown and if you want to climb Kilimanjaro, take a plane and dare, the world with a little knowledge is just as safe as two years ago.

5-Make decisions at the last moment

You may not be a fan of the lack of planning or buying your tickets a week before your vacation, but the reality is that the regulations change constantly in every country in the world every day. He does not want to risk making a correct decision today that in two months may not be so correct.

Give yourself a couple of weeks before traveling to be able to have visas, vaccinations and permits in order, this applies to 90% of your destinations that you may have in mind.

Do not worry about the hotels, they will still be there, they will have (in most cases) availability and the same applies to the activities you want to do in each place. Tourism is at its lowest moments in recent years, so you will have availability for almost everything wherever you go.