Lanzarote Lament

 Edwin is scheduled to fly home today from his week's 'holiday' in Lanzarote. The holiday was a good idea originally, a chance for the four friends to fly out for fun and sun by the beach on a cheap, off season break. The first hint of trouble was when BA completely cancelled flights to Lanzarote. Edwin, a whiz at all things travel-related, immediately arranged for a transfer of their direct London BA flights to go with Iberia Airlines. This unfortunately involved travelling out via Madrid, and returning via Barcelona, with lengthy waits at both stopovers, but was an acceptable alternative. However, the Iberia flights only went Sunday to Sunday rather than Saturday to Saturday, so he then had to contact the AirBNB owner to persuade them to let them change their days. Also, it was a much earlier flight, so they'd need to get up about 2am to get to the airport on time.

By the time of their flight, Spain and all its islands were blacklisted by the British government, so they faced the possibility of two weeks quarantine on their return. However, three of the four have Brazilian passports, and when they arrived at Heathrow they were told that Brazilians were not allowed to fly to Spain, so only Edwin would be allowed to board. They eventually persuaded the Heathrow officials that all three Brazilians held British residency permits, and were therefore exempt from the ban.

They were not many days in Lanzarote when Edwin developed fever and a sore throat. Andre had to drive him over the mountains to the medical centre where they did a Covid test and started him on antibiotics for tonsillitis. Then next day, Andre and Lucas went down with severe food poisoning, laying on the floor being sick. Edwin became worse, his fever even higher and his throat on fire, so next day Andre had to drive again to the medical centre despite his sickness. There, they said the good news was the Covid test was negative, but the tonsils were in danger of rupturing, and he might not be fit to fly home. They give him an enormous shot of penicilin in the buttocks, making sitting painful in the bouncing car, and leaving Edwin unable to sit or lie on his back. They were due to fly back today, but had to go once more via the medical centre for an 8am appointment to see if he would be certified "fit to fly".  We've just had the message through to say the doctor has given him the certificate, so they're finally heading to the airport for the return via Barcelona. We can only wait on events and see what happens next!