Five hantavirus cases, three deaths, and a global cruise scare. The likely vector wasn’t the ship at all. It was a Ushuaia shore excursion.
If the landfill theory holds, the ship was not the source of exposure. The ship was the diagnostic environment, the place where symptoms emerged in close enough quarters that the cluster became visible. The shore excursion was the exposure event, and the operator was outside the cruise line’s chain of custody but still became everyone’s problem. With hantavirus, ships may seem particularly risky but cases remain incredibly rare.
I had a look through a couple of hundred Viator and Expedia excursions and tours and couldn’t find a single one that tours a landfill. I couldn’t find one from any of our private vendors either. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why anyone would want to tour a landfill and it’s puzzling. Surely, there must have been a reason but I can’t even find a provider.
A great solo travel tip spotted this week on Live and Let's Fly.
