Into the red: ‘laundering’ my travel status in Mexico to enter the US

Mexico may be on the UK’s travel red list, but Brits are travelling there to eventually gain entry to the US. Jamie Fullerton joined the launderers looking to get Stateside

The city of Merida, in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula (Getty/iStock)

I thought I’d be the first with the idea. A pandemic travel pioneer.

In early August, I wanted to go to the US for meetings I absolutely couldn’t do on Zoom, but UK travellers had been banned from entry by US authorities since March 2020. Exemptions aside, if you’d been in the UK in the last 14 days, you couldn’t go.

At the time, Mexico was on the amber list, and there were no Covid-related restrictions for going there – and from Mexico, I could potentially get into the States. I read reams of US government website blurb, and emerged 90 per cent sure I’d processed it correctly: go to Mexico for 14 days, get a negative PCR test, and I could fly on to the US.

The tax on my “origin country laundering” plan? A couple of grand for a fortnight of Mayan temples and gorging on tacos.

I bought a £900 British Airways flight from Gatwick to Cancun – £800 for the basic fare, plus £100 and 25,000 Avios for a premium economy upgrade. Might as well launder in style.

Just a few days before I took to the skies, Mexico was moved to the UK’s red list.

The flight was rammed with other Brits, also happily flying into the red on a savvy detour en route to the US

Brits in the country rushed to return in the three days between the announcement of the list changes and the day they came into effect, with many narrowly avoiding compulsory British hotel quarantine at around £2,000 a head.

But I hadn’t set off yet. My Cancun flight was changed to depart from Heathrow, not Gatwick, but it was still on. And since I wasn’t returning to the UK directly from Mexico, the red list switch wouldn’t affect me – or my mission to get into the US. I anticipated stretching out on a ghost flight, the adjacent seat freed up for my backpack by hundreds of holiday cancellations.

So on boarding, I was staggered to find the flight rammed with other Brits, also happily flying into the red on a savvy detour en route to the US. My pioneering plan was already a “thing”.

I wasn’t even the jammiest flyer onboard. The woman in the next seat told me she worked as a tutor in Los Angeles, and that the family of the kid she taught was paying for her to hole up in a Cancun all-inclusive for two weeks before heading back. Having already sneaked into California this way a couple of times, her biggest concern was the repetitive resort menu.

Nearby, passengers with posh British accents chirped about the prospect of sunny LA after their two-week Yucatan holiday. There was far more talk of tacos than of the Covid cases spiking in both the US and Mexico.

I’d read that I’d have to complete a health form to enter Mexico, but when I asked for one at Cancun airport, I was simply waved through. No Covid test result or proof of vaccination was demanded. Green lights all the way.

I took a bus from Cancun to Merida, the breezy (and reportedly extremely safe) capital city of Yucatan state. Friends had told me it was a good place in which to stay out of trouble.

Covid may have been an immigration non-issue, but Merida’s population seemed rather hot on the local pandemic rules. I arrived just in time to get a taxi to my Airbnb apartment before the city’s curfew began at 11.30pm, when bars and restaurants closed and it became illegal to drive around.

Most locals wore masks indoors and out: impressive, considering that temperatures routinely hit 35C by lunchtime. The swelter created an unofficial daytime curfew, making it near impossible for a pasty-skinned Brit to do anything active in the city before 5pm, at which point I had a six-and-a-half-hour window in which to operate.

I’d considered travelling around Mexico – a tempting stretch of the wings after 18 months of pandemic entrenchment. But following a 10-hour flight and a four-hour bus journey, I felt that swanning around the country might be irresponsible, even armed with two Pfizer jabs and a fistful of free NHS lateral flow tests.

Wanting zero-crowd, heat-avoiding fun, I ventured into the countryside to visit some deserted cenotes – the natural sinkholes that are unique to this area. I paid 50 pesos (£1.80) for a skinny guy to show me Cenote Mani-Chan, where I sank into what felt like a vast, empty pool of Evian. The only time I went within two metres of anyone was when my guide gave me a backie on his motorbike to a larger cenote, where I swam alone beneath fluttering bats.

On the streets of Merida, city officials sprayed sanitiser on the hands of a smattering of tourists, mainly from the US, entering the historical centre. Every shop and restaurant zapped foreheads checking for high temperatures, but many museums and galleries were closed altogether.

Floating alone in expansive turquoise pools, I felt infinitely more Covid-secure than I had in post-‘freedom day’ Britain

The country’s official Covid figures buttressed my decision to stay in one spot. During my stay, the numbers flitted between 5,000 and 20,000 – but even Merida locals were suspicious of the stats. A make-up artist in her twenties told me she’d flown to the US twice to get jabbed, frustrated at Mexico’s slow vaccine rollout. She said that post-pandemic normality still felt a long way off.

I visited restaurants in the evenings, lowering my mask for poc chuc: fabulously marinated pork. The curfew makes dinner-date dynamics interesting for locals: to avoid fines, Uber bookings must be made by 10.45pm, meaning that dining couples have to be decisive about where the evening is headed. Walks of shame can legally take place from 5am, when the nightly curfew is lifted.

Such dilemmas aside, staying out of globule-sharing distance of other people was easy in uncrowded Merida. I was almost always masked up, although my mask needed regular wringing out due to the heat. Seeing Instagram teem with crowd photos from Reading Festival while I floated alone in expansive turquoise pools, I felt infinitely more Covid-secure than I had in post-“freedom day” Britain.

Assuming I ace my £100 PCR test Mexico-side, I’ll soon rejoin the British throng undertaking this enjoyable if convoluted laundering process, and fly on to Ohio.

Yes, it’s a faff having to fork out for a flight and two weeks’ accommodation in Mexico. Though Merida is an affordable city, two weeks there is hardly a negligible added cost. And on top of the extra spend, the possibility of Covid rules changing at any stage of the journey always looms, adding worries about the cost of emergency flights or extended time spent stranded in Mexico.

These are among the risks you accept when you choose to fly into the red. But for many of the Brits prepared to take them, so far they’ve paid off.