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(CNN) -
When British traveler Zoe Stephens flew to the South Pacific island nation of Tonga in March 2020, she was only planning to stay for a weekend.
Originally from Crosby in Merseyside, UK, this 27-year-old had lived in China for two and a half years, before taking time to travel around Asia and arrive in Fiji.
Eager to escape the talks about the virus, which dominated the news wherever she went, she booked a flight to Tonga, a Polynesian country made up of more than 170 islands in the South Pacific.
What is Tonga like and where is it?
Yet almost 18 months later, she is still trapped in the small archipelago, which turns out to be one of the few places in the world that has remained totally covid-free.
"I'm probably one of the few people in the world who has never had to wear a mask," Stephens tells CNN Travel.
"I haven't worn a mask throughout this pandemic. I think it's going to be pretty weird going into a world where so many people wear them."
During her time in Tonga, which has a population of just over 100,000, Stephens began pursuing a master's degree in international communication online and is currently living in a house on the beach while caring for the home of a family who cannot return to life. island due to travel restrictions.
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Very isolated
Zoe Stephens has been trapped in the Tonga Archipelago since March 2020. Courtesy of Zoe Stephens
But while living on a remote island may sound like the ideal way to cope with a global pandemic, and Stephens feels "lucky" to be there, it seems the experience has not been as great as it might seem.
"Not many people can relate to being stuck on an island without your friends or family, in a country that you have not deliberately reached," Stephens tells CNN Travel.
"Or staying out of the country you live in and not being able to go back. And being afraid of going back to your home country because of a strange virus that's circulating. So it's quite isolating."
He also notes that while Tonga has so far averted any cases of coronavirus, those living here have suffered greatly from the impact of the virus.
"We have not had covid here, but it is still around," he explains.
"It's not that all of this doesn't affect us."
Like many people around the world, Stephens was initially unfazed when he first heard of the coronavirus in early 2020.
But things took a turn when she left China to visit South Korea, and confirmed cases began to rise in the country while she was away.
When the situation worsened and the borders were closed, Stephens chose to continue traveling so that he would not have to pass the quarantine when he returned to China.
But he realized something was wrong almost immediately after flying to Tonga from Fiji, when his taxi driver told him that the South Pacific country had just reported its first cases of Covid-19.
"I thought it was a communication error," he says.
"But I got to the hostel and they said, 'We don't want to accept you, you just came from Fiji.' So it was pretty instant."
It didn't take long for Stephens to discover that Tonga was going into lockdown, and couldn't get out for a while.
"It took a week for the flights to completely stop arriving," he says.
"We had a three-week confinement, which was very, very intense. You could only leave the house once a week to go buy food and they would write down the license plate and the name."
"Everything in the country was closed. Shops, restaurants, everything except one or two stores."
Living in limbo
Tonga's capital, Nuku'alofa, was deserted during the country's strict three-week lockdown.
Courtesy of Zoe Stephens
Tonga declared a state of emergency in March 2020 and the nation has been closed to foreigners ever since.
During those first few months, Stephens kept telling herself that she could go back to China and that she just had to wait for the borders to reopen.
She even skipped a repatriation flight from Tonga to Europe, because she was convinced that she would make it back to China.
However, as time passed, he realized that his stay was going to be much longer than he had anticipated.
"I spent about six months in this strange limbo," he says.
"That was probably the hardest. Then I calmed down a bit."
After trying and failing to return to China for months and months, Stephens has accepted that he will not be able to return to his life there anytime soon.
"I've had to give it up," he admits.
"I know that China will not open for a long time."
Although he has previously had the opportunity to return home to the United Kingdom, the few flights to which he has had access have coincided with periods in which the cases of covid have been especially high.
"I think in March of last year I wanted to go back, and then things had gone crazy [in the UK]," he says.
Stephens admits that the experience of watching her family and friends grapple with the reality of the virus from a distance is incredibly difficult.
Observe from afar
Stephens says it has been "doubly isolating" to watch his family and friends grapple with the pandemic from a distance.
Courtesy of Zoe Stephens
"It was strange to see it from outside," he admits.
"I'm used to being away from the UK, but I feel like this has been doubly isolating."
"My grandmother passed away from covid-19 very early on, at a time when there was no possibility of her coming back."
Although she says there is no typical day for her in Tonga, Stephens' routine consists of waking up in the morning, walking her dogs on the beach, and then studying online.
"I keep busy," she says.
"I have fun with friends by going to one of the three bars or eating at one of the few restaurants, something like that, and then I go home. It's very, very boring."
She spends part of her free time paddle boarding and snorkeling, as well as posting her experiences on her Instagram and YouTube accounts, and has been able to take some remote work here and there.
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"I have tried to make the most of it," he adds.
"But I think one of the hardest things was people in the UK, constantly telling me 'You are so lucky.' I wake up every morning and I see the beach and I see the island and it's great, but I wasn't enjoying it. They told me I should be really enjoying myself, and I said, 'But I don't want to be here.
"The hardest thing about being stuck here for almost a year and a half was accepting that I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon."
Not planning to stay long, Stephens brought very few possessions to Tonga and had to do without items he normally had, such as his glasses and a Kindle.
"For the last year and a half, I have lived without my glasses, which is not good because there is nowhere to get them in Tonga," he says.
"And until a few months ago, there was no bookstore. So I wish I had brought them."
Cyclone damage
Shortly after Stephens arrived, Cyclone Harold struck the islands of the South Pacific.
Courtesy of Zoe Stephens
A few months after his arrival, Cyclone Harold hit the islands and the house he was staying in was completely flooded, taking "half of the few possessions" he had brought with him.
Although he has made the most of his situation, and has even organized an annual marathon in Tonga to raise funds for the Humane Society of Tonga, Stephens admits that he would have spent his time differently if he had known in March 2020 that he would still be there now. .
"I would have gotten a job, I would have learned the local language," he says.
"I would have done some volunteer work or something." But I always thought, at least for the first few months, that I might be leaving soon. "
Stephens knew very little about life in Tonga before arriving and has found the process of adjusting to being part of such a small community quite complicated.
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"The town I grew up in in Liverpool has a larger population than the entire country," he says.
"If I had known at the beginning that everyone was going to know what you said, what you did and who you hung out with, I would have been much more careful about what I said, what I did and who I hung out with."
"I've had to learn by making mistakes. Even if I had researched Tonga, there really isn't much information available on the internet. And none of that information tells you how to live here, where to shop or how to open a bank account."
While the strict travel restrictions in place have helped protect the nation from the virus, the trade-off is that many Tonga citizens have been separated from their families throughout the pandemic.
"There are thousands of Tongans abroad who are still unable to enter," he says.
"They are still repatriating people, there is maybe a repatriation flight every two months."
Like many other remote island destinations, Tonga has been hit hard by a lack of tourists due to the pandemic.
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As one of the few places where it is possible to swim with the humpback whales, which begin to arrive in Tonga's waters around July, the nation is popular with tourists, receiving 94,000 international visitors in 2019.
"A lot of tourists used to come during the winter months," says Stephens.
"So there are many and many businesses here that have been greatly affected.
Although things were very quiet at first, "no parties or gatherings," Stephens notes that "life is pretty normal when it comes to covid" now.
However, the night curfew is still in effect, although it has been shortened to run from midnight to 5 a.m.
Leave paradise?
Stephens is due to return to the UK later this month, but tries not to get his hopes up just in case.
Courtesy of Zoe Stephens
After living on a small island for a long period of time, the prospect of leaving is quite daunting for Stephens, who is about to do so, or so he hopes.
He is due to return to the UK at the end of August, but after so many false starts, Stephens is cautious about trusting that things will work out.
"Flight times are constantly changing, so I'm not under any illusions," he admits.
"Leaving will be very, very bittersweet, of course, because I've started to build a life here."
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"But nothing here is real. People say, 'How can you leave an island paradise'. And I say, 'It's great here, but it's not my real life.' It's not what I chose to do. I didn't choose to be here. amazing, but I don't want it. "
"The other foreigners here have jobs, they're here for a reason. And while I've made sure to keep busy, the time has definitely come when I have nothing else to do."
Tonga has received 24,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines through the Covax mechanism, a global initiative for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, and Stephens is among residents who have been fully vaccinated.
Vaccine deployment
The 27-year-old was vaccinated in Tonga through Covax.
Courtesy of Zoe Stephens
Stephens fears the virus will eventually reach Tonga, and what that could mean for a nation where 22.1% of the population lives below the national poverty line and medical facilities and equipment are limited.
"It is inevitable that the covid will arrive here at some point, and this country will suffer greatly from it," adds Stephens.
"There is simply a lack of infrastructure."
However, he is well aware that adapting to a world where Covid-19 is part of everyday life will not be easy.
"First of all, the very idea of being around a lot of people terrifies me," she says.
"But then the whole issue of covid is also very worrying. Being in a situation where it is present and the feeling that it is present."
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"I do worry about what will happen if I go back and everything closes up again and everyone is confined, and I'll think 'I should have stayed on the island.'
After being effectively stranded for so long, Stephens says she now has "all this weird travel anxiety," despite having flitted around the world with confidence since she was 16 years old.
"I'm worried that I might get stuck somewhere," she admits.
"But I see so many people traveling on social media right now. And I think 'okay, it could be.'
"I don't know how I will feel [when I can travel again]. I will have to wait to see what happens when I return to the real world."
Covid-19 Tonga