How the deadly hantavirus turned a dream cruise around some of the most remote islands on the planet to tragedy Quarantined, and stuck at sea

As MV Hondius sailed out of Ushuaia, the most southerly city on Earth, on 1 April, the grey skies above Tierra del Fuego lifted, lighting up the fresh snow on the mountaintops and the autumnal tree cover closer to shore.

- Esther Addley

Health personnel help evacuate patients from hantavirus-hit MV Hondius at Praia in Cape Verde

(AFP/GETTY)

Eighty-eight passengers and 61 crew of 23 nationalities had boarded the small polar class vessel for its 35-day “Atlantic expedition” to Cape Verde, via some of the most remote islands on the planet. As the ship cleared the narrow channel leading from the southern Argentinian city to the open sea, those onboard had already been treated to glimpses of humpback whales, dolphins, black-browed albatross and South American sea lions.

Jake Rosmarin, a travel blogger from Boston, had promised his followers the trip would be “something I’ll carry with me forever”. “Off to an incredible start,” he wrote on Instagram.

A little over a month later, things were very different. Three passengers were dead after an outbreak of hantavirus, a disease with a troublingly high mortality rate for which there is no cure. Hondius, having previously stopped at South Georgia, Tristan da Cunha and St Helena, had arrived at Cape Verde, but the authorities of the island nation were refusing to let its passengers disembark.

Tearful and distressed, Rosmarin posted a video on Monday that was swiftly shared and broadcast around the world. “We’re not just a story, we’re not just headlines, we are people - people with families, with lives, with people waiting for us at home,” he said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty, and that’s the hardest part. All we want right now is to feel safe, to have clarity and to get home.”

Six years after early outbreaks of Covid forced some cruise ships to sail from country to country seeking somewhere to dock, while thousands of passengers were trapped onboard, the world has watched transfixed as another little known virus emerged on another cruise ship.