An Okotoks couple caught in Peru has made it safely home.
Kevin Weisbeck and his fiancée, Sherry Kasper, travelled to Peru on March 10 to see Machu Picchu, and from there their tour group went to Lima and Cusco, but Peruvian authorities shut down the country on March 16 when the country witnessed its first death from COVID-19.
“It’s unbelievable,” Weisbeck said of being in his own home after waiting 15 days to catch a coveted flight out of Peru.
They had been with a tour group when the country announced it would close its borders, and the company took its travellers to the airport in Cusco to catch a flight to Lima, where planes would be departing for their home countries.
However, getting a flight out of Cusco was a non-starter – the place was packed and all seats were taken by the time they arrived, he said.
Weisbeck credits their next move to some of their American companions from New York – a retired police officer, and his daughter and son-in-law who were also police officers. While they debated whether to take a bus to Lima, which would be a 20-hour ride through what they had been told were treacherous mountains, their American friends jumped into decision-making mode and convinced everyone to return to their hotel, because it had been a nice place and would likely be their best bet.
“It was true, because they’d already shut down the roads and we didn’t know that,” said Weisbeck. “They’d shut down everything, it was all closing so fast. We never would have made it through the mountains, we would have been stuck in some little town in the middle of nowhere, so they made the right call to just stay in the hotel for the next week and a half.”
They managed to entertain themselves for 10 days by having trivia afternoons and watching Spanish television. Announcements came that flights would be leaving Peru on March 24, but these were departing from Lima and Weisbeck said they were unable to leave their hotel by that point except to pick up essentials, and couldn’t make the trek to that city.
Their freedom had slowly slipped away over the 10 days in Cusco, he said. On the first day there hadn’t been a curfew, just police walking the streets. Then an 8 p.m. curfew was set, and people were limited in their excursions – one person at a time only, and each person could only visit the grocery store or a pharmacy, not both.
“They didn’t want you out and about,” said Weisbeck.
After a couple more days, the rules became even more stringent, and anyone out on an errand run was required to be wearing a mask.
The streets were lined by military at night, patrolling to ensure people were living by the curfew.
“A couple of times in front of our hotel we had people basically swarmed and arrested because they were out there with a suitcase trying to get a hotel,” said Weisbeck. “Nobody was letting them in – our hotel wouldn’t let anybody in.”
Though it was unfortunate for those people, he said those inside appreciated the measures to keep their temporary home safe and healthy.
Not all of the guests took the pandemic as seriously as others, and a group of Europeans continued to tour the city despite all the rules in place – which led Weisbeck to an argument with one of them.
They would walk out of the hotel, one at a time, then wait around the corner for one another and take off in a group of five or six to tour Cusco, he said.
“I had an argument with one guy because he said, ‘I’m on vacation, I’m not a prisoner,’” said Weisbeck, “And I was like, ‘Yeah you are, we all are, and don’t consider it prison just consider it a quarantine. Bottom line, at the end of the day, you can’t go out.’
“That was just going to get all of us in trouble, and we didn’t need that.”
On March 24, the American group received a call – they would be going home. Though they were happy for their friends, Weisbeck said it was bittersweet because they wondered how long it would take for their call to come.
They didn’t have to wait long.
By Thursday evening they received one of the coveted codes for Canadian flights home. About 400 codes were issued, for the number of seats on the Boeing 777 they would board in Lima – but each person had the same code.
This produced a nightmare for those trying to book flights, because if one person in a hotel or hostel got the code, he or she could share with friends who hadn’t been so lucky, and flights sold out very quickly.
Weisbeck and his fiancée took the code to their hotel room and dialled his daughter, Jessika, on speakerphone, and the three of them worked for nearly an hour to get two tickets confirmed and paid for. It cost them $1,400 per one-way ticket for flights to Toronto, which would normally cost about $800 round-trip, he said – on top of the $1,400 additional expenses for the hotel room for several extra nights.
“But you just want to go home,” he said. “At this point you just kind of pay it and it is what it is.”
On Friday morning they were picked up by a bus outside the hotel and taken to a meeting place along with 300 more Canadians, where they waited in line for about two hours while travellers were checked against official lists to ensure everyone there was supposed to be boarding.
Then they were taken to the closed Cusco airport, where they waited in line again to get onto a flight. Before boarding, they went through a health check to ensure nobody with symptoms got on the plane. It felt like a long wait as their names didn’t appear on the first or second list, and they waited for the third call.
“All the time you’re just waiting for that other shoe to drop, that you’re not getting out, this isn’t your flight, or something went wrong – too bad, so sad, kind of thing,” said Weisbeck.
They finally landed in Lima, and the sight was emotionally overwhelming, he said – flight attendants stood at the top of the stairs holding a Canadian flag, waiting for their passengers to arrive.
“It’s still emotional,” said Weisbeck. “You see the words Air Canada plastered across the plane and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, that’s ours.’ At that point you’re starting to think, this is going to happen.”
After landing in Toronto, they booked flights to Calgary and arrived at YYC around noon Saturday, March 28.
They’re now at home, healthy and relieved to be in their own house with the simple pleasure of little things like English television.
“Watching old Bruce Willis Die Hard movies in Spanish, it just isn’t the same,” said Weisbeck.
They were relieved to hear the other four Canadians in their tour group booked flights earlier this week, but Weisbeck said even with about 1,200 people returned home there are still at least 400 tourists there and another 2,000 or so who are snowbirds in Peru.
“I know Canada has a lot of work ahead of them to get everybody home,” he said. “It’s slow and steady.”
Krista Conrad, OkotoksToday.ca
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