Coronavirus plays havoc with Boise residents traveling abroad, BSU student in Denmark
The rush of foreign governments to close their borders to curb coronavirus has forced Treasure Valley residents traveling abroad to make hard choices: Stay where they are and risk being stuck indefinitely, or abandon their travels and scramble to get home.
The travelers include a Boise wine lover who was harvesting grapes in Argentina, another Boise wine lover touring wine sites on the Iberian Peninsula, a Boise State student studying business in Denmark, and a couple who traveled to Ecuador hoping to see the Galápagos Islands, only to be stuck in their bed-and-breakfast.
John Bigelow and his wife, Sydney Rocklin, were holed up in Quito, Ecuador, for more than a week. They arrived in Quito on Thursday, March 12. From there, they had planned to take the two-hour flight to the Galápagos but never did.
“All flights within the country are stopped, so people can’t get from city to city,” Rocklin said Sunday on a video call.
The Galápagos Islands are one of the world’s foremost destinations for wildlife-watching. The unique variety of its bird species helped 19th century scientist Charles Darwin develop the theory of evolution.
As a precaution, Ecuadoran officials banned travel to the islands by anyone who had been in the country for less than 14 days. “The government has shut down all traffic, all travel, particularly in the Galapagos, because they don’t have any cases there and they want to keep it that way,” Bigelow said.
The couple considered trying to leave Ecuador through Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, population 2.3 million. It’s located 260 miles southwest of Quito and would have required a eight- or nine-hour taxi ride.
They abandoned that idea after learning that Guayaquil’s mayor blocked an airport runway with more than a dozen vehicles Wednesday to prevent a Spanish plane from landing and picking up stranded tourists.
On Saturday night, they learned Tame, Ecuador’s largest airline, had scheduled a flight early Monday from Quito to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Quito officials had ordered a curfew from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. To get to the airport for the 2:45 a.m. flight, they planned to leave their bed and breakfast by 5 p.m. for the 45-minute ride so their taxi driver could return before curfew.
“It’s been an emotional roller coaster,” Rocklin said. “I’m sure it is at home, too. But things here change so suddenly.”
Ecuador’s health and labor ministers resigned Saturday, hours after officials announced the number of confirmed cases of the virus that causes COVID-19 had increased to 532, Reuters reported. The cases shot up from 100 in a week. Seven people have died.
Originally, Sunday would have been the couple’s last day in the Galapagos Islands. They had planned to return to Quito, get a rental car and spend 11 days touring the country with friends from the U.S. They then planned to spend a week in the Andes Mountains in southern Ecuador.
The couple had to pay $700 apiece for the tickets to Fort Lauderdale, at least three times the normal price.
“Even though we’ve traveled, all of this is a little terrifying,” she said Sunday.
But they got to the airport on time. On Monday, Bigelow emailed the Statesman to say he and his wife had arrived in Fort Lauderdale. “With some luck, we’ll be back in Boise by midnight,” he wrote.
Boise woman harvested wine grapes in Argentina
Samantha Bauer, former manager at Uncorked, the wine bar at the Boise Co-op, traveled to a small town in Argentina, working with a family harvesting grapes for wine.
She spent five weeks in Tupungato, an important wine region in northwestern Argentina. Bauer planned to remain there until the middle of June.
Last week, a friend heard that Argentina would close its borders within a few hours and that she needed to leave.
“There weren’t that many cases in Argentina at that point,” Bauer said Sunday by phone. “Their government just made the decision to act really quickly and try and stop any kind of traffic from coming in or out, and stopping people from moving around the country.
“I’m glad I was able to leave while I still could.”
Boise man took wine tour through Portugal
Boise resident Stuart Mitton was with two friends on a wine tour through Portugal when President Donald Trump announced March 11 that he was suspending air travel from Europe.
Mitton originally planned to spend a day in Barcelona, Spain, and fly home, but as confirmed coronavirus cases escalated in Spain, leading to a shutdown in Madrid and Barcelona, he stayed in Lisbon.
He had to scurry to book a flight out. He returned to Boise Monday, March 16, three days early.
“It was pretty surreal,” he said by phone. “We felt pretty confident and comfortable that we were going to be able to get home, but we knew it was going to be a little more gymnastics than normal.”
BSU student studied business in Denmark
Boise State University student Jackson Blackwell had been taking business classes at Aarhus University in Denmark since January, as part of a study abroad program.
He was in London with his family, visiting from Alaska, when Trump announced the travel ban from Europe. His family booked a flight home. Blackwell returned to Denmark to pick up his belongings.
The evening he returned to Denmark, March 13, the Danish prime minister made a television address in which he said the Danish borders would close at noon the following day. Blackwell said he and other students made plans to leave as soon as possible.
“I booked a flight for that next morning at 6 a.m., packed all my belongings and got to the airport,” he said.
He flew to Amsterdam and then to Seattle, where he said no one questioned passengers about where they had traveled. He only had to fill out a form saying where he would be for the next 14 days, before flying back to Alaska.
“I was kind of personally surprised and a little disappointed, because I had traveled to Seattle and had been in London and Paris and all these kinds of hotspot areas,” said Blackwell, who said he hasn’t shown any symptoms since returning home and self-isolating. “The border agent asked where I had been and I said Denmark, but there were no follow-up questions.”
This story was originally published March 22, 2020 at 3:24 PM.
