Our crazy virus travel experience....
Vung Tau, Vietnam - Dec 24: We gave up and turned over the keys to our studio apartment, stuff was already stored at a friends house, and we were on the bus to Saigon to catch our plane to Panama where we would leave for our 4 month trip thru S. America on Dec 27 after spending Christmas with friends. If only we knew what lay in store...
Dec 27: We, we being myself an American man and my Vietnamese (incl her passport) fiancee arrived at the airport at 11:00 am for our 2:00 pm flight. Plenty of time, the way I like it. Our flight went from Saigon to Taipei, LAX and finally Panama City, Panama (not the one in FL). I handed over all our documents to the check-in staff. This is when things first started going sideways. She looked at us suspiciously and went to chat with her manager. The two of them cam back looking serious and stern. "Where is her visa to the USA or her permanent residence card?", they asked. We informed them we were just transiting thru LAX on our way to Panama, not stopping in America. No way, she needs a transit visa to go thru any USA airport. Unless you have that she can’t board.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
I had planned this trip from months. Panama, Chile, Peru, Ecuador – a 4 month adventure to really see the continent. How could I miss this fundamental issue – a USA transit visa. I had never even heard of it. I subsequently learned that America more or less did away with transit areas. You have to clear immigration and check back in therefore a visa/proper documentation is required. We called time-out and found a seat to discuss. They warned us we only had an hour to cancel the tickets or they would be worthless so make up our minds quickly. I rapidly went thru all the emotional states and finally cleared my head. We had no choice – cancel the trip or buy new tickets on an airline that didn’t transit thru the USA. As it turned out almost all flights go thru the USA and even the few that didn’t also needed transit visas. What a nightmare. My fiancee was insisting I go on the trip alone and she would wait for me in Vietnam. No Way!! We were going together, period! First we canceled the tickets and surprisingly got a good majority of our money back, yes! Then we sat there at Saigon airport searching online for a new flight. $17,000 on Swedish Air, hmmm, no thanks. Finally, I found a reasonable flight on Turkish and Copa Airlines. It went via Istanbul, Sao Paulo and finally Panama. A whopping 55 hour trip and we had a potential issue in Sao Paulo as no one could tell us if we needed a transit visa in Brazil and we couldn’t get a boarding pass until we arrived there. Jeeeez. We booked it and prayed. It left at 11:00 pm that same night.
I learned something on this trip. It really pays to have a passport from a developed country. My fiancees VN passport was questioned, challenged, frowned upon or even rejected everywhere we went! It started upon boarding our first flight and didn’t end until we were in our hotel 60 hours later in Panama. A Novotel King size bed never felt so good! I can tell you zombies are real as that was our physical state from about the 40 hour point on. Turkish Air were incredible the whole way, simply wonderful.
Things went relatively smoothly in Panama, Peru and Chile. February, in Santiago, in the middle of the riots there we got tear gassed once, that was a first and hopefully last. We loved the mountains, volcanoes and desert. What sights to see! Finally we were on our way to our last destination – Ecuador.
The Virus: We arrived in Quito in early March. We spent a week there before heading to the Amazon to experience the remote jungle life. It was wonderful and remote enough to be offline most of the time but we were getting tidbits that the virus was finally impacting S. America and we heard that Ecuador was going to close on March 16, our last day in the jungle. Other tourists from all over the world were scrambling to get home. The place was deserted by that night. We weren’t ready to leave Ecuador yet, logistically it would have been really difficult and we didn’t think the virus would turn into the monster it became. How wrong we were...
We have been trapped in Ecuador ever since. Vietnam has closed their borders so we can’t return home and the situation in S. America is deteriorating. Panama City and Quito are both in dire straights now. We are seriously expecting we could be here the whole year. We have been able to travel within Ecuador and have enjoyed Banos, Cuenca and now Vilcabamba. It’s a lovely country but in desperate need of international cooks, haha!
There are a lot of side stories about flooded airbnb’s, enormous hail storms, bank freezes and more but this post is long enough
