The Great Escape Continues for Many

There are still thousands of Americans stranded overseas after borders and airports closed last week all over the world. The numbers in the press vary but there are at least 9-13,000 Americans still stranded, in 28 countries. 

Americans waiting for a charter flight out of Guatamala

Some Americans have been repatriated this past week, including 1200 who were stranded in Peru and over 600 in Morocco  But this just a small number of all those who have reached out to American embassies and consulates worldwide asking for help.

It is not just Americans though. There are many thousands of Australians and Canadians stranded all over the globe. And cruise ships around the world are adrift as ports turn them away and passengers are unable to disembark.  There are at least 10 ships currently adrift carrying more than 10,000 passengers.

The ship that we booked originally is one of those. We expected to board the Eclipse in Chile on March 15th to take us to California, but the ship was refused landing privileges and is now en-route to California non-stop with the wrong set of passengers - people who expected to leave the ship on the 15th. The passengers on our cruise? Alll 3000 were in Santiago at the same time as us trying to catch the same flights we were trying to catch. You see our problem? Not only were all the flights out already booked, but there were 3000 extra people trying to find flights out before the airport closed two days later.

I always thought the main purpose of an embassy was to help citizens in need, however, under the current administration they have been more or less unsympathetic telling citizens to be prepared to hunker down in place and that it is not their job or intention to rescue everyone. When planes came to remove embassy staff no places were offered to civilians. Speaking as someone who used to work in the United Nations and has some familiarity with diplomats, my question is: what is their purpose of an embassy if not to reach out and help citizens in need? 

At the time I wrote The The Great Escape blog I thought Franklin and three of our friends  were the only people in Buenos Aires scrambling to exit South America. So in the previous blog I tried not to make too big a deal of this event. Someone said I presented being stranded twice in two different countries as a “lighthearted adventure and a thrilling episode rather than a perilous dangerous worrisome narrow miss”. Well, that is the nature of the phrase, “having an adventure.” You try to reframe your experience to sound less perilous and more amusing than it really was. 

They suggested that the post sounded like I was having a ball. Did it sound like that to you? That was not my intention. While reporting the facts of our journey I didn’t want to sound like a drama queen so I may have underplayed the drama.  But it was dramatic at the time and still seems so to me. And still continues to be for the thousands of people who are still stranded.

Some of us who managed to get flights out before the airport and borders closed in various countries have been in contact, sharing our experiences, still staggered at the changed in the world this past week. Strangers who shared this experience have contacted me via Facebook. I can’t speak of the North American experience as you self quarantined because I didn’t share it. Maybe you were staggered by the speed of current events too.

In the past two weeks, airports and borders closed worldwide with only a day or two of warning, not months or years like they did before and during WWII. I don't want to repeat the details of our experience here, they are in my previous blog. You already know that we could not find a flight to the US from Argentina so we went to Chile where our troubles started all over again as they once again scheduled to shut the airport one day before our flight. We found ourselves stranded on three separate occasions in one week with few if any options to exit. I hope this doesn’t sound like a lighthearted adventure. Adventure yes, but really rather serious. 

I compared the possibility of us getting stranded overseas to my father and his family almost getting stranded in Europe a hundred years ago because it seems similar to me. But it wasn't really. His family left voluntarily, leaving a home and a support system of extended family in place there while we didn’t have those things either there or here. He was leaving, we were returning. We were escaping an international health crisis, He was trying to immigrate. But what we had it common was the border closing and having to exit before it happened. 

So what do Americans stranded overseas have to look forward to? Well, most will be in self-quarantine unable to leave their hotel room except to go to the grocery store or pharmacy. They will probably need a note from the hotel proving that is their address. At least that is what my friends living in Argentina need to do. One friend can walk her dog as far as the next corner. She can't go around the block. Groceries are open two hours a day in her small town in Mendoza.

I have previously posted many photos here and on Facebook of 9 de Julio, where we lived. Here is a photo of our neighborhood in quarantine, with no cars and no people. 

I am in contact with another person who chose to continue an extended vacation with family in Penang, Malaysia. One person per family can go out for groceries under their 'movement control' plan. 

But it is not so easy in other places. In Ecuador, the hotels have been told they need to close down so the travelers literally have nowhere to go. There is no one in the streets, shops are closed, there is no food, there is no street access. 

Anyway, I am relieved to be back. We chose this location in Scottsdale because we are surrounded by walking trails and open desert. It took me a week to stock the kitchen as there was nothing here except some salt. I am having a little trouble getting used to not hopping in the car several a day but you probably felt/feel the same way. I'm trying to keep in touch with people, particularly friends living alone. 

And I hope it won't be too long until we meet again. 

The Great Escape

“Running just as fast as we can, holding onto one another’s hand, trying to get away into the night…”

The lyrics to this teen pop song have been stuck in my head for days. That's how it felt to me. The two of us trying to escape ahead of the virus, and the grownups with their borders and laws.

If you have seen my recent Facebook posts you know that we planned to return to North America on a  cruise from Chile. We canceled after the first cruise ship went into quarantine a few weeks ago and this past week the cruise line itself canceled the cruise at the very last minute, stranding thousands of passengers in Chile. (In fairness to them it was not their fault, it was the Chilean government that made the decision). Then we booked flight after flight,  5 or 6  on different carriers into and out of different countries, all of which were either canceled or proved illegal after borders and airports in three different countries closed.

My father was a refugee from Eastern Europe. He left his homeland with only one hour's notice before the borders closed on what became the Iron Curtain. This story plays an important part in my family history and while these two stories and their consequences are not the same, they are close enough to keep me up at night.

If we’d been somewhere comfortable in a way that could work for a longer term like Mendoza, Argentina or Puerta Vallarta, Mexico we would have just played musical chairs, stopped in the next available seat, and hunkered down. But the province of Mendoza was one of the first to close its borders, even before Argentina closed the airport. And Vallarta is still an option for us.

I just glanced through some texts and Facebook posts I have made in the past week and I can hardly believe what was going on. I am posting some here not so much for you, the reader, but as catharsis for me to release the stress this situation caused.

The airline just canceled our Tuesday flight. We now have paid for two tickets to the US but still can’t get out of this city.

After eight hours on hold on the phone, we are flying FROM Santiago, Chile but we can’t get TO Santiago.

Help. Borders closing here. We need to get out before the 18th. Can you please get on the phone with COPA airlines and try to find us a flight through Panama or Rio. Can't go through Peru or Columbia, they are already closed. Mexico is ok.

Don't try to call, we are on hold with Delta for the past two hours.             

Now we are stuck in Chile. The same problem as Argentina, the President is closing the airport the day before our flight leaves. We may really be trapped this time. 

These are just a few of the messages I have sent or posted in the last 10 days. And I am not even listing my messages to friends who flew to Argentina for a tango festival that was canceled while they were at the airport or in the air. I wasn't able to stop them (3 people from different cities) from flying in. Once they arrived they had only two options - to go into self-quarantine for two weeks or fly back.

March has been a difficult month so far. Can someone please press the reset button?


                             

Probably The Quirkiest Museum in Buenos Aires +1

There are a lot of museums in Buenos Aires.. in the past few days I visited two small specialty museums both by accident. I can’t say that ever happened before. 

The Palace of Running Water probably has the most beautiful exterior in Buenos Aires and covers an entire city block. You can’t miss seeing it as you drive or walk by. It was originally a water pumping station built in the Victorian era. The elaborately tiled structure hides the city’s water system. It was built at a time that mass immigration caused several epidemics of yellow fever, cholera and typhoid and was something of an architectural marvel in its day. 

The inside is rather industrial and less impressive. All household bills in Argentina need to be paid in person, not online or through the mail. This includes water bills or electric bills. So the first thing you see when you enter the building is a long line of people waiting to pay their water bill. You would not believe how much time people spend here waiting on lines for stuff like this. 

The small free museum exhibits a mix of floor plans, pipes, photographs and drawings. There was also an exhibit of art created with recycled materials. Actually it was this exhibit we went to see, we didn’t even know about the museum. Mostly I just wanted to see inside this beautiful building. I am often surprised what is inside open doorways of old buildings in foreign cities. Well this exhibit of plumbing fixtures was certainly a surprise. 

Toilets and bidets. Bidets are in most, if not all homes here. 

The sculptures were made from recycled materials,  mostly  water bottles and soda cans.

Made from cut and colored water bottles

 mostly water bottles

Not a must-do museum but interesting.

The second museum was also a surprise. We went to a piano concert held in the beautiful main synagogue of Buenos Aires.

It is located in the center of town half a block from the famous Teatro Colon, the main theater of the city which also has  lovely architecture.

 Here is a photo of the interior during the concert.

Before I left the synagogue i walked through their small museum. The bulk of their collection was art relating to immigration to Argentina, which started during that wave in the Victorian era. Here are some photos.

This is a painting of passengers coming over In a ship in steerage class.
This is how my eight year old father came to America as well . He and his siblings were supposed to have a stateroom but as children traveling alone they were thrown into steerage and the room sold to someone else. 

An early immigrant.

Last spring I posted several times about the art in Argentina, One post was April 22 which included street art. Another was earlier than that and showed art from the terrific MALBA museum of Latin American art. If you enjoy looking at photos of art you might want to scroll back and look at those nice pieces again.