The Landslide – A Short Trip To Peru, Part 8

Stephan and I have been caught in a pandemic lockdown at a Peruvian Amazon lodge. The two-week quarantine order has been extended three times. I’ve run out of antidepressants and been sick during the six weeks we've waited to go home to our sailboat in Ecuador.

SV Hanalei’s Ecuadorian papers have expired. We can’t extend her temporary import unless we’re in country, but the border is still closed. We’re trying to evacuate to the U.S. Yesterday, we drove all day from the Amazon to Cusco. This morning we’ll board a charter bus to make the 20-hour overland trip to Lima for tomorrow’s flight home.

IR 101

Today's story is told in (sort of) real time through a WhatsApp group thread. The group comprises passengers of six nationalities and two relentlessly cheerful volunteers who nicknamed us International Relations 101.

Low Oxygen

The altitude sickness came on last night. After nearly two months at sea level, we climbed 11,000 feet in nine hours. I have a splitting headache and am so short of breath I can’t carry my own bag to the meeting point.

My mini-oxygen tank, a cylinder the size of a Starbucks Venti, is rigged like an asthma inhaler. One puff helps me breathe, but doesn’t do much for the headache.

I'm trying to pace myself. I don’t know how many puffs it holds, but do know the road to Lima crosses 14,000-foot mountains.

By the time the bus collects everyone we are sixteen adults, one baby and two kittens. Masks and gloves are mandatory, as is social distance among thirty-seven seats. Luggage goes underneath; food and warm clothes take up the rest of the space.

The passengers of IR 101 remained in Peru–isolating in hostels, private homes and farms–long after most tourists evacuated in late March. The virus hasn’t flattened Cusco. Remote areas haven’t been hit, either, but we all seem wary of each other.

The bus and passengers who left the week before we did.

Our first stop is the Ministry of Health, DIRESA, for Covid testing. What that means here is a pulse oximeter of oxygen saturation and a temperature check.
We’re called out a few at a time.

I self-administer two prophylactic puffs of oxygen and wait, a little anxious.

Should I take the oxygen with me when I am called?

The bus driver says no. It may look like I need it because I have the virus. Better that one passenger is left behind than a whole bus.

Even with a mask on, the kittens make me sneeze. Unexplained sneezes aren't welcome in the age of Covid, but I don't have the energy to explain as I leave the bus.

From a social distance, a nurse shoots my forehead. Temperature normal. Another nurse records the number.

Then comes the pulse oximeter. She reads my numbers and her manner changes. I might imagine her step backwards. We might have a problem. My oxygen saturation is 89%, well below acceptable levels.

I suddenly have its of energy to explain I’m not ill. It’s the sudden altitude change. The sooner I am cleared to leave for Lima, the sooner I can breathe again. She’s dubious.

Just let me go.

I show her my results from yesterday at sea level and she relents. Maybe she believes me. Maybe she just wants the foreigners to go away.

At any rate, she stamps my papers.

On the Road

I make this to be the fourteenth checkpoint since we left Wasaí yesterday morning. There’s no way around them. Papers are checked, but nobody is allowed out.

Abancay, Peru.

After six hours, we’re all looking forward to stopping for a few minutes at Abancay. It turns out the town is wary of strangers, too. Permission to stop is denied.

A half hour later we do stop–suddenly– at a hastily-erected army barricade near Chalhuanca.

Landslide

Ten minutes earlier, a chunk of the Andes collapsed into a nearby river, which carried lava-thick mud across the road directly ahead. If not for our delay in Cusco we might be on the other side, munching our tropical snacks, oblivious to a natural disaster.

Or the whole bus might have been bulldozed over the mountainside.

And people think crossing an ocean is dangerous?

Our intrepid volunteers are on the job from undisclosed remote locations.

We are here.

No amount of signed and stamped paperwork will get us around Mother Nature’s barricade.

The soldiers at the roadblock don’t know quite what to do with us. The volunteers have scrambled, furiously texting and phoning the U.S. Embassy. The Embassy phones local authorities. Everyone wants information, answers, reassurance.

Some of us want more immediate concessions, like to use the bathroom. The driver says we can’t while the bus is stopped.

After the police take over from the army, they relent. We’re allowed out one by one to negotiate a nearby field in the dark.

Working On It

Sleep is hard to come while wearing a mask and gloves and sitting upright. I doze and wake and think about a book I read in high school.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder, is a novel about five people who die in Peru. It isn’t so much about the cause of death–an Inca rope bridge collapses on the road from Cusco to Lima–but how each came to be on that bridge at that time.

What brought us all to Peru seven weeks ago? Two students from Korea who came to study Spanish who quarantined with their host families; a norteamericana just beginning a year of adventure travel; the owner of a Peruvian restaurant in California visiting her mother; a young Californian studying plant medicine; an older Californian seeing Peru solo; a young mother with a baby who finally has permission to join her partner; newlywed circus performers; and Stephan and me, the people who live on a boat in Ecuador. 

Not everyone is heading home. A pair of backpacking Colombians who can’t return the way they came have no flight to look forward to. An American couple from a retreat center in Pullcalpa–the people with the kittens–will have more travel days to reach their jungle home.

We’ve run up against a cultural roadblock. Peruvians are not inclined to pester authorities about rules.

The sudden, wobbly headlights of a passing dump truck enroute to the work site jerk me back from dreaming. It’s followed by more, each timed for the moment I fall back asleep.

At daylight, when they return, I groggily note they’re weighed down, dripping sludge down from their tailgates.

Not On Our Hands

Twelve of us are booked on a flight to Miami that leaves tomorrow. Solange Reps, the travel agency that arranged the flights at $1300 per person, has a reputation among #StuckInPeru for inflexibility about changes or refunds.

The bus makes a video to release to Peruvian news outlets. Favors are called in. Influential relatives are contacted.

Solange Reps could care less. Their next flight–already fully booked–is in a week.

We’ll have to think about that later. For now, I only want to get to Lima in one piece.

Washout

 Eventually, the police let us wander. We get food and try to stay out of the sun.

We’re going to be here ‘til the cows come home.

Drone shot of worksite and landslide from Chalhuanca’s Facebook page.

How long can it take to clear a road?  

The problem is the river of mud. As fast as workers move the sludge, more takes its place.

Twenty-four hours after the landslide, we start to see progress.

When we are finally cleared to drive it’s only a few minutes before we reach the landslide. They’ve found a way around it, built a bypass road in one day.

Seriously, give me an ocean any day.

Fair Winds,

Christine