Quarantine Diary: Week 1 completed

As mentioned in the last blog article, our entire travel plans have changed or disappeared overnight. Here is a brief summary of what happened: Until Friday (13.3.) there was no talk of Corona at all here in South America, although there had been isolated cases in recent weeks. But in Cusco we heard more and more people talking about it and suddenly there were a few face masks to be seen. On Saturday our flight for the end of March was cancelled, even though until then there was only an entry ban for Europeans. After much consideration, we decided on Sunday afternoon to rebook our return flight (which was supposed to go through the USA on Thursday). Unfortunately, we were already too late here. On Sunday evening, the Peruvian president made a televised speech announcing a 15-day quarantine for the whole of Peru starting on Tuesday. The rules for this are similar to the curfews in some countries, and travel within the country is also prohibited. We learned all this on Monday morning from other hostel residents - just before we wanted to move to another place. We were told that the curfew would be enforced immediately by the police and the military, and that foreigners currently have a very hard time on the streets of Peru because they are all potentially considered carriers of the virus.

To be honest, we were completely shocked, because deep down we were still expecting to return home earlier that week. Fortunately, everything was quickly settled in the hostel: we are allowed to stay as long as necessary at half the price of the room. In addition, the hostel owner will go shopping for us so that we can prepare our own meals in the kitchen. So far, this has worked out very well and we are provided with supplies according to our needs (we write shopping lists). Not everything is available in the supermarket, but no one has to starve. Since we can't do our own shopping and the police are heavily patrolling, we don't leave the hostel grounds.

The first few days were particularly difficult for me (Tabea) because I simply couldn't come to terms with the idea of potentially being stuck in this hostel for 2 weeks or even more, and I had an incredible longing for home. But now we have created a temporary routine here (which consists of a lot of "doing nothing") and for the most part we manage to think positively. For example, the hostel garden with swimming pool is on our list of things to enjoy. Not all tourists currently in Peru have this luxury. We are also in good company: besides us, there is an American traveler here and a group of 13 Europeans, Americans, and Latinos who were on a volunteer project in Peru. Most of them don't want to go home and seem to be enjoying their time here on forced vacation.

Of course, we feel a little different: we want to go home. Since the beginning of last week, in addition to the list from the Foreign Office, further registration lists have been published, on which we are registered. The German embassy also communicates daily by email and Facebook about the current status of the government's repatriation flights, on which we are unfortunately dependent now. At times, for example, it was said that they wanted to enable us to come to Lima soon, but there has been no progress here for days. So we have to continue to be patient and hope that Germany will soon receive the necessary approvals to allow the flights to take place. Currently (Monday, 23.3.) is our eighth day in quarantine and we hope that there will not be many more.