‘I Got Lucky’: A Peru Vacation, A Perilous Return

With multiple Middle Eastern deployments under his belt, Rob Harris is something of an expert on high-stakes travel experiences.

But when he got back to North Carolina a week ago from his first personal trip abroad in South America, the 32-year-old Army veteran was almost ready to kiss the ground.

What was planned as a week exploring Incan ruins and learning about ancient plant medicine segued into a 10-day stint in quarantine limbo as the coronavirus pandemic escalated in mid-March.

"I got lucky," Harris said. "Everything that happened through the entire trip ... it was unfortunate from the beginning but it was kind of exhilarating — almost."

Harris arrived in Peru the day that the country's Ministry of Health announced 28 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, and the U.S. Department of State issued a health alert on travel there. Peru's swift response to the pandemic meant that by the time he got to his retreat center outside of Cusco, it was too late to turn back.

By March 16, Peru had declared a national state of emergency, enacted a 15-day mandatory quarantine and closed all international borders on 24 hours' notice. No one was getting in — or out.

"We were hearing a few things here and there, but there was no way I could have known," said Harris. "You didn't think the one country in the world that did that was going to be Peru."

On television, Harris watched thousands of people flood the Lima airport in the hope of making a last-minute flight. Facing a 90-minute drive through the mountains to the small airport in Cusco, he decided he would have to remain in Peru until the end of March.

"With layovers and cancelled flights and things like that, the trip seemed almost cursed from the beginning but I didn't see it as a bad omen and I just kept going," said Harris.

So he booked flights for March 31, when Peru was scheduled to lift its initial quarantine. In the meantime, his planned ayahuasca retreat came to an end. Along with another American participant, Harris spent another 12 nights hunkered down in a hostel in the town of Urubamba in Peru's Sacred Valley.

Though the area is home to the ruins at Machu Picchu — and the majority of Peru's tourism — Harris said that the locals seemed wary of outsiders.

"We were told that normally they're friendly people, but with all of this going on they were very skeptical of everyone. In that area education isn't a priority. There aren't many schools and most of the adults are going to believe whatever they hear."

Over the next two weeks, Peru's coronavirus case count moved north of 1,000, and a nationwide 6 p.m. curfew went into effect. The borders remained closed and Harris' flight out was going nowhere.

"My mom in Florida was more worried about the situation than I was being in the situation," said Harris. "After being stuck there for a little over a week, things were getting more serious and the curfew got worse."

On March 29, a friend called upon U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson to intervene. Hudson represents North Carolina's 8th District, which includes parts of Moore County and Fort Bragg.

The U.S. Embassy in Lima began chartering repatriation flights for American citizens in the last week of March. But those flights have been inconsistent and scheduled on short notice as they clear bureaucratic hurdles to secure approval from the Peruvian civil defense department.

Two days and countless phone calls and text messages later, including between Hudson and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Harris was booked on an April 1 flight from Cusco to Lima, and on to Miami.

Hudson's office also stepped in to ensure Harris had what he needed while he remained in Peru — one staff member used Google translate to communicate with a local pharmacist.

"They were on top of everything, super quick getting back to me. Even just the compassionate ‘how are you doing' part of it," said Harris. "One morning I got a call from the embassy and they moved me up to the top of the list."

At that point, about 4,000 Americans had been repatriated from behind Peru's closed borders. As of this week, that number has climbed north of 6,000.

With flights booked for Harris and his American companion, the only thing left was to get from Urubamba to Cusco by 9:30 a.m. April 1. Which, like almost everything else on coronavirus lockdown, was a lot harder than it would have been on a normal day.

"The embassy could get us on a flight but there was no way anyone was coming to get us by car," said Harris. "All the roads were blocked, there were checkpoints everywhere, there were literally boulders in the road."

One ride fell through, then another. Finally, Harris threw law and order to the wind and resorted to bribing a police officer.

"He didn't know us, we didn't know him and he charged like three times the going rate for a cab," he said. "As we were going we had to duck and literally get down on the floor to try not to be seen going through checkpoints. It was really bizarre.

"I was pretty determined to get to that airport because I knew if we got there it would be all right."

Back home in Fayetteville, Harris has gone from one surreal experience to another. When he left, schools were still in session, soldiers still jammed the roads on and off of Fort Bragg, and diners gathered around restaurants' tables.

Now life as he knew it has ground to a halt. For his part, Harris has been laying low at home and consuming record quantities of takeout. He's also thinking about returning to Peru in another few years to visit Machu Picchu, which should have been the highlight of his trip but closed in light of the pandemic.

"I was so happy to see my dog again. It's me and her pretty much all day everyday," he said. "I'm trying to maintain some semblance of normal, whatever that is now."