I think she ran out of steam by the Wednesday.
Stuck in Peru
Tuesday 17th March we join a WhatsApp Group
The WhatsApp group of Brits and Irish that we've joined here in Peru to work together to persuade the UK government that we need to be repatriated, has now set up a data team! That's because there are hundreds of us.
Wednesday 18th March
Morning everyone from our wonderful hotel in Lima Airport 😊 Not a huge amount of updates to report – unsurprisingly. Although if any of ye want to see the sunset over Lima Airport let me know…
The two WhatsApp groups that we joined, one for Lima and the other for Cusco have been amazing. There are probably over 300/400 people stuck here, Irish and Brits. Between them, the issue was raised in the House of Commons yesterday, featured on the BBC 6 and 9 o clock news, the ITV News at Ten and several other media outlets. Everyone has been in touch with the MP and I’ve messaged Brendan Griffin (TD for Kerry) who has responded.
The Peruvian Government has signed a law allowing repartition flights to come in. These flights must be organised by the countries themselves to bring their own citizens back. We’ve registered with both the UK Embassy in Lima and the Irish Embassy in Chile (who look after Peru). The team at the Irish Embassy has confirmed that they are pulling together all the details of people stuck in Peru and establishing the logistics of trying to get us home. But say it could take days.
The travel agency is also working for us. We are on their priority list however they can really only begin to book flights once the scheduled flights restart. Who knows when that might happen.
What we want to make sure is that we are on one of those repartition flights out of here to Ireland/UK. We both believe there are too many people for everyone to get out and so the key for us is to be on one of the flights that do go.
In other news, I’ve read three of six books I brought. I’ll write up my thoughts on them shortly – gives me something to do. I’ll also be writing to Penguin Ireland to ask if Mary McAleese will come down to the Dingle Literary Festival – again gives me a purpose 😊
The airport itself has seen a little more activity with flights going out to Santiago in Chile and Cusco. Rumour has it that the US, Israel and Germans are bringing their citizens home.
Hotel is coping with the situation and their salads are superb. But in truth when you are stuck in a hotel 24/7 there is only so much green stuff you can eat.
More as and when and if you know anyone with an aeroplane that will fly halfway around the world to pick us up, send them our way. In other words, if any of you are related to JP McManus or Dermot Desmond 😊
Thursday 19th March
Morning from Lima, 3 of 14… at least we hope it’s 14. The lockdown here is getting more dramatic with reports of tanks on the streets and blocking the main roads into the capital.
It's strange to say it but somehow being inside the airport compound behind locked gates with the army protecting us seems safe and we can always walk to the terminal building whenever planes start to fly again.
Yesterday passed a lot quicker than you would otherwise think because a story unfolded that showed the stark differences in culture between the Irish and the Brits.
I am a member of three WhatsApp groups– how facebook must be rubbering their hands in glee with all the data they are collecting. Anyway, one is for people stuck in Cusco, one for everyone stuck in Lima and then a dedicated one for Irish stuck in Peru.
Yesterday around lunchtime there was major excitement when we got emails from both embassies announcing a flight on Saturday, Lima to London with Avianca, albeit at €3000 each. It’s extortionate without a doubt but we both immediately went yes, please.
Immediately the WhatsApp groups went into a frenzy. The Cusco group, which is made up of both nationalities, were, of course, horrified at the price, aren’t we all but also freaked out that by being in Cusco how would they get to Lima. No planes and a 21-hour drive.
The Irish in Peru group went along the lines of “ok, well is anyone going for this, I think I’ll sign up and see” or “Jaysus that’s steep but I’ll sign up”.
Whereas the general "Stuck in Lima" group went into absolute meltdown. The anger was practically coming off the keyboard. Along the lines of what is our government doing (true), how can they charge this amount, how dare they, let's get onto our MP, who knows anyone in the media to highlight our story. I responded to say that we’d signed up but oh la la I was asked to take down my comment because it was not helping the cause. So much for putting another viewpoint.
We felt that both governments actually had enough to be doing at home where hundreds of thousands of people are about to lose their jobs, people are struggling to pay the rent, businesses are running out of cash and the elderly are terrified to be prioritising 400 people in Peru. At one point several people “can they not send the navy to rescue us” I mean…..
Turned out I was too busy managing my WhatsApp’s to do the invite to Mary McAleese 😊 Now there’s another sentence I never thought I would write.
Having only decided to sign up to Netflix in January we have possibly become their biggest fans watching some films or show with them every night and last evening was no exception. We passed a couple of hours watching Mama Mia which is just great fun although we didn’t get to dance around the room. We have very different viewing tastes whereas now we need to find things to watch together – suggestions welcome, that are light, engaging and funny or dramatic in a good way. We are creating our own drama here thanks 😊
Woke this morning to hear that one of my favourite people, Ryan Tubridy gave us a shout out on his show, thanks to Roisin – such a lovely thought, thanks Roisin x
Late last night we also got reports of a KLM/Air France flight that might fly to Paris from Lima on Friday or Saturday. No price or firm details of that but we signed up. I guess the airlines know there are people stranded and if they can fly under the humanitarian banner they can come in and fly out with paying passengers.
And Ireland being the small world that it turns out that Margaret Power (ex-Lady Captain of Ceann Sibeal and semi-resident in Ballydavid) has a niece who is looking after us from the Chilean Embassy.
Our local TD and my BF from the festival, Brendan Griffin, has been in touch and he is talking to the DFA about our case.
How is everyone else doing? Things seem to be getting more serious which they will probably do before they get better. Seemingly good news out of Wuhan/China where no new cases have been identified so if that’s true there may be light at the end of the tunnel.
I do want to give a big shout out to the library service because being a member enables me to download the latest Hello magazine free of charge –
Thursday 19th March, later in the day
Yesterday was another exciting day in our world. Before I get onto that, it was also a day of nice memories on what would have been my Mum’s 89th birthday. Sadly, we lost her three years ago but we have lovely memories of celebrating her birthday over the years. Here’s to you Mum.
We also woke to hear that Roisin Knox had been very thoughtful and got a shout out for us on the Ryan Tubridy Show. It was great to play it back and hear our names. Many other people heard it so we woke to some nice messages asking how we are getting on.
Onto day 4 of, who knows how many, in Peru. The cultural differences between the Irish and the Brits became even starker today… 😊
The core of the biggest Whatsapp group is still working on press statements going to UK media about their plight. They have got super coverage and raised the profile dramatically. Dominic Raab was before a Commons Select Committee saying that there are about 1 million British people stranded around the world and it is a logistical nightmare to bring them back. In truth, most are safe and, in a position to sit it out. Although people needing medical care and those with a lack of funds are in serious need. And there’s a lot of truth in that even though I cannot stand the guy.
At the same time, we had an update regarding the potential flight out from Lima being promoted by the Irish and British Embassies. The “Irish in Peru” group got an email from the Embassy saying the airline, Avianca, is now asking people to sign up directly with them indicating which flight they would go for. The Irish were on it like a shot and with a price reduction to $2,400. The comments were along the lines of “if this flight home works, we’ll have a serious session on the plane”, “I’m gonna drink $3k worth of alcohol😊” “For $3k I am on the Middleton and Lobster”! All in humorous and funny posts.
One entertaining post on the Irish group was “In the Wild Rover Hostel” which someone responded to with “Give the Manager Chris a slap on the marty and Cici a kiss from me”. Who knows what a marty is? The only Marty we know is our neighbour in Dublin, Marty Morrissey😊
In the meantime, the Israelis have brought in 4 planes to take their citizens home, all free flights. The Germans & the French are sending planes scheduled for the coming days. I’ll leave you to imagine the comments from the Brits on that one.
Although unfortunately for some of the Israeli it turns out that they have underestimated the numbers and many were left behind. That’s hard and I would find that hard to cope with. Thinking you are on a flight, turning up and then, eh no sorry we can’t take you. But apparently, they are coming back today.
The afternoon developed with a flight offer from Saga. I don’t know how many of you are aware of Saga but they are squarely aimed at the over 55’s which we now fall into that category. The proposal from their office in the UK is that they are chartering a plane to take back 100 or so of their clients. They need a minimum of 250 to make the flight viable economically and this offer has been pushed out to the Irish and Brits. A mostly positive reaction to this, certainly from the Irish group, some Brits still angry and wanting to know why RAF cannot fly in for them. TBH this is probably our best hope right now. Only 150 people needed to fill that plane as Saga already has 100. Time will tell.
The average age of a Saga client is around early/mid-’60s. So twelve hours in a plane with mid-sixty-year-olds will result in some falling asleep, some too hot, some queuing for the toilet regularly – although that’s probably the men (ah-hem, a note from the editor - that's me you're talking about)
They need to get enough people interested in the flight, then work with the Peruvian authorities to allow the plane to land, arrange to pull everyone in from surrounding areas – no mean feat during a lockdown and then get to take off.
In other news, the menu in the hotel has been dramatically reduced ☹ Its still ok but it has gone from about 5 or 6 choices for me to one… or two if I am a wee bit more adventurous.
We finished the evening watching Two Weeks Notice. It is our plan to watch some light entertainment and step away from the news for at least two hours and for me spending those hours watching Hugh Grant was perfect.
Friday 20th March
Not a huge amount to report from yesterday. Which in itself is frustrating. No movie last night, in fact, it was like our normal Friday evenings. I watched the Late Late Show and Peter watched a movie.
A wee update on the flight situation: The Saga flight has fallen off the radar because they could not pull it together for whatever reason. The Avianca flight the same, they got a lot of people interested but not enough to make it financially viable. Our travel agent calls every day and is keeping an eye on commercial flights that might become available for us, but nothing showing up so far.
The two embassies (Irish and UK) have been in touch to say that they are working frantically to get us home but nothing concrete on the horizon as yet. The latest option appears to be the Portuguese who are working with the EU to put together a flight. It would be a Lima to Lisbon route and we’ve put our names down if that happens. We thought at worst we could sail home😊 After all Peter did his level 1 & 2 training to sail last year!!
The Brits on the Whatsapp group are getting angrier and angrier, although two have resorted to praying. The Irish group are gathering together to up the media coverage of our situation. There’s a press release being put together, and we are going to send it out to all. Also, we are lobbying MEP’s to ensure if there is an EU repatriation flight, we are included. (That’s my job!) Tips, advice and ideas welcome. TG we only have a few MEP’s….
The Peruvian President has made two announcements we believe. One that he is closing the airport again tomorrow to all flights but on the upside says if everyone adheres to the lockdown, he will lift it on 31st March.
So far we are still allowed to move around the hotel, go outside but we are hearing stories all the time that people staying in hotels are being told to stay in their room and use room service.
Have a lovely weekend everyone, get out and about for walks if you can and turn off the social media for an hour and take a break from the news.
Saturday 21st March
Busy morning so far... Wrote to 13 Irish MEP's about our plight. So far Mairead McGuinness, Ciaran Cuffe and Barry Andrews replied. By all accounts, Simon Coveney is leading up our case as the only option now is an official government repatriation flight.
Set up us on a VPN, what is that you might ask, me too, never heard of this before we came on holidays. But it enables us to watch RTE, BBC and access our Virgin Media service from Peru. How one's priorities change in a few days
A wee update. Both the UK and Irish governments seem to have woken up and leapt into action all of a sudden. UK Foreign Office says they are arranging flights within the next few days. Within the Irish Government, we are in the hands of Simon Coveney and he is hoping to have news this evening or tomorrow. Still could be days away before anything happens and of course, it is totally depended on the Peruvians cooperating...
In breaking news from Lima, I have just taken a phone call Michael Martin (for the non-Irish on here he is the leader of the opposition) to say he got my email, had spoken with Simon Coveney and they were working hard on the rescue flight. Kudos on him doing that, has lots on his plate no doubt, including forming a government
Sunday 22nd March
Yesterday was a more exciting day then you might imagine. Beginning with downs and finishing with good news and lots of laughs. We woke to a sort of triple whammy and not in a good way. The news that the Peruvian authorities were formally closing the airport to any flights other than government planes, and that the Avianca and Saga flight options were not going ahead. We were staring at the 31st as the earliest date when the state of emergency would be lifted. We headed off to breakfast with me saying to Peter if only we knew someone with an aeroplane…
Over breakfast, we got word from our travel agent that in fact the Saga flight could happen and he was going to try and get us on that. Turns out that the flight was not only flying out the Saga clients but also passengers from a cruise ship!! The hotel room in Lima airport was suddenly looking more attractive. Then, hey could not make that flight happen in the end so my dream (not) of spending 12 hours with British passengers from a cruise was crushed…
The Irish in Peru were pulling themselves together and my task was to send the press release to all the MEP’s. We also had a great response and offer of help from a Cork TD called James O Connor. We were told to email him and cc in Michaél Martin.
From my email to the 13 MEP’s I got some great and swift responses. Not everyone mind you and names will be named… Ciaran Cuffe, Mairead McGuiness, Maria Walsh, Frances Fitzgerald, Barry Andrews and Clare Daly all got onto the Tánaiste’s office and confirmed our hopefully NBF Simon C was working hard on sorting out flights. So with a little hop and more of a spring in our step, we headed for breakfast.
A quiet few hours and there I am playing solitaire on the bed when the phone rings and sure isn’t it only Michaél Martin. He’s a little out of breath and before I had any thoughts as to why he tells me he is out for a walk – how does he have the time I wondered – and he wanted to give me a call to say he had spoken to Minister Coveney and confirmed that the DFA was working hard on putting together flights.
The afternoon began quietly before the British Foreign Office arrived on the scene. First, there was an email from them saying that within the hour they would be sending out formal details and could the WhatsApp groups make sure that everyone had registered their email address with the Embassy. Well if that didn’t wake up people. Within an hour another 100 people were added to the list of those stuck in Peru. The end total turns out to be 584 Irish and British stranded here.
We then got the official email from the Embassy asking us to send all the necessary details, which of course we did. The WhatsApp group was alive with messages but there was a distinct feeling that the Brits are pulling away on this one with the Irish still waiting to hear. Thankfully being married to a Brit we are being swept up in the British repatriation. After all those years of him having to put up with being called Mr O'Reilly, it now looks like I am going to be Mrs McKay for a few days.
Everything settled back down, back to my solitaire. I was only getting going when I got a message from someone, I have mentored to say her boss, Irish guy (his Dad set up a major Irish airline 😊) lives in South America (Columbia to be precise) and owns an airline!! She has been in touch with him and he said tell Sheila to contact me. Before we got carried away, we knew he could not just put on one of his planes and fly in to pick us up.
I emailed him and he responded back immediately, and we had a lovely conversation. Although the upshot is that he said never to trust the Peruvian government if the hotel is ok that’s lucky and stay put. And to keep in touch. It was lovely to have had the conversation and really good of him to respond so quickly to someone he’d never met. (We learned after we returned that he did make two planes available to fly those stuck in Cuzco back to Lima - what a star.)
I know it’s a small gesture but huge kudos to both Michaél Martin and Declan Ryan who responded immediately to me. Even though they didn’t have anything firm or concrete proposals we felt that people were on our side and certainly gave us a huge lift to end the day as well as bragging rights from me to himself – he has not had a call from Jermyn Corbyn or Richard Branson 😊
Monday 23rd March
Not a huge amount to report from yesterday. A few phone calls from friends which were great, means we are not just talking to each other!! Finished the evening watching The Great House Revival, IMHO the chandelier in the main hallway was too small, as was the mirror, the furniture and the colour was too contemporary. All in all they didn’t take on board Hugh’s advice but they did achieve a phenomenal job with a small budget. Peter even thought it was a great programme even though he is not a fan of Hugh – who btw I think is lovely.
Had a lovely chat with an Irish Independent journalist, Ian Begley. I asked him if he was related to any of the West Kerry Begley’s and he says he gets asked that all the time and no he is not. Turns out his Dad was a Bagley and he changed it to Begley so as not to be thought of as a Protestant. !!
The recent headlines might lead you to believe we’ll be home soon, but the reality is far different. We have more information and therefore a greater understanding of the predicament we face… I say we, the group now numbers over 610.
The Peruvian government has confirmed that they will allow official repatriation flights from national governments to land at the military part of Lima airport. However, they will only allow one plane a day and everyone needing to board that plane must be in or near the airport when it lands. That’s ok for us because we are literally overlooking the runway. But the larger percentage of Irish are stuck in a tourist city called Cuzco. No flights are allowed from there and the bus will take 20 hours. The Irish Government has been in touch this morning to confirm that they are busing in people from Cusco at some point.
Add to the complexity of the situation is that there are apparently over 4,000 Germans stranded here, along with some Swedish, French, Australians, Americans and that’s just the nationalities we know of.
The logistics of coordinating each country to schedule their flights whilst at the same time bringing in their citizens from remote and often inaccessible parts of the countries is a massive challenge.
Although positive news is that the Air France plane did come in, land and take off about 5pm as a full flight. That’s 330 odd happy French people.
We (the Irish Group stuck here) have set up a petition to keep the pressure on the Irish Government and thanks to everyone who signed it. We are over 1,100 and have had retweets from Dara O’Briain and Vicky Phelan which raises the profile no end.
On and on the downside with fewer people in the hotel the nutter guest has managed to engage us in conversation more than once. We need to stop adopting the West Kerry approach of talking to everyone and adopt the London commuter approach of eyes down, headphones in and no talking.
This morning we start an hour-long yoga class – online with the lovely Hsin in Beckenham. She achieved what I would have thought was the most impossible task – getting himself to take up yoga. He loves it, finds it really brilliant. Who knew that I’d have to come all the way to a hotel room in Lima to begin my journey with yoga.
Tuesday 24th March
Morning all. We are now back from breakfast and a walk around the car park. It's 30degrees here and a bright sunny day. Not a huge amount to report from yesterday. Most of us were occupied with the news from both the UK and Ireland. We see the UK is following everyone's footsteps in declaring a sort of lockdown but the Brits here are feeling well set for it having started a week or more ago.
We started our yoga session with Hsin and this is the god's honest truth, we had literally settled in and started our breathing technique to calm us down when the hotel phone rang and we were asked to move rooms. Bang goes the calming efforts as we quickly packed and relocated to the 3rd floor. No airport view but a slightly bigger room. The hotel has fewer and fewer guests and they are scaling back their service considerably. They are gathering us all together on one floor (so much for social distancing) and the restaurant is now closed so we are being fed and watered in the bar!
We knew the first UK repatriation flight was cancelled on Monday and Tuesday, then rescheduled for Wednesday (today).
So it was pleasing to wake this morning and see it had left Heathrow. Due here about 6pm our time and scheduled to leave again at 8am our time - about 1pm your time tomorrow. We are not expecting to be on that flight, the British Embassy is prioritising over 70's and vulnerable. They need 3 planes at least but it is a very encouraging sign that flights are coming.
The Spanish and Swiss are also flying in planes today for its citizens.
The Irish Embassy has been in touch to say that they are awaiting a date from the Peruvian Government as to when they can land a plane. Once they know that they'll organise to move people from the other areas of Peru.
We have our yoga rescheduled for this morning at 11 and I am determined to be more flexible when I come home - in body at least :)
Wednesday 25th March
Fly home…
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| On the bus to the military base to be processed |
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| Being processed |
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| Boarding plane |
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| Heathrow T2 |
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