Südamerika mit Winnietwo

Here's a summery of how we got stuck in Colombia during the Corona pandemic. We entered Colombia on 26th January 2020. At that point the world had 2,800 reported Corona cases and only 29 of them were outside of China in 10 countries, 26 of them came from Wuhan City. 80 people had died, all of them in China.

We were watching the news at the time but weren't really concerned that it might come to South America soon. While making our way north the numbers of cases and deaths increased gradually worldwide. We got to Santa Fe de Antioquia on 26th February 2020, the same day that the Coronavirus hit South America when Brazil confirmed its first case in São Paulo.

Looking at the rest of the world, we estimated another 4 to 6 weeks before the situation on this continent got bad as well. But for now we continued with our sightseeing. When we got to Mompóx - only 10 days later - the first case was reported in Colombia. Oh, oh ... now we got worried and already made a plan and worked out where we could possibly sit out the Coronavirus. We definitely had to leave the north of Colombia, it was way toooo hot there for us!

On 15th March we arrived in Barichara - a lovely colonial town and moved to Guaimaro campground on 17th March when the lockdown happened. We knew we were in for a long haul. The health emergency was supposed to last until November 30th but has been extended twice and currently runs until 31st May 2021.

The lockdown was extended so many times I can't remember all the dates. The first one was for 19 days but then it kept going for another 3 or 4 weeks each time. It was 6 weeks before we walked into town for the first time from the campground and were only allowed in once a week. That changed to twice a week in July and then every other day in August. The first wave hit in July and August but they still started opening up in September.

At first we were wiping over everything we bought from town - packs of rice, sugar, flour etc and I also wiped down bars of chocolate before we opened them. This was because, in the beginning, we thought the virus could be transported by touching things that infected people may have touched and the science said the virus could last for days on plastic and cardboard boxes. Later that changed so we stopped wiping stuff down. The shops in town all had hand sanitiser at the door and in between they even had foot shaped plastic containers that we were supposed to step into and clean our shoes. That lasted for about 4 months and then stopped.

A second wave followed after Christmas and a third after Semana Santa (Easter) in April 2021. Curfews were brought in for Christmas 2020 although the hotel and restaurant owners all complained and got the curfews reduced. They didn't affect us because we weren't going into town in the evenings. More curfews were brought in for April and May 2021. The huge protests against the government began on 28th April 2021 and we started wondering how we could ever get out of Colombia safely.

Roadblocks mean getting to the border with Ecuador, if the borders ever open (!), is difficult and dangerous. Flying out means getting to an airport and then onto a long haul flight or several flights with the chances of catching the virus virtually guaranteed!!

We got a shock when Duque opened the Colombian borders on 18th May 2021 (except to Venezuela) but fortunately both Ecuador and Panama said they were not opening theirs. Phew. We need to sit it out here in Barichara. But then another wave hit and this time even Barichara was getting lots of cases - 76 children in the school got infected (not in the official figures!), the approx 80 year old owner of the big hotel here died of Covid and the owner of the Panaderia Central (under 60) also died!! She had to be flown out by helicopter to Bogota because there were no ICU beds in San Gil. She died 2 days later! We have heard several helicopters in the last week (beginning of Jume 2021) which means more serious cases are being flown out. People are starting to get scared and there are massive queues for the vaccines. We're currently trying to work out how to register online so we can get a vaccine – our passport numbers don't work. But now we're looking forward to the European Championship so we'll work out everything else later. We've been here so long now that it feels like home!