Peru: Day Seven - Sick Airport Hostages

We caught a train to Ollantaytambo the next morning. By the time we arrived it was already late so we stayed the night. In the morning Kaden wasn't feeling great and Zaddek wanted to stay at the hotel so Mom, Dad, Sage and I went to check out the ruins without them. The ruins were right on the edge of the town with the terraces stretching down the side of the mountain. They were once the last stronghold of the Inca against the resistance of the Spanish invasion and served as a gateway to the Amazon corner of the Inca. We had to catch our flight back to Lima that evening so we didn't have time to fully explore the ruins but what we did get to see the terraces, the baths and the ruins of the old storehouses.

After getting back to the inn we all jumped in a taxi van for an hour and a half ride to Cusco where we caught a short flight to Lima. Then we had an airport hotel for the night before our flight back to Costa Rica in the morning. Unfortunately Kaden was still feeling quite under the weather the whole day so he didn't make it out of the room for dinner and had a rough night.

The next morning we were all set to board our flight back to San Jose when we were stopped at the gate. Apparently we weren't allowed to enter Costa Rica without the Yellow Fever vaccine which is required if you had been in any jungle areas in Peru. Everything we had read said you didn't need to get the yellow fever vaccine if you are visiting the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu but at the gate they said that was for the States and to go back to Costa Rica you must have the vaccine. They hadn't told us any of that when we arrived or a week later when we checked in. We sat in the airport for hours while they moved us through customer services and border control. Our plane had taken off without us long ago. Meanwhile Kaden was having a pretty bad time and was throwing up a lot. We later figured out it must have been the yogurt he had eaten had given him food poisoning. The airline decided to put us up in a hotel for the night for messing up our documentation when we first got our tickets and we would try again the next morning. The hotel was really nice and had a great complimentary dinner and shuttle service. 

Early the next morning we were right back at the airport with all our bags. Unfortunately someone else had decided that it wouldn't work out and we couldn't go back to Costa Rica unless we wanted to stay for another week in Lima - the allotted time to show we didn't have yellow fever. We sat for another few hours while Mom and Dad were able to figure out what we could do and get a flight to Miami as we were allowed back into the States and Dad had a business trip planned to go there anyway. We would stay there for a week or so to quarantine and prove we didn't have yellow fever and then we could finally go back to Costa Rica. 

Since it was spring break and last minute the only flight we could get was a late flight and it had a connection in Panama with a four hour delay. It was difficult travel too as Kaden and now Dad and Zaddek weren't feeling well. We arrived in Miami at about 2 am and were stopped by the border control. We were traveling with our Canadian passports instead of our American passports because we hadn't ever been planning on going to the States from Costa Rica. We waited for another hour in a holding room before they looked us up through their system and saw we were American Citizens. Mom and Dad were fine because they had their green cards with them but obviously they waited with us in the holding room. At about 4 in the morning we checked into our hotel room and collapsed.