Last updated: October 2026
Between Sunday 15 March 2020, when Deer Valley closed, and Monday the 23rd, when I crossed the bridge at Foz do Iguaçu, eight days went by. In those eight days there was an earthquake, five flights that did not leave or that I could not take, a plane I was not allowed to board, and two borders that closed behind my back. This is what happened, with the dates I later pieced together from the photos.
Paula and our friend had their return tickets bought through a travel agency in Chaco. That was their luck: in those days airlines became flexible like never before, and the agent changed everything over the phone so they could go home early with Copa, via Panama. They were asked which Argentine airport they wanted to land at and chose Rosario over Buenos Aires, out of fear of the big city. Their parents drove to Rosario to pick them up: Paula's from Resistencia, and our friend's from even further away. Many hours on the road, in the days the country was going into lockdown.
Selva and I had a flight with Avianca and we did not exist for Avianca. Two whole afternoons on hold, three hours by the clock each time, with nobody answering. We decided to buy another one. On Delta's website we found Salt Lake City–Atlanta–São Paulo for about $300 with a checked bag, and from São Paulo an Azul flight to Foz do Iguaçu. Travelling with us was Mati, from Mar del Plata, who bought the same thing and from São Paulo continued to Buenos Aires with Ethiopian.
On Wednesday 18 March, at 7:09 in the morning, I woke up because someone was shaking my bunk. There was nobody there. My phone was blaring the earthquake alert: magnitude 5.7, epicentre in Magna, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, some fifty kilometres from Park City. Nearly three million people felt it. There were more than two thousand aftershocks that day; the one at 1:12 pm, magnitude 4.6, caught Selva and me on the bus on the way to TJ Maxx, with every phone on the bus going off at once.
At TJ Maxx I tried to open my Delta booking and it did not exist. Not by email, not by name, not by passport. I called (Delta did answer) and was told that among all the attempts with the card, the purchase had never gone through. The same flight now cost almost $800. So I used the one advantage of the pandemic: Delta had scrapped its change fee for every ticket bought in March. I found the same itinerary two days later at the old price, bought it, called, and asked to have it moved to Selva and Mati's day. They moved it. Same plane, same price, through the back window.
The earthquake had evacuated Salt Lake City airport, burst a pipe that flooded one of the concourses and closed the airport for about four hours. Our original flight, as far as I can reconstruct, was on the 18th: cancelled. We flew on Thursday the 19th. And that flight, which was not delayed, had no pilot: the assigned pilot did not turn up for work. By the time they found a replacement we were over an hour late, exactly the margin we had in Atlanta for the São Paulo flight. The women at the counter promised to warn Atlanta to hold the plane. We ran up to a closed door.
In Atlanta they offered an alternative: a flight to Santiago de Chile leaving in an hour that continued, same aircraft, without getting off, to São Paulo. We said yes to everything. We were in the boarding queue, inside the gate area, when the flight attendants started turning away the passengers in front of us: Chile had closed its borders to foreigners, a rule in force since the previous day, and only Chileans and residents could board. We explained we would not be getting off the plane. It did not matter. We stood in the gate area and watched them close the door.
We went back to the Delta counter. There was a flight to São Paulo the next day at nine in the evening; it was ten at night. I knew that when a passenger misses a connection through the airline's fault, the airline pays, but I did not want to pick a fight in the middle of a panicking airport either. I asked, carefully, where we were going to sleep. They gave the three of us a night at the airport Hilton and vouchers for dinner, lunch and dinner again. The photo from 20 March is in that hotel. At 9:26 pm that day we were sitting on the plane to São Paulo.
We landed on Saturday the 21st in the morning, a day later than planned, and our connecting flights were dated the day before. Azul and Ethiopian asked for the same thing: a letter from Delta accepting responsibility, from an administrative office, not the check-in counter. We found one at Guarulhos, I explained the whole chain (earthquake, airport, pilot, Atlanta, Chile) and we walked out with the letter in hand.
Next door the Ethiopian counter was closing boarding for Buenos Aires. I spoke for Mati, in Portuguese and English, holding the letter up. They did not look at it: "where is he? is that his bag? passport, go, go". They boarded him last and he was gone. Under three hours later he landed at Ezeiza, where his parents were waiting, having driven up from Mar del Plata.
We went to Azul with the same letter. That day's flight to Foz do Iguaçu had already left. And it was the last one: the following days' flights from Guarulhos were cancelled. That left Viracopos, São Paulo's third airport, an hour away by Uber, with a flight the next day. They would not cover a hotel: rebooking us was already the courtesy. We booked a simple hotel with meals included next to Viracopos on our own, and paid for the most expensive Uber of the trip.
Sunday the 22nd. Selva handed over her suitcase at one counter and I handed over mine at the next; they weighed it and tagged it. At that moment the screen refreshed: flight cancelled. They gave us the suitcases back. At the Azul counter they said they would try to put us on the next day's flight, no guarantee, because that flight already had its passengers. We were among the first to arrive and we got on. This time, yes: hotel voucher, transfer and meals. The hotel was the same one we had slept in the night before at our own expense.
Monday 23 March, one in the afternoon. There is a photo of Selva and me on the jet bridge. Finally.
In Foz we took a taxi to the bridge and the taxi drove us across to the Argentine checkpoint. On the other side Selva's father was waiting; he had driven from Eldorado. Puerto Iguazú that day was a cauldron: hundreds of people coming from Brazil, with no planes (domestic flights had been suspended since the 20th) and the country in lockdown since that same Friday. The Río Uruguay buses were there, but they only left when full: they handed you a passenger sheet and you had to gather fifty-odd people who wanted to go to your destination. People were shouting "Córdoba!", "Tucumán!", "Rosario!" on the pavement. We got into a car and passed two Gendarmería checkpoints on the way to Eldorado.
Four days later, on 27 March, Argentina closed its borders completely, including to Argentines abroad. We got in just in time.
Selva's mother moved in with her sister and left us her house. That is where we did our fourteen days of quarantine, the two of us alone. Because we had told the trip in our stories, all of Eldorado knew we had arrived, and in a Facebook group the town uses to shame people, we got shamed: why were they let in, why did they not stay over there with the plague, someone make sure they actually quarantine. We were watched, and that was fine: the SAMIC hospital messaged us every day on WhatsApp to ask how we were, and one afternoon they came to test us. Both negative.
Once the quarantine was over I had to get to Posadas and the roads were empty: nobody was allowed to drive. Selva's father went to the Gendarmería, got a permit and drove me. Not to my mother's, where I lived, because that house had dengue in it at the time, and a mosquito that bit my mother and then me would infect me. He dropped me at my father's, where I did another fourteen days, now with family, taking turns to go to the supermarket. From the moment I crossed the bridge to the night I slept in my own bed, a whole month went by.
In those days radio stations called us, then the provincial newspapers, then Canal 12, live by video call on the morning news. Not because we came home in a pandemic: because of how we came home. Primera Edición ran the story on 6 April 2020, with our names, the earthquake, Atlanta and Chile. It is the only record I have of all this that is not a photo.
Keep reading: the year I travelled without leaving Misiones →
The stories run in order: this is what happened around this one.
