Coloradan Stuck In Peru After Country Shuts Borders Down

DENVER (CBS4) – Jonathan Du and Dan West intended to spend their Spring Break vacationing in Peru, sightseeing and hiking Macchu Pichu. However, widespread coronavirus concerns put a halt to that, and now the two friends are stranded there.

Du reached out to CBS4's Mekialaya White via Twitter, saying they needed help and just want to come home.

A 15-day nationwide border closure went into effect last Monday. Du and West say, however, they weren't aware of the fact that they were supposed to leave the country. They happened to find out about the border closure from another friend who was visiting there.

"There's always a little bit of anxiety when going through this situation, but we realized really quickly off the bat that if we didn't advocate for ourselves, no one was going to advocate for us. That's particularly true like you mentioned because really no one knew about it. All the news outlets, no one was covering this," Du said.

So, for nearly a week, the emergency decree has caused a lot of frustration for them and hundreds of others who are stuck and say they just want to return home to loved ones.

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"There's a lot of people here in Peru that are students that don't have the finances to keep staying here for one, two, three weeks. And there's people that need life-saving medication that they can't get here. There are people who are pregnant who want to get back in the states with their families," West said.