good morning guys we are at Apu Lodge in Ollantaytambo
and this video is going to be a little different this time
we just wanted to sit down and talk to you guys we have a lot to talk about and
a lot to tell you about yeah we have a lot of updates and we
want to be really transparent with you guys
so throughout our time in peru we have really tried to keep it super positive
in our videos and everything like that but we have actually had
also a lot of hard times which we haven't talked about quite as much
so the last few weeks we've both been feeling homesick i think it hit me
sooner than alex but i just started getting this feeling and i didn't really
exactly know why because we were starting to be able to do more things
than we had been with lockdown but i started getting this feeling like it
felt right to go back home and for me it wasn't so much feeling
homesick as that we were here for a long time hoping
that once we got through with lockdown after a month maybe two maybe three
months of lockdown that we would be able to do things in
peru we came here to travel we came here to see this beautiful
country and things just have not opened up even when
lockdown kind of stopped in cusco and we were able to travel again
we thought we were able to travel again most things were still closed
machu picchu rainbow mountain all of the rainbow mountains even stuff
that's in the middle of really nowhere in the middle of nature these
small communities are very scared of the virus and are not letting us in
so for those of you who are new to the channel we have been in peru for six
months not being able to fly home borders are closed
and we started i think the lockdown would go for a month and then it turned
into four months and then now we're back in
lockdown again in some regions in peru so when the lockdown happened in the
first place and we were in peru almost all the tourists went home
everyone we met everyone seemed to be trying to get home
because of the lockdown but we thought hey we are travelers we
wanted to stay here be in this beautiful country during
lockdown and then at the end of lockdown we'd be able to
do a lot of things but we were very wrong even though
lockdown ended a lot of the touristic sites
stayed closed so we started to get kind of frustrated by that
we felt like we're here in peru not being able to see these amazing things
and it seemed things were actually getting worse and not better recently
yeah every time we heard that things were getting better that lockdowns would
be lifted that they were going from one phase to
another phase and kind of getting better in this country it was
usually a rumor and things just kind of went
backwards things opened up for a couple weeks and
then it got really bad when domestic flights started uh within
this country and so they went back in a lockdown
pretty much almost a countrywide lockdown
and even the places that are far far away from everybody
we're not allowed to go so we're in this country basically confined
to the four walls of the house we can't travel we can't really see
things and even if you've been watching all our
videos and you see us sometimes see things and show you ruins and things
like that usually we don't get much time there we
can be there for 10 minutes and then we get kicked out
40 minutes or we get kicked out and so we can barely show you guys anything
we can barely see anything i mean we have seen a lot of things like
you've seen in our videos we see awesome things but that does not come without
effort also those things technically are closed
so the only way we're doing that is by waking up at four in the morning
getting there getting scared that someone's gonna blow their whistle at us
and eventually they do yeah every time and so
i mean we are seeing these things but it's because we know the right people
or we go at the right times and so it's getting hard
yeah so it's just it's not getting better we keep hearing
more things so this week we heard that peru probably won't open its
borders until mid next year which would mean which i
believe yeah which which means that if we
don't go home we would be stuck in peru probably for a year
or more and not even get to see things not even see machu picchu after being in
peru for a year and a half after being in cusco for a year and a half
we would just be living in peru but 90 percent of the restaurants are closed 90
of the cafes all of the sites so there's really no point in us being here when we
can't see anything and we can't see family we can't be home
seeing our friends family and all of that
everything familiar to us it's been long enough we've also had a rollercoaster of
emotions from the very beginning of this because no one expected it would go this
long improve or be this strict so we went from four months to lockdown
and then hearing rumors of oh machu picchu will open
at the end of june at the beginning of july at the end of july
we've literally heard that so many times and then now we're just
convinced it won't be open till next year i'm sure
yeah so we kept thinking these touristic sites would be open
and i think there are people or even the government maybe that wants to open
these sites make some money from these places but
then the smaller the villagers the townspeople
nearby they usually don't want to open it up because they don't want to get
sick so they're all fighting with each other
and basically nothing is happening nothing's opening up and so
there's not much of a reason for us to be in peru for
over a year not able to do anything basically we just really want to get
back out there and travel we feel like we've kind of reached our
limit here in peru and i think the point where we really
became frustrated is when we started going to these
sites that are really in the middle of nowhere and the villagers would stop us
and not let us come in because we're gringos and then as they're
talking to us saying that we can't go in their own village townspeople that went
out of the town to get groceries into the big town where we live and then
they came back in they're allowed but we're not so like when the logic
doesn't make sense it just really is frustrating and it
doesn't make sense disappointing especially because they
know if we're tourists in peru borders have been closed so we obviously
have been here for months we haven't come from another
country come in we've been in peru anyone who's in peru now has been here
for six months exactly so the local peruvians can go
from smaller town into town like say we're in oyen
taitambo they can come here get their groceries
and possibly get coveted bring it back to town but we can't come
into this village bring it back to their village but we
can't reside in this town exactly where they are and get our
groceries and then go to their village so they're just that logic does not
resonate with me the whatever logic they're using
and the other thing is like they're the village people they're probably talking
to each other they have family and friends there
the only thing that we want to do most of the times when they don't let us in
is walk by a house very far from a house just because you have to walk
not touching anyone yeah breathing on anything we want to walk on a road for
five minutes to get to a destination where there are no
people so there's no possible there's no possibility of infecting
anybody so there's just no logic involved okay so basically
we've reached our limit and once we realized we could be stuck here for
over a year we started looking into options to get home
repatriation flights to the us are like three thousand dollars so that was never
really a great option for us that's a lot of money for us
we could live in peru for a year six months on that if not more
yeah so the whole transportation process of getting from
where we are like the cusco area to lima to get a flight to miami and then for
both of us to go to our homes that would be three thousand dollars u.s
or more yeah so we started looking at cheaper
options we luckily found a repatriation flight
that leaves out of lima to mexico city and then we have four days
to leave mexico since it's a repatriation flight to get
home to the us so so we've pretty much decided that
that's what we're gonna do so we are going to leave peru
we we booked the flight to mexico uh and then back home and the cost of that
for the repatriation flight was a thousand dollars so still
a lot and and to get from here to lima it costs
quite a lot yeah so we have to hire a private car
and it's 1500 soles from here to lima which was
by far the cheapest oh yeah offer we had we had offers for over 4 000 soles so
that's uh a thousand dollars u.s to get from
here to lima and we have to get to lima to
take the flights because that's the only place where the flights are leaving from
and then the very very expensive flight to get home
so we're spending a lot of money to get home still but it's a little better than
our own repatriation flights this is like a mexican one that we were very
surprised that we could get on so to break it down for you we're
spending about four hundred dollars total to get to lima
in a car 24-hour drive there then we're taking the thousand dollar
flight to mexico city and then we have some subscribers who were super generous
and helped us out with our leg of the flight from mexico city
to home i'm going to minnesota and i'm going to california
so the plan after that we both wanted to visit
home each of our homes so we're gonna be separate for a little while
probably a couple of weeks but this isn't the end of our travels this isn't
the end of the channel it's just the beginning so you'll
continue to see these peru videos for a little while and it'll probably be a
seamless transition into when we start traveling again but
we're gonna show you the whole process when we leave pretty soon so we're gonna
film the car ride while we're trying to get to lima which will take
two days we'll be filming the covid test process we have to get
a rapid cover test before we can drive to lima
we'll be filming the flights we'll be filming separately
if possible as much as we can we'll try to put that footage together
and then maybe we'll show you quickly our separate lockdowns
in california or not lockdowns just we'll show you what
life is like with cove life during covid in california and minnesota
i'm sure they'll be very different that'll be interesting yeah really well
and minnesota and california are completely different states
so that'll be pretty cool you'll get to see a little bit of the u.s
covid life and then we don't know for sure
where we can get into some countries are opening up to
united states citizens not many just a few
but we're hoping in the next month as we're home more things will open
and then we'll be meeting up again and traveling somewhere else so your guess
is as good as ours where we'll end up it's going to depend on the cost of the
flight we don't want to get ourselves into a situation where we're going to be
on lockdown again so we want to make sure we're
going to a country that is not going to end up in a strict lockdown
so where do you guys think we should go there probably won't be a ton of options
but we're thinking mexico is going to be open eastern europe
some countries in eastern europe uh dominican republic
a lot of the islands around the world island countries um
yeah we don't know but if you had your choice of where you would be interested
in seeing from us next let us know so in the coming weeks
you'll be seeing a rainbow mountain you'll be seeing lima
videos you'll be seeing mexico videos and then
our flight home and we feel really good about this decision
i definitely think we made the right choice purchasing a flight now
i'm sure it's going to be even harder and more expensive to get flights the
longer we wait because now that they announced
the closure of the border for the next year
people are going to be trying to get home now on these repatriation flights
yeah that's the thing we knew if we didn't make the move right now to get
this flight to mexico that we saw we could be stuck for another six months
or something so it was pretty much now or never we
didn't want to leave peru just yet we had a lot of things that we still wanted
to see but a lot of them aren't opening up and
we just felt like we were just waiting around
waiting and waiting for things to open up
and it's never happening we have to be okay with what we did see
we did get to see a lot we've learned a lot so we're very thankful for our time
in peru if you are from peru and have been
following our journey please don't stop following us
just after this when we leave peru because there is so much more of the
world to see that's super interesting and we want to show it to you we're
going to show you so many different cultures
different foods countries all around the world and
they will be very interesting we swear we'll make interesting videos
and you'll learn a lot and we want you guys to continue being here with us
because a lot of you have been some of the best subscribers that we have ever
had well i've had a youtube channel for a
few years and you guys have been the best so
supportive always liking commenting engaging with
everything so we really thank you guys all for that
and we really hope that you'll stick around
even when we're in other countries so we're hoping that our flight
leaves on time a lot of these flights end up getting pushed back
if it does get pushed back i guess we'll just have more time in lima
that'd be okay we feel like we didn't get to experience the true lima so
yeah that would even be nice if we could get pushed back for
a week or two we would love to do some food videos in lima and some other
things we will let you guys know if that
happens and we'll be asking you a lot of what we should see and what we should do
there and we have a special surprise for the way we're gonna spend our last
few days in sacred valley we're not gonna tell you yet but we're very
excited and we think you guys will like it too
so this whole thing is kind of bittersweet for us as much as probably
for you i know a lot of you have said over the
last few weeks that you wanted us to stay
in peru forever and continue making videos here
and move here and live here we will be back in peru
it isn't over and we have a lot more videos to show you guys still
from peru thanks for listening to our entire story and plans uh
if you guys have questions please leave them below we'll try to get to them in
our next q a's and if you have any advice thoughts
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good all right thank you guys for everything
and we have a lot more exciting stuff coming up but we just wanted to update
you on where we're at right now and
hopefully we will see you in the next video
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