Related to travel, but certainly not ABD sort of travel.
Israeli kids have a tradition of backpacking after they finish compulsory military service.
They backpack for months to a year, trekking through 3 preferred locations: Southeast Asia, Nepal, and all around South America.
The border in Peru was closed yesterday, so hundreds of israeli backpackers are now stranded in Peru, unable to get out (there were no flights available to anywhere).
So Israel is sending planes to Peru to bring them all back home.
A lot of families are breathing easier today, knowing their kids will be coming home soon.
If you do end up needing medical care, you'd much rather be at home.
Even if the medical system crashes, you'd rather be in the crashing system you know with your family nearby.
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so remember this story i told you about? turns out there are a 1,000 of these backpacking kids in peru...
600 of them are stuck in Cusco, Peru (in the Peruvian Andes where they were trekking).
they had tickets on specially organized local charter flights to get them to Lima, to get to the planes that Israel is sending to Peru to get them out.
But Peru wouldn't let the 600 board the internal flights to get to Lima and made them leave the area of the airport...
So now they're still stuck in Cusco.
In the meantime, the Israeli foreign ministry is desperately negotiating with Peru to try to get them out of Cusco to get to Lima for the convoy of planes coming to pick up the stranded Israelis.
The flight in each direction is 16 hours. The planes were standing by last i heard to take off for Peru.
The flights are free. But the backpackers have to get there to be able to get on board.
And I've heard there are hundreds of other foreign nationals stuck in Peru with no way to get out, also begging their countries to help them leave.
And the other South American countries are closing their borders as well.
The foreign ministry warned everyone anywhere in South America to get out now as if they don't leave immediately, they won't be able to leave until who knows when.
Indeed a nightmare.
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