Father, son back in Canada after Amazon escape
Adventure began when they tried to leave Peru amid martial law order
A Canadian father and son are safely home after an epic, Indiana Jones-style journey from the heart of Peru’s Amazon basin to quarantine in a North Vancouver AirBnB.
Alexander Boldizar and his son Samson, 14, landed in Canada Friday after first flying on an American evacuation flight from Iquitos, Peru to Miami.
“It was a huge relief to be back home. The fear was being locked out of our own country,” Boldizar, 48, said.
“To be honest, I was in planning mode the whole time, so I didn’t have much time to think about it. But I did have that ‘Thank God’ feeling when my cellphone service flipped and I realized we were over Canadian airspace.”
The pair had been caught on a river journey into the jungle when Peru unexpectedly imposed martial law because of the coronavirus outbreak. Suddenly they found themselves trapped in an isolated village, among a hostile population that thought foreigners were carrying the virus.
“That night was unpleasant,” Boldizar recalled. “We couldn’t get a place to stay. In the end, we stayed with a family in a house that only had three walls. They were saving money to buy the fourth. They needed the money more than they were concerned about the virus.”
A terrible thunderstorm lashed the village that night — “a jungle rain like we don’t get in North America” — but Boldizar was relieved that it kept any pitchfork wielding mob inside. Even so, he slept with his hand on a machete.
After convincing a boatman to take them on the two-day journey upriver to Iquitos, the pair found themselves rushing to get to a hotel just minutes before the 8 p.m. curfew.
“The curfew in Peru is serious. Up until the day we left they’d arrested 21,000 people and put them into work gangs cleaning the streets. They weren’t joking around,” he said.
They were banging on the door of the hotel when the curfew fell, but no one was answering. That’s when they were spotted by patrolling police. Boldizar gambled and waved them down. He asked the police for help getting inside.
The hotel manager would only take them in if they’d been checked by a doctor, so they donned respirators they had with them and walked through the now deserted streets to the hospital where they were given the all-clear.
Behind its high walls, the hotel — Casa Fitzcarraldo — was an oasis. It’s owned by Walter Saxer, a movie producer who has worked with director Werner Herzog on some of his most famous films, including the hotel’s namesake, Fitzcarraldo. They were the only guests.
“It was the most fantastic, beautiful place you could imagine. It had great food, a pool. He gave us private screenings of his movies. It was safer than anywhere I could imagine.”
But outside, the situation was worsening. Iquitos is the world’s largest city without road access, and the window of opportunity to escape was rapidly closing. Boldizar contacted an old Harvard University classmate who operates a charity called Warrior Angel Rescue. It specializes in mercy flights and Boldizar was able to book passage to Miami.
But then the U.S. government took control of the flight and barred non-U.S. citizens from boarding. Samson has dual citizenship, but it looked like Alexander was out of luck.
“For a while it looked like Samson was going to get a seat and I was going to have to hide in the landing gear,” he joked. “I said, ‘I can’t let a 14-year-old kid fly to Miami on his own.’”
After a flurry of emails, and an hour delay in takeoff, the two Canadians were allowed to board. “Everyone was cheering and clapping when we took off, and again when we landed.”
But the two still had to make their way home to Canada. Boldizar booked several options, eventually flying via Minneapolis and Seattle.
“I wanted to make sure that if any of the flights were cancelled, we’d be close to the border and we could make our way there over land.”
The flight to Vancouver was uneventful.
Boldizar conceded that in hindsight, the trip was unwise. But it was more than just a chance for a father and son to kick back for a week.
Two years ago, Boldizar’s wife, Tania Xenis, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a mastectomy and kicked the disease only to later learn that she had Stage 4 colon cancer. It’s the reason Boldizar was travelling with respirators — he’d bought them in January to protect the family in case the coronavirus outbreak in China spread globally.
“This trip wasn’t just for kicks,” he said. “I wanted Samson to have a distraction from my wife’s sickness. I wanted to give him some sense of normalcy.”
There were no travel advisories when they left Canada on March 12; it was only after landing in Lima they learned travel restrictions had been imposed. Boldizar immediately booked the first flight home he could get, but it was still 10 days away. He figured the pair would be safer on a jungle journey than hanging around the city.
Now back home where he works as a writer for a number of financial firms, Boldizar found a mountain of work waiting for him, which he says will help pay some of the costs of the escape.
“It turned out to be a very expensive vacation,” he said. “But we didn’t cost the Canadian taxpayer any money, so I feel a little less guilty.”
It was a huge relief to be back home. The fear was being locked out of our own country.