Local resident stranded in South America by quarantine

SHERIDAN — When Austin Barton and Colton Bates left for vacation March 11, they knew of the COVID-19 pandemic but cancellations and warnings hadn’t reached their current levels.

By the following weekend, though, the world was a different place.

On March 15, local officials announced the closing of Sheridan County schools. In the week that followed, state officials would close restaurants and bars to dine-in traffic and later would prohibit gatherings of 10 or more people.

Similar closures and even more heightened restrictions were put into place around the globe, including in Peru where Barton and Bates had traveled for a spring break adventure.

The duo started in Lima before traveling to Cusco, where they stayed with a local family and took in the city. Then they spent a couple of days in the Sacred Valley with plans to take a train to a town just outside Machu Picchu on Monday, March 16.

“We waited for the train, but time came and went and it never came,” Barton said in an interview with The Press via WhatsApp.

He and Bates tracked down a ticket agent who let them know the trains were canceled and the president of Peru had ordered the closing of the entire country at midnight on Monday. The men had just 14 hours to get out of the country before the nationwide quarantine went into place.

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