A Canceled Flight Left My Family Stuck in Puerto Rico

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nilgen Velazco. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I woke up at 9 am on Saturday, January 3rd, thinking I’d start rushing around to get our family ready for our return flight to Colorado. My husband, Malcolm, and our two children, ages 8 and 4, have been in Camuy, Puerto Rico, visiting my family since December 12th and were due to leave today at 4 p.m. from San Juan.

Groggy-eyed, I looked at my phone and saw I had an email from our airline — our flight had been canceled.

My mother, with whom we are staying, turned on the news, and that’s when we saw what had happened in Venezuela while we had still been sleeping.

I genuinely thought it must all be a dream.

This was our first time visiting my family

When Malcolm and I started planning this Christmas trip to Puerto Rico to visit my family — the first time we’ve ever done it — we’d had issues finding and booking flights because of the government shutdown.

Once we arrived, we had no idea that it would be an issue getting back home to Colorado. Things were stirring in Venezuela, an unfolding story I keep up with as my dad is Venezuelan, but we didn’t think this would impact our trip in any way. It wasn’t even on our radar.

We were completely shocked by the news this morning.

I managed to rebook us on a plane 6 days from our original flight

I immediately got on the phone to try transferring our flights to another day. The person I was on the phone with kept telling us the seats were disappearing as she went to click on them, because everyone is in the same boat as us. We’re all stuck here because all flights have been canceled out of Puerto Rico, desperate to book new flights.

After an hour on the phone, we had managed to get tickets for Friday, six days from now. But we’re unsure if that flight will get canceled, too. It’s all very up in the air right now.

We’re really lucky that we’ve got family to stay with. I know there are so many people who can’t find hotels to stay in.

Even though we have accommodation, this delay in getting home is going to have a big impact on us.

The delay is affecting our finances

We had meticulously planned the finances for this trip, setting aside and saving exactly the amount we needed to make such a special trip. We aren’t a wealthy family, so we had to scrimp to make this trip possible.

However, since we can’t return home, we’ll end up spending several hundred dollars more than we expected on our pet sitter and airport parking, which will definitely be a financial strain on our family.

Our 8-year-old is missing some standardized testing and school, and our 4-year-old daughter is booked in for preschool, which is nonrefundable.

I will need to use my sick leave to cover the time I will be missing work, as I have already used my vacation leave for this trip and didn’t bring my work laptop with me. Malcolm is the same.

My mom borrowed a car from a friend for us to use while we were here, and we’ve had to ask the friend to use the car a bit longer because you can’t get around Puerto Rico without a car.

We are not the only ones in this situation

We know we aren’t the only ones in this position. Today, we took the kids to the beach — trying to make the best of a bad situation — and met several families with kids going through exactly the same.

It’s one thing to be stuck when it’s just you, but adding kids to the equation makes it that much more difficult.

We’re also nervous about what Venezuela might do in response to this attack, and if we’ll still be here if and when something kicks off in Puerto Rico.

We just wanted to spend some time with my family for Christmas, something we’ve never done before, and then this happened. It’s just really frustrating.