Brooke Schaefers was on the last commercial flight out of Quito, Ecuador, March 15 before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the airport. One of her fellow students on the Youngstown State University biology field trip to the Galápagos Islands wasn't so lucky.

Schaefers and her fellow students left for Ecuador March 7 during Youngstown's spring break.

“Because of the bad WiFi, we didn't really hear anything, until someone got an email saying Ohio State had extended its spring break,” she said. “Then we learned YSU was shut down for the rest of the semester,” she said. “They were trying to find flights for us back earlier but we said, 'Let us finish.'”

However, an unfortunate meal choice led to one of their group being removed from their flight home.

“On the last day in the Galápagos, they got us to try cerviche, a seafood dish with tomatoes and onions,” she said. Then her group boarded the flight from the islands to Quito during which the students all got food poisoning.

“We were all pretty queasy. The next day we were supposed to see the rain forest, but three students stayed at the hotel, sick,” Schaefers said.

“One of the girls tried to tough it out at the rain forest, but she was puking all the time,” she said.

The next day when the Americans were lined up at the airport gate for the 11:50 p.m. flight to the United States, the sick girl “puked in front of everybody at the gate.”

“She was escorted off the plane. We tried to say this was food poisoning, but a lot of people didn't want to fly with her,” said Schaefers.

“One of the professors stayed with her and they got a charter flight out of the country the next day,” she said.

“It was all very stressful. We all wanted to get home after that. We were ready to come back,” she said.

Despite the ending, she said of the trip, “We all got something out of the islands. It was incredibly amazing and definitely worth it.”