When Jay and Carmenza Pfahl left their Key West home on March 3 last year for their annual trip to Bogota, Columbia, to visit family, they expected to return on March 17. Seven months later, victims of the coronavirus travel shutdown, they finally made it home on Oct. 6.
But while it was an ordeal on many levels, Jay was in heaven. A self-described âorchid addict,â Pfahl was able to spend months trekking through Columbian jungles looking for orchids, often straight up a mountainside with no trails and no guide and, one day, jumping off a mountain ledge into a thick bamboo grove in order to get to a firebreak that was the only way down.