The trip of a lifetime turned sour for a New Zealand family after they were refused entry to Ecuador and bundled on to a plane back to Costa Rica.
Peter Kendall and his two daughters and son-in-law arrived in Ecuador for their six-day cruise of the beautiful Galapagos Islands twodays ago but suddenly found visa requirements had changed with no warning.
"We were bundled unceremoniously back on to the aircraft, basically treated like criminals," Mr Kendall said from Costa Rica.
New Zealand appeared last weekend on a list of countries that require visas to enter Ecuador.
The Ecuadorian honorary consul in Auckland, Yovanka Tomitch, said she was not notified.
"After talking to the embassy in Canberra, it seems there has been a change in the law this week and New Zealanders now require a visa but we weren't informed," she said.
Mr Kendall and his party tried to use their British passports to get into Ecuador but officials still refused, though UK citizens do not need visas.
He and his elder daughter will fly to Ecuador again today, hoping to use their British passports. His other daughter and husband have flown to Nicaragua to try to get visas and get to Ecuador on time for the $8000 Galapagos trip.
"We're just lucky we set off with a couple of days in hand or we would never have made it," Mr Kendall said.
He knows of at least two other groups of Kiwis bound for the Galapagos, made famous by Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution.
"We just don't want anyone to have the same unpleasant experience we did."
