Los Paddys: On their remarkable journey home from Chile during the COVID-19 crisis

As the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the globe, travel restrictions left thousands of Irish people stranded abroad – including members of  Co. Clare band Los Paddys, who were two weeks into their month-long tour of Chile.

Following a landmark 2019, which included performing for President Michael D. Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin and a European tour, the seven-piece band, who fuse Irish trad with South American folk, were set to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with high-profile performances in Santiago and the surrounding area – before lockdown restrictions left them scrambling to get home.

However, as frontman Paddy Mulcahy tells us, just a "week before the measures came in, people barely knew about coronavirus" in Chile.

"Nobody talked about it, and nobody seemed to care about it," he continues. "There’s also a lot of social problems and political unrest there, so there were mass protests in the streets going on. Interestingly, there was no shortage of masks – because everyone already had masks from going out and fighting with the police, and throwing rocks! They had face masks to cover their identities when they were out protesting."

The global response to the COVID-19 crisis took a dramatic turn almost overnight, and ahead of the St. Patrick's Day celebrations, the Irish Embassy in Chile reached out to Los Paddys.

"The Embassy had actually booked us to play the St. Patrick's festival in the centre of Santiago," Paddy explains. "But the Friday before the St. Patrick's weekend they were on to us, saying, 'We're going to get this festival done on Saturday, but after that everything is going to shut down – and you need to be looking at getting home by any means possible'."

As tensions and restrictions tightened, Los Paddys found that their flights home had been cancelled by their airlines. With dwindling options, the band set up a Go Fund Me page, in an effort to raise money to purchase new flights home – and were taken aback by the outpouring of support from fans, friends and family.

"The Go Fund Me earned around €7,000 which covered our flights," Paddy tells us. "It was overwhelming to us, that so much money was raised in such a short space of time. We had the goal fulfilled in two or three days."

They were also touched by the kindness of local people in Santiago.

"Over in Chile people were amazing to us," he says. "Our friend David brought us to his parents house for a meal before we went to the airport. They told us, ‘If there’s a problem at the airport, or if your flights are cancelled, we have this house reserved so all seven of you can come back and live here. Whether you need the house for a month or two months, we have you totally protected and safe’. That, to me, is incredible – to imagine someone giving their house freely to protect a group of people from the other side of the world."

While Paddy and some of the other members of the band landed safely back in Ireland last month, other people travelling with Los Paddys have just made it back to their homes in Spain this week – after being held up in Argentina for a month.

"When we came back we had to go into self-quarantine," Paddy says. "It was okay. What's more difficult is looking forward. A lot of us are working musicians, so all our work, including tours for the summers, gigs and sessions, will be gone until probably September.

"But, everyone is happy, healthy and safe," he adds. "We're happy to be alive. We try to keep some kind of perspective. We're sad to lose the things that we've lost, and we're sad that our tour had to end early, but in the grand scheme of things, we're doing okay!"

Watch Los Paddys perform 'Take Us Home' from a rooftop in Santiago below: