Oh drat, that's a poor outcome for you SaltyPaprika and not a good look for SV.

I did start to look at SV's conditions of carriage at the weekend but got distracted and forgot to follow up with a reply. But my reading of their CoC led me to the conclusion that what they were offering you was aligned with their small print. That's little comfort for your return journey and whilst it seems like you can lean on your travel insurance to sort out the additional expense you incurred that's not something you should have needed to do when dealing with a full service airline like SV who have the financial resources to reroute you. As is frequently the case in the middle east, if the remedy is not part of the script in front of the agent, there's frequently no flexibility for agents to do the right thing for customers and they fear loosing their jobs for going off script.

I hope all these shenanigans didn't detract from the purpose of your journey and the hike happened without any hitches.