It has been almost 2 years since our last overseas trip (our babymoon to Vietnam and Singapore). Not long after our 2nd son was born, Covid-19 pandemic hit and our 2020 travel plans all went out the door. New Zealand is our first overseas travel in almost TWO YEARS. We have been stuck in our home state of Western Australia having to make do with road trips.
Where we live, we have been very lucky with Covid. For most parts we have been living normally as if there is no pandemic. We have worked and worked – doing the same routine everyday – without having anything to look forward to. It sounds dramatic but that’s exactly how we felt. We don’t enjoy shopping that much and we don’t enjoy staycations at fancy hotels down the road. We have one thing that we love: travelling. To have that freedom taken away from us and being stuck in Perth have been extremely hard for us mentally.
When travel bubble within Australia opened, we considered going to eastern states. However regular Covid outbreaks in Sydney and Melbourne made us nervous. Then in April this year New Zealand opened its travel bubble with us Aussies. New Zealand is up there as the safest country in the world right now. Covid-19 cases over there are all returned residents in (very well managed) hotel quarantine. They have zero community cases for many months.
We immediately made bookings! At the time everything was smooth sailing in Australia. All Australian states had no community transmissions, everyone was living normal lives that is until about 2 weeks before our travel date. Sydney began reporting cases of delta strain in the community and that’s when everything turned for the worse.
One day before our highly anticipated New Zealand holiday our home state reported ONE SINGLE CASE of delta strain and New Zealand immediately shut their borders indefinitely – our travel plans was in ruins!
(After lots of swearing) We had to cancel everything. Tara had to cancel all accommodations, tours, car rentals, restaurant reservations – everything. That day Alfred was on hold with Air New Zealand for an unbelievable 3 hours 48 minutes to reschedule flights – his call was not even answered! After a sleepless night he called again just after 5am the next day to be on hold for almost another 2 hours before finally able to speak with someone (very helpful) to help rebook flights by one week – hoping the travel bubble would reopen quicklly. We felt dejected.
We tried not to give up hope and kept praying the situation gets better soon and the travel bubble to resume. Two weeks later with only 5 cases and no further community transmission, New Zealand allowed that travel bubble with Western Australia to resume… with an additional requirement of negative PCR test taken within 72 hours of departure.
We re-BOOKED everything for travel in 6 days time! The most difficult part was to again rebook Air New Zealand (they received more than 12,000 calls a day). Alfred was on hold again for another 5 hours (over 2 days) to shift the flights. So that’s more than 10 hours listening to Air New Zealand’s on hold music, sometimes until there was no more music left!
Our new travel dates fell during New Zealand school holidays, it was a mad scramble to find available accommodation even a car we can hire. The places we originally booked were all full. In the end we did have to pay a lot MORE for having to book last minute. But at least we can still tick most of our things we wanted to do.
Four days before our departure we noticed there was a problem with our local PCR test lab booking system. Despite having prepaid $150 per person for a test, the voucher didn’t allow us to turn up to the clinic without making prior appointment. We had to go to another drive through pathology collection centre and waited. The swab testing part was surprisingly quick and not painful. More of a tickle that left us with sneezing fits. Our results came in 24 hours… only to find Tara’s report came back with incorrect name. That was another long phone call to get it corrected before we fly.
Ready to go? Not quite. The drama did not end there! The day we fly – our flight just happened to be due for take off during ‘twice in a century’ thunderstorm event (as the media puts it). Our plane did the usual take off run up, only to abruptly grind to a halt right before take off. The pilot was not taking risk in such a massive storm. We had to refuel and were stuck on the tarmac for 2 hours. We missed our connecting flight.
Honestly by this stage we were thinking WHY is this so difficult???! (and lots more swearing).
When we FINALLY arrived in Queenstown, it was definitely an emotional moment for us. We cried (happy) emotional tears, as the frustration, the drama and draining process trying to reach New Zealand had finally paid off. We held each other hands tightly during our helicopter ride over Franz Joseph glacier with our two very happy boys thinking it was all worth it!
New Zealand is our 30th country as a couple and 1st country visited as a family of four.
New Zealand is absurdly beautiful. After so many years of travels, we have never seen landscape this beautiful. We spent just under two weeks exploring Queenstown, picturesque Wanaka, stunning Mount Cook and unforgettable Milford Sound. New Zealand deserves all its rave reviews. Everything somehow look better in real life than the often over edited videos you see on Youtube and Instagram.
We will blog more on our New Zealand travels in coming days. Stay tune!
