This afternoon, 7th June 2020, we should have been landing back in the UK.
We would have spent 3 months travelling the US and Canada, seeing friends and family whom live there, and with friends and family coming out to meet us. We’d have climbed and travelled, from wildernes to New York City, where we would have flown to Norway to spent the last 10 days with our wonderful friends Pål and Elise. This afternoon we would touch down at Heathrow to be greeted by our friend Sammy, who would take us to dinner with my brother and his family, beginning a week of travelling the UK to catch up with friends and family.
Instead, we were ‘locked down’ in New Zealand, returning to the UK a few weeks ago, unable to have the reunions we wanted. Screw you COVID – spoiling everything!
But there is a story nonetheless, and learning from the Life of Brian, maybe COVID has done things for us in unexpected ways.
Our chronological narrative left you at Changing Course, which described the weeks as COVID took hold of Western nations, during which time we didn’t know what continent we should be in, let alone what we should be doing with ourselves. It was a very unsettling period, as it was for many people across the world
That last post concluded with us being in a campsite in Wanaka. We were feeling emotionally battered from all of the change, yet in hindsight we ended up in the best place possible. Our time in Wanaka was sureal yet beautiful and peaceful. While so many people were locked up in their homes, we were locked outside in one of the world’s most beautiful locations. We will share our experience of Wanaka in more detail elsewhere, but that time certainly solidified our love for that part of the world.
We were fortunate, by a great deal of chance and by only 6 hours of leeway to spend the peak of the COVID crisis in the country which dealt with it better than any other in the developed world (we were hours from geting on a plane to America before border closures). New Zealand was quick off the mark and dealt with it exceptionally well, from the truly inspirational leadership of PM Jacinda Ardern, down to each citizen who stuck to the rules. New Zealanders who did so well from government down to citizen are now enjoying a return to normal life – not even ‘new normal’ but genuine normal, with only a single active case in the entire country.
We were also fortunate to have found ourselves in the Mount Aspiring Holiday Park. This beautiful setting could not have been better, nor could we have been luckier than to have Jo and Hamish running the campsite with such kindness and generosity. They knew that everyone was in a rough situation, and were so kind to us visitors stuck there.
Ness turned 30 in the early stages of the lockdown, but as we were moving so regularly and without warning we didn’t have a chance to plan or do anything. As the restrictions were eased, I was able to give Ness a birthday she deserved, with cake, a special meal and birthday messages from many friends and family.
We also had our first wedding Anniversary in the van on that hill. We renewed our vows and discovered that we could still just about perform our first dance, though really not well. We also tried reversing roles, and it turned out that I could do Ness’ part much better than she could do mine, especially when she tried to lift me!! If you haven’t seen our meagre attempts to recreate the music video of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Thinking Out Loud’ as our first dance, you can find it here.
In the last few weeks, as the weather got colder and I suffered from being in a cramped van (this bed was much smaller than in our old van Kenji), Jo and Hamish offered us an apartment in the campsite, which we enthusiastically took up. We still spent most of our time outside, but having rooms and walls was quite fun and novel.
As restrictions were eased, we were able to travel within the region, so went on the most spectacular drive through Queenstown to Glenorchy. This had been something we’d missed on our first trip and we were really pleased we had a chance to do it this time. Many people had described it as the most beautiful drive they’ve experienced, and I can see why.
Another day was spent driving into Mount Aspiring National Park. Due to my back pain we couldn’t do any big walks, but could nevertheless enjoy some spectacular scenery.
We also drove up to the top of Lake Wanaka. We had hoped to be able to cross Haast Pass to the West Coast, linking up the route we had first planned back in January, and filling the last big gap in our travelling experience of the South Island. Unfortunately that would have involved entering a new region, a restriction not lifted until we were already on our way home. Nonetheless, the drive up towards the pass was beautiful.
The easing of restrictions as I have described above also gave some other benefits. We were able to get coffee in town, and enjoy some wonderful meals a from Big Fig, a Lebanese restaurant famous in Wanaka. We spent many an evening sat beside the lake in town, watching the sun set with drinks or hot food in hand. Even in the tail end of lockdown we made friends as we saw the same other people doing the same as us each afternoon.
We returned to climbing towards the end, valuing it even more than before. We hadn’t fully explored climbing in Wanaka before, so were able to see far more of it than on previous trips.
In the last week, the final joy of travelling was getting to know Julia and Marcin, a Polish couple who had been living only metres away from us, but with whom we hadn’t been able to socialise until then. They were an absolute pleasure to spend time with and have given us a good incentive to visit Poland. Marcin taught me a lot about photography, while Julia enthralled us with her beauty and charisma. They made our last few days really fun and special.
For several weeks after our last blog post, we had settled into the idea that we didn’t really know what was going to happen. We had money to survive, and would see how things panned out. Most other nations repatriated citizens quickly, but the UK didn’t do so (which suited us). We had booked a flight home via Singapore on 22nd May, but that was soon cancelled as Singapore closed, so we booked to fly via Los Angeles on 2nd June. That was the plan for a long time.
Then the UK started running repatriation flights, initially just for vulnerable people but then open to all. More than a few people observed that vulnerable people were surely the last ones that should be returned from the safest country in the world to the least safe, but we were happy to wait for our turn. Ness had been very much on top of all of the information coming out of the consulate, as well as forums for Brits stranded in NZ. It was apparent that other people had more need to get home than us, so when the first round of open flights came around, we decided to not put our names in for them. It was early May and we were loving NZ, we certainly didn’t want to go back to a chaotic UK still in the depths of the crisis.
When the second round came up, we did the maths and figured they these would probably be the last set of government flights. We had to choose between this guaranteed option, or keeping our fingers crossed that our commercial option on 2nd June would go ahead. Waiting until June would be to take a big chance, as the flight was Air NZ then Virgin Atlantic, and Virgin Atlantic seemed to be in crisis. With a very heavy heart we went for the reoatriation flights.
The decision to take those flights was a painful one. Life in NZ was becoming really good again, and the UK was not in such a good place. It was also definitively the end of travelling. We discussed it and wavered for hours, but ultimately knew they this was the decision we had to take.
Incidentally, this was a great example of the teamwork we discussed in Together. Ness is more conservative on taking risks than I am – our competing perspectives resulted in us being on the last flight, and therefore maximising our time in NZ.
As it turns out, the 2nd June flight did go ahead (British Airways took the route over), but we would have been wearing face masks for the entire flight as well as the transit in LA, with no meals, so it wouldn’t have been a pleasent flight. Instead, with just a couple of days notice, we would fly home via Hong Kong.
We went for a last climb at a beautiful venue beside a river, and on the last morning we repeated one of our favourite walks, a stunning 12km route along the lake, at sunrise. We bid farewell to Jo, Hamish, Julia and Marcin, and set off in our Jucy van.
On our way out of Wanaka we popped in to see John and Marelda, the incredible couple who had hosted us here in Wanaka earlier in the year. It was lovely to see them again, a year after we had first met them in Greece on our honeymoon.
We drove back to Christchurch, checking into Urbanz Hostel where we had stayed on two previous occasions. On the morning before our flight, we popped into town to Therapy Coffee, one of our favourite coffee shops in the world. They remembered us and welcomed us so warmly, and told us how they looked forward to the full opening of retail across NZ the next day.
Finally, on 13th May, we drove to the airport, dropping off the Jucy van we had lived in.
These 2 months in New Zealand had been totally unexpected. At times it had been stressful and unsettling, but it had also given us time to reflect and be peaceful in a place of endless beauty.
We have read, exercised, and learned new things about each other. Most of all, we have clarified what we enjoy in the world, and what we want from it. Our love for Wanaka and New Zealand as a whole was really solidified, and after going through this crisis as part of Jacinda’s ‘team of five million’, we feel a real affinity for Kiwis, a love for their spirit and kindness. We learned how important it is for us to have space and beauty around us, that we are happy without the fancy things in life provided we have each other, friends, and somewhere special to be. As discussed in Are We Ready to Go Home Yet? we were able to really establish what ‘home’ meant for us.
The lockdown enabled us to reflect a lot on our travels and what we have taken from this experience, as well as reinforcing that travelling is far from over for us.
Furthermore, and jumping over the return itself, COVID pushed us into the arms of my brother, sister in law and their new baby. We had planned to meet them this afternoon as we arrived home from travelling, but instead we have spent 3 weeks living with them, reconnecting and getting to know our wonderful Nephew.
COVID has screwed us around a lot, crushed our plans and for a while our dreams, but it has unexpectedly given us a lot. Whether we wanted it or not (we didn’t!) this experience has come to be a hugely shaping one, and I must reluctantly admit that I think we are on a better path for it.
As for what happens next, you’ll have to keep reading these posts as we write them from the UK, describing our experience of re-entry, it has been the hardest part of the entire travelling process!
