Hi Everyone! Lydia and I arrived in Auckland yesterday afternoon after an all day drive north from the town of Foxton, just north of Wellington. We are both well and ready to take on the challenge of trying to get home. We are currently staying with our friends Trish and Alex at their home in Auckland – we are very appreciative and lucky that they have taken us in so we wouldn’t have to hunker down in the van while we wait to go to the airport on Friday. New Zealand is currently under level 4 alert, which basically means that you have to stay home and self isolate. We will be able to transit to the airport, but that’s about it.

Our flight leaves Auckland tomorrow at 10:55pm and arrives in Los Angeles 13 hours later. We have a 5-hour layover before flying to Vancouver on Air Canada. Once in Canada, we’re not sure what will happen. We’ve heard we may have to self isolate in Vancouver for 14 days (at a hotel) but we haven’t confirmed that yet. I’ve put in a call to Canadian consular services here in NZ, left a message and am awaiting a call back…good luck with that I’m thinking.

Today will contact the van rental company to determine if we can still drop the van on Friday on our way to the airport. Anyway, that’s enough info for now! Below is a post for the past number of days to explain how things unfolded for us. I’ll try and put some pictures up soon to go with the posts!

Sunday March 15

We liked Wanaka so much we decided to stay an extra day

Following our big hike up Roy’s peak yesterday, we started our day slowly with a trip to the French bakery in Albert Town. Popular spot, great coffee and tea as well as lovely pastries! After coffee we went into Wanaka to check out the sports stores and pickup a few groceries while we were at it. We also had an idea that I might rent a mountain bike and accompany Lydia on a longish run. Found a bike store however being a Sunday they were closing at 4 pm which didn’t give me a lot of time for biking. We nixed that idea, went back to camp and we both went for a run. Our run took us out along a river path, accessible from our campsite, that follows the river flowing out of Lake Wanaka – clear, clear water and a really good flow, enough to create a few white water spots.  Turns out it’s a popular spot for kayaking. We saw a few different styles of boats, one a standard, stubby white-water model and the other a really long, slender shell that is used specifically for fast flowing river running (but not heavy white-water).

We ran downstream to Albert Town, approximately 3 km, chatted with a kayaker and then ran back. Lovely trail, popular with mountain bikers, had to squeeze up against the bluff wall in some areas as the mountain bikers went by. Finished off at our campsite – did a few stretches beside the bench beside our campsite – beautiful spot overlooking the lake, mountains and the crystal clear river.

Rewarded ourselves with a well deserved happy hour and delicious van cooked meal.

Monday March 16^th

Drove to Queenstown today, stopping in Arrowtown along the way to check out this very attractive little town and pick up some NZ pies at the Arrowtown bakery. Poked around town, looked in some shops and had a coffee break before securing our pies, one a spicy chicken, the other steak and cheese.

After Arrowtown, we stopped in Franktown at the New World for groceries, then made our way to the Top 10 Holiday park just north of Queenstown. Once established we decided to head back to Queenstown for the afternoon.  Cool, very windy and a bit overcast, we parked in the town garden area and enjoyed a walk through the gardens which lead into the village. Attractive town, very touristy which was no surprise, we looked in some shops and then finished off our walk back in the town gardens.

Supper was a highlight with our two NZ meat pies – one a spicy chicken, the other steak and cheese. It was a bit of a challenge to heat them up as one of the two ovens in the kitchen at the campsite was very busy and the other didn’t work! I managed to heat the pies in the BBQ which worked just fine. I believe we enjoyed some chocolate for dessert!

Spent the evening by the woodstove fire in the common area, it was toasty warm and had comfy couches. We did some reading and planning for Fiordland. We needed to decide on Doubtful sound or Milford Sound. After chatting with the reception person at the campsite, she explained that Milford had higher mountains and a narrower fiord plus a dramatic 120 km access road. Doubtful Sound involved a bus to Lake Manapouri, a boat ride across the lake, another bus to the sound and then the boat cruise. It was more expensive than Milford and it seemed more complicated, so we opted for Milford Sound and booked it.

Reluctantly left the comforts of the common room for the chilly van – pulled out all the blankets as the temp headed down to 5 C.

Tuesday March 17

Drove from Queenstown to Lake Te Anau and stayed for two nights at a really nice campsite on the shores of the lake. Did our usual look around town, very attractive, tidy town and went for provisions. Once back at the camp we decided on a late afternoon run out to the dam at the end of the lake. Another amazing shore side path took us through some parkland and then out to the dam.  The dam is really a water flow control point with large gates that can be raised or lowered to control the water level in the lake. Just across the control point in the trail head for the Kepler track – one of New Zealand’s great multi day hikes, one Lydia and I had considered but decided against due to the crazy expensive fees charged to foreign tourists to use the facilities.

Had a stretch break at the dam and then headed back to camp – 8K run completed! Of course there were after exercises to do at a nice picnic spot beside the lake in front of our campsite.

Wednesday March 18^th

Trip to Milford sound

Woke early (6:30 am) to catch the bus leaving Te Anau at 7:30. Full bus, a very comfy coach run by Go Orange. The coach left on time and we made our way to Milford stopping along the way for some photo ops and a bathroom break. The road to Milford is rugged to say the least. It was started in the 1930s and wasn’t completed until after WWII. The final few kilometers include a 1 km tunnel through a mountain and then the road follows a steep descent into the valley below to Milford Sound. We had a laid-back driver who fed us interesting info on the way up to Milford. He gave us a brief history of the road and the difficulties in maintaining it year-round in a very harsh, wet (rain forest wet) environment. Normally we wouldn’t have taken a bus, as the road is usually open to pubic. For the past month however, due to a weather related washout on sections of the highway, only buses are permitted to use the highway. The buses have to be aware of road closure schedules and transit the construction / repair zone in a convoy at predetermined times.

Once in Milford we quickly made our way to the boat which had a capacity of a least two hundred, but today only people from our bus made up the passengers on our cruise. The absence of the self driving customers made all the difference.

The trip up and back on Milford Sound was peaceful and awe inspiring. We had a blue sky day, which is a rare thing in the sound. The waters were calm as well and even though it was a bit chilly, we enjoyed the sites from the rooftop deck for the most part.

The bus ride back from Milford was uneventful, but visually stunning and we arrived back in Te Anau a little after 3 pm….just enough time to go for a run. Then it was time for a drink and time to have a look at what was happening in the news. It may seem like we’ve been blissfully ignorant of world events, but we have been following along with the miserable progress of the corona virus. One of my usual checks is to have a look at my Air New Zealand app and today, to our surprise, we read that all flights to Vancouver would be suspended starting March 30^th through June 30^th, yikes! Here we had been all smug about not needing to return to Canada to face the horrors of Covid-19 because our return flight hadn’t been cancelled…well, that all changed today. Reality hit and we started to mentally change gears and figure out what our options were. It an instant we went from being in happy vacation mode (but being aware that all was not well in the outside world), to realizing we were not going to magically escape the huge net being cast as a reaction to the virus.

To make matters a bit worse, we were way south in Fiordland, about as far away from Auckland as you can possibly be and still be in NZ. So, our plan was to somehow get in touch with Air New Zealand and change to an earlier flight. We had a contact number for booking changes, but every time we called, it would immediately go to a “please call back later” voice message. Considering our inability to connect via telephone, or online, or with their smartphone app – we decided our best course of action would be set a course for the airport in Christ Church and talk face to face with a ticket agent. That became step one of a multi-step plan which included rescheduling our flight to Vancouver, booking our ferry back to the north island (which usually requires a booking one week in advance), returning our campervan early after just paying to extend our rental right up until our departure date of April 16^th – more on that later, and then changing our domestic flight from Vancouver to Ottawa to line up with our as yet unchanged international flight from Auckland to Vancouver! Lot of pieces to fall into place. The other and perhaps most important thing, stay healthy, so we won’t be turned away at the airport because we’ve fallen ill.

I think we accompanied all this heavy news with an extended happy hour.

Thursday March 19

Drove to Dunedin – found a nice campsite on the Otago peninsula which is a very hilly and spectacular peninsula leading out to the village of Portobello, where our campsite was located. Arrived early enough to continue out to the end of the peninsula to see the Royal Albatross colony and some more seals! Hoped to see some blue penguins, but no luck, they usually come into the beach after dark.

Our Mad Camper friends pulled in after we were back at camp preparing supper. Spent the evening in the cozy and somewhat humid kitchen / common room to download some pictures and talked with some of the other campers about their travel plans – all the international travellers are facing the same problem – trying to find a way home.

Friday March 20

First day of autumn in the southern hemisphere

Windy day, so much so that our little van feels more like a giant sail that a van – can’t really go much faster than 80 kph without feeling like I’m losing control. Anyway, we white knuckled our way to Oamaru, a nice little seaside town, it was really more of a convenience stop than anything else as we couldn’t make it all the way to Christ Church, especially with the windy driving conditions. Great campsite though, right beside a town park / garden and Lydia took the opportunity to go for a run. I spent a bit of time trying to contact Air New Zealand with no success. After Lydia’s run, we went into the lower town area beside the harbour where there are a couple of streets and buildings from the 1800s that really were influenced by the Victorian age, interesting old buildings. Unfortunately, the shops seem a little under funded and there wasn’t really that much there. Nice park by the harbour with some fun stuff for kids to play on, we tried a few of the things – there was a slack line, a zip line and a giant hamster wheel which was an accident waiting to happen! Lydia has a little video to prove that! After our walk about, we went for groceries and then returned to camp for supper. Our mad camper friends from Austria were there too! I think this is the fifth or sixth campsite we’ve both stayed at, quite funny.

Saturday March 21

Off to Christ Church and to the Air New Zealand office at the airport to hopefully determine our fate. The day started off a bit wet, but no wind so we were able to hum along quite nicely. Stopped for a quick coffee and a stretch break along the way and then set the GPS to CC International Airport. We found short term parking and made our way quickly into the terminal. Once inside, we found the ANZ counter with only a few customers ahead of us. Finally, it was our turn and the somewhat frazzled customer service agent asked what she could do for us.  We told her our story and asked if there were any flights to Vancouver available between March 25^th and the 30^th. We chose the 25^th as Auckland was still a long way off. She had a look – but I got the impression she wasn’t that comfortable navigating their booking system. After a few futile minutes she said it looked like all available flights were full and there wasn’t anything she could do for us. She did suggest calling their toll free number because the agents are better equipped and more knowledgeable with re-booking flights. I asked her to write down the number – and it looked to be different than the number we had previously tried. Needless to say, we felt a bit dejected and a bit confused on what to do next. We went to an information kiosk and asked if there was an Air Canada presence in the airport, but alas Air Canada does not fly into CC. We struck up a conversation with a man from the UK who like  us, was trying to make arrangements for a way home. He suggested we consider fly Air Emirates which goes through Dubai and then potentially, on to Toronto. We thanked him for his ideas and then left the airport. We found ourselves back in the van looking at each other. We decided to call the ANZ toll free number supplied by the customer service agent. We connected successfully and promptly got in a call queue. We also considered calling Mastercard because we have travel insurance with our credit card, and thought that may be an avenue to explore. While we were driving along with Lydia trying to find the Mastercard number on my phone, ANZ picked up on Lydia’s phone! I answered and then passed it to Lydia as I tried to keep the van on the road…and then the magic happened! The booking agent was able to find us a flight from Auckland to Vancouver with a 5 hour lay-over in Los Angeles. Lydia asked about potential travel restrictions to transit through but the ticket agent ensured we would be ok. After about 10 minutes on the phone, all was sorted and we were booked to get back to Canada! Lydia tried to hug the ticket agent through the phone but the ticket agent was safe, miles away in some call centre. Step one in our multi-step plan was in place!

To relax our nerves and stretch our legs, we pulled in at the next available café and took a wee break and did a bit of a happy dance. After coffee, our next most important call was to book our ferry crossing to the north island. We decided to try Interislander, the competition to Blue Bridge who we took on our trip south almost a month ago. We didn’t have to wait too long to speak to a booking agent and we booked passage on the earliest option they had – Tuesday March 24^th at 2:15 pm. Well, ok, good, we’re booked, but it didn’t leave much time to get back to Auckland for our Friday flight. At this point, NZ had still not implemented much in the way of restrictions to services – it was still mostly business as usual for day to day stuff. We were still half in holiday mode and thought we might have had time for a beach day or two in Raglan – a funky beach town just south of Auckland. Now that we had our somewhat later than expected ferry booking, the beach idea went out the window. However, today being Saturday and our ferry not until Tuesday – we had a few days to play with here on the south island. We decided to head to Kiakoura, a quaint beach town popular with whale watchers and fun seekers like us. After one of our longer days in the van, we pulled into Kiakoura and our campsite at 6 pm. We got settled in our spot and decided to eat out for a change – plus it was late enough that we didn’t feel like doing a grocery store run at this late hour! We wandered into town, which had plenty of options and settled on a small pub that was busy with the local Saturday night crowd. No one practicing social distancing…yet. Had a hearty and delicious pub meal and walked back to camp were we settled in to pleasant evening in the van.