OZ Cancellations – Covid-19…

March 16th – We got up early and started making calls to cancel the OZ part of our trip. It’s Monday and we are suppose to leave Thursday but according to the travel agency’s 24hrs hotline, that is too much time to make it an emergency. Meaning they won’t cancel or change anything yet. To be an emergency, you have to be travelling within 24hrs. Our actual travel agent back in Canada was, ironically, stuck in NZ as well and unable to help us out. They (travel agency) had an automated message left on, so we couldn’t get through to them.

At this point, we still weren’t super stressed out. Don’t misunderstand me. We were upset and definitely worried but so much of it was out of our control. We really couldn’t do anything other than what we were already doing. And there was no sense in not making the most of what little of our vacation we had left. We thought “things are changing daily” and “who knows what will happen”. We also figured that because of the current situation, we would be able to make the necessary changes.

We carried on with our day, sand dune boogie boarding and just forgetting about the whole situation as much as possible. The most likely scenario we thought that would play out, was we would have to head back to Canada on the next available flight. Little did we know that was not going to be the case at all.

In Kerikeri, we stopped in at one of the travel agency’s offices. We thought maybe we would have better luck with an actual person. Unfortunately, each country operates on a different system. She could see our bookings but couldn’t actually do anything with them. She advised us to keep trying the Calgary office. She was very nice and very sympathetic but of no help.

Later in the day we decided to try again to call the travel agency’s 24hrs hotline to get the big flights home changed. Again, they told us that we were not an emergency situation – yet. They were currently only able to deal with emergency situations at this point because of the sheer volume of calls. But they were going to check in on why our travel agency office in Calgary had their automated answering service on. They told us to keep trying them as it was going to be the best way to get our travel plans sorted.

We also decided we would try the airline we were flying with to see if they could help to change the tickets. They told us there was a couple of options but they would be expensive and not guaranteed. In fact, they advised us against changing the tickets at this point as flights were getting cancelled left right and centre and we would not be refunded as no travel was being insured at that point. Which would mean we would be out of pocket for any rebooking or changes not only for that flight change but for the next as well. We emailed the travel agent one last time with hopes that someone on the other end was seeing the emails. So, with that all being said, we decided we were best to make the most of what we had left of the trip. We went back down to the campsite and decided to let go of the stress for the night. Hopefully tomorrow would bring better news.