A roller coaster day – Covid-19…
March 17th – We had really crap wifi down by the beach. You had to drive up a ways to get a proper signal. It was glorious to be disconnected but also very stressful in the current situation. That morning, we got an email from the Canadian Consulate in Wellington saying that our Prime Minister was urging Canadians to get home as quickly as they could. With that statement, he added that now all travel and medical insurance was null and void for anything Covid-19 related. What?!?!
Wow…. Now, we really did need to get our tickets home sorted and quickly. We checked out of the caravan feeling a bit anxious. We really didn’t know what these statements truly meant for us. What we did know is that we needed to get to a stable internet connection and start making phone calls. And that is what we did. We headed off to the hotel while the rest of the gang went to see the glowworms. Sad to have missed out on that one but don’t think I would have enjoyed it anyway because I was getting quite anxious about it all at this point. Things were changing so quickly and without warning. It was hard to process everything coming in at that speed and rate of change.
The hubby and I got to the hotel, checked in and started making calls in the lobby were the signal was strongest. The hubby called family, friends and work to let them know about our current status. And I finally got through to the Calgary travel office. They knew about us and were trying to figure out how to get us home. It was a funny feeling of relief when I spoke to Isabelle on the other end. I didn’t know her and had never met her but she was awesome. Very calm and reassuring. She was also french Canadian so it just made it that much easier for us to chat and make a plan. I was feeling tons better by the minute.
Our families were definitely getting worried and so were our friends. They were sending us news article links and keeping us posted on what the situation was like back in Canada. None of it sounding very good. In fact, all of it sounding very bad. Not something I wanted to rush back to. But the hubby reassured them all about our status and progress. I think everyone was starting to feel better.
After talking to Isabelle I was feeling calm. But then a new feeling of panic came over me when I realized that we would have to board a plane with a lot of other, potentially, sick people and head back to a country that had a lot more cases. There were only 12 cases in NZ at that point. And some already recovered. We felt incredibly safe where we were. Blissfully safe. The thought of going through an airport and getting on a plane felt very counter intuitive to me.
I called Isabelle right back and told her that we were not in a rush to get on a plane. We explained that we would feel safer if we didn’t rush out with the masses over the next few days. We were happy to leave after the main panic crowd left – if we had an option. She agreed with us and said that sounds like a very smart plan. However, she warned us that we may not have a choice about which flight we got. We obviously understood that but just wanted to make sure that if there were options that later was better than sooner for us. Of course, none of this conversation would matter within a week’s time.