A Exciting Couple of Days

Our flight to New Zealand, the second try, went off without a hitch. After 15 long hours on a plane, we landed in Auckland. Using the Returning Residents line, we passed through Customs and Immigration quickly. We picked up our rental car deep in the bowels of the airport environs and made our way to the Half Moon Bay ferry. As we didn't have a reservation, we had to wait a couple of hours to get on. It would normally be easy, but the ferries had not been running the previous two days due to the cyclone.

Finally on Waiheke we stopped at the Ostend Countdown supermarket—new since we left and very fancy—for a few necessities. We made our way our friend Russell's accommodations, Wild Days Waiheke, where our tiny house awaited. It is quite new and came with a king size bed, bathroom and good hot shower and a little kitchen. The shower was the first thing we used after traveling for 40 hours.

We slept like the dead our first night. Next morning (yesterday), we headed off to do a little birding, 15 new life birds (of course most everything is!) and to visit our friends, Tom and Christiane. After all of that we stopped and picked up a few things for dinner. As evening fell, I started to get quite congested and it didn't go away overnight.

We both took Covid tests this morning and mine came out positive. Ellen tested negative but doesn't feel too well (40 hours of traveling perhaps). We let Tom and Christiane know to make sure they were okay. 

After a lot of time on the phone with the local GP, I have been given a 5-day course of Paxlovid and instructed to isolate for seven days. Ellen must test every day for the next five days. This has thrown a monkey wrench int out plans. We will have to cancel all of our South Island reservations and we don't really know what to do. We cannot rebook them until we know if Ellen stays clear. If she tests positive over the next 5 days, she will have to isolate for 7 more days. This is all too awful; Ellen is shattered.

Russell has no problem with us staying the extra time, but we will have to rethink all of our plans. We probably have to cut the birding trip short, so we can get to spend time with friends on the back end of the trip. There probably won't be much to write about over the next week as we'll be stuck here until the quarantine is over. We'll keep you all posted.