Retirement Trip - Finally that week in Auckland

 Can you believe its been 6 months since we were in New Zealand trying to get home?  I had planned on getting our trip written up sooner but somehow just couldn't get to finishing it. Anyway here we are.  

When last I left it we were on 24 March having found the British Consulate locked and no one home. 

With full lockdown starting on 25 March we weren't really sure what to expect.  The rules were that you could go out and walk for an hour per day, but to be honest we didn't stick to that and were passed by police patrols on a number of occasions and no one was interested in us.  I guess as long as you were keeping your distance from the few people on the streets it wasn't a problem.  We walked and walked and walked.  Considering that we had only planned to be in Auckland for one day, it was a bit of a bonus to have what turned out to be a full week there.  We certainly did it justice, walking approximately 30 miles over our time there.  Visiting all the green spaces and parks, the water front, the different areas, looking at all the amazing restaurants we might have had to choose from.  Chatting to stranded holidaymakers at a social distance, its funny how you could tell who they were and people were desperate to strike up a conversation to find out how you were doing, did you have a flight home etc etc

Fortunately, we found a fish market open, though we could only get smoked cooked fish as we didn't have facilities to deal with some of the amazing stuff on sale.  Queues for the supermarkets were long and very frustrating but as we all know it was something we would all get used to.

On the evening of 26 March we received the news that we were booked onto a flight via LA for the 31st March - the day we were actually due to leaving New Zealand.  Anything of course could have gone wrong in those 5 days but it was a light at the end of the tunnel and the closer we got to that day the more nervous we got.  We didn't tell the hotel until the afternoon before we were due to leave as we didn't want to loose the room just in case it all went wrong.  

The trip to the airport was surreal, empty motorways, empty everything.  Once at the airport there were only the people that were going on our flight, so weird.  Nothing open, so fortunately we had taken drinks and snacks to tide us over.  The flight was uneventful - I slept all the way - once we were actually sat on the plane I finally believed we were going home.

Arrival at LA was a shock.  Pandemic!! You would never have known it apart from the closed shops and restaurants. No social distancing, everyone crushed together in the arrivals and immigration.  Thankfully we were wearing masks.  Once we got to the terminal for our London flight we found one burger place open and enjoyed a couple of beers and a huge burger.  We decided it was easiest to book a car to drive ourselves home from the airport rather than use public transport, so managed to arrange that online whilst we waited.

Again an uneventful flight, not full which was great though we did end up keeping our masks on just in case.  Heathrow was as deserted as Auckland and we raced through immigration etc in no time, collected the car and headed home.  Our trip completed, a brief visit to the USA - 7 hours in the airport rather than three weeks travelling and meeting with friends.  Ahh well maybe when the world gets back to rights we can sort that trip.  In the meantime, Auckland was lovely, New Zealand was wonderful, but too far away, not sure that I would ever make that trip again, but never say never.

This is a small selection of Auckland - enjoy