Hello again! Apologies for the long delay in posting, I shall try to make up for it with interesting photos to share.
First of all, both Byron and I are alive and well in New Zealand. We’re still in Auckland, in our little Airbnb apartment. We’ve extended the rental so many times, I expect we’ll be able to write a very thorough review of the property by the time we actually leave. Right now it’s a rainy Sunday afternoon, and we are holed up with tea and shortbread as the days get cooler and we are all crossing our fingers that New Zealand has avoided the worst of the epidemic.
So far New Zealand has done a great job containing the outbreak. We spent about five weeks in level 4 lockdown, and then this past Tuesday we moved into level 3. The whole city was so excited, they even set off a few fireworks at midnight when we officially moved down an alert level. If we stood in the corner of our balcony and leaned the right way, we could just see the top of the fireworks over the roof of a nearby building.
While it’s incredibly encouraging to move out of the strictest level of quarantine, level 3 is in many ways similar to level 4. We still can’t move around freely, or have contact with anyone outside our bubble. However, there are a few wonderful improvements about level 3.
First, WE CAN GET YARN! Or, more accurately, I can get yarn. Byron has (strangely) no interest in obtaining yarn, but I sense he’s happy for me. Non-essential retail is allowed to operate in New Zealand as long as there is no contact between employees and customers. Naturally, our first order of business the day we went into level 3 was to go on a quest through the city to collect my treasures.
On our way back we meandered through Auckland Domain and stopped to take a few photos by the duck pond. That’s me wearing my finished sweater, I completed it before the end of level 4 lockdown! And just in time for fall here in NZ.
The second improvement – we are now allowed to go hiking (or “tramping” as they call it in New Zealand), so long as we stay in our current region and don’t do anything dangerous that would require us to be rescued. We took advantage of this by hiking up Mount Eden, an inactive volcano with lovely views of the city and surrounding scenery.
The final perk – we can now get takeout. Under level 4 the only way we were allowed to get food was from the grocery store, but now restaurants are allowed to offer food for pickup or delivery. For us, this meant we were finally able to obtain bubble tea, the drink with the squishy tapioca pearls for which Byron and I both harbor a minor addiction. There was much rejoicing.
Overall, things have been fine. I have good days and bad days, days where staying inside (with no mosquitos, spiders, or cockroaches) and being able to cook our own food feels like an incredible luxury, and days where I am consumed with anxiety. One of my goals for this trip was to become more comfortable with uncertainty, with not having the next step of my life planned out all the time. So perhaps this is a “be careful what you wish for” type situation? In any case, I’m extremely grateful to be here with my favorite adventure-buddy, to be in a cozy apartment on this cold and rainy day, and to have the ability to check in with friends and family, even though we are thousands of miles away.
Plus, the yarn. Always the yarn.
