Lockdown Leveller
It’s been just over a year since we returned to Aotearoa New Zealand, completed our hotel MIQ (managed isolation and quarantine) and were released into the freedom of Covid free society! We were benefitting from the hard lockdown Aotearoa New Zealand had endured earlier in the year which resulted in the complete eradication of Covid. We’re one of very few countries to have achieved such a feat.
Not that we hadn’t done our bit too – we did five months of one form or another of lockdown in India. It was a challenge. Foreigners were singled out and were subject to more restrictions than Indians, because, well, it was foreigners who “brought the virus to the country”. There had been the usual changes of behaviour, with social distancing and sanitising in place, but with over a billion people in India, even under normal circumstances the sense of personal space varies greatly from low population-density Aotearoa New Zealand. In India, “social distancing” means not stepping on the sandals of the guy ahead of you in a queue!
But the months of lockdown in India didn’t come close to eradicating the virus from the community as it had in Aotearoa New Zealand. From the time we were released from MIQ, and for most of the next year as we travelled the length and breadth of Aotearoa New Zealand in our campervan Cyril, Covid barely impacted our day to day lives. We religiously scanned in to places we visited using the Covid tracer app, wore masks on the few occasions we were on public transport – but that was about the extent of it.
But all that changed at the end of August, when Covid spread into the community, resulting in a country wide snap lockdown. We had been passing through Taupo on our way to my home district Hawkes Bay for a dog-sit and to catch up with friends and family. We couldn’t resist the opportunity to catch up with our Taupo friends, but our intended one-night stay turned into three weeks! We entered Covid lockdown with no alternative but to stay where we were, and with no idea at the time how long the lockdown would last.
We haven’t known these friends for a long time, having only met them on our tramp (hike) on Rakiura Stewart Island earlier in the year. But where our friendship lacks length it more than makes up for in depth, being fortunate to share a lot in common with them.
Regardless, it was a bit awkward imposing ourselves for so long beyond the original invitation. We declined their kind insistence to use one of the downstairs bedrooms, preferring to keep Cyril on the driveway as our chilling and sleeping zone. He’s actually pretty cosy to sleep in, but also a nice ‘den’ for when we wanted our own space, and of course to give our friends some personal space in their own home.
We joked a few times – how would we know when their hospitality expired? We wondered if one morning we’d come in for breakfast, to find the house keypad code changed? Or maybe we’d head out to Cyril to go to bed and find the keys in the ignition and the engine running!?
There is an expression called WWOOFER (Willing Workers On Organic Farms – where volunteers get food and lodging in exchange for farming or gardening activities), which has echoed our approach during our lockdown here. We’ve tried to make ourselves useful – we joke that we are paying our driveway rent each time we help out with chores like mowing the lawn, trimming edges or helping to paint the shed! I even mowed the neighbour’s lawn one day!
After a few days we slipped into a routine of sorts, sharing the cooking, and also having a new person taking on the role of “entertainments officer” each day. It sounds like a really corny title, but having one person nominated for keeping the others entertained was sure to result in a bit of competition to better the previous evening’s effort! We had a real range, from card games, a quiz, to hide and seek, to flower arranging, sewing bee and even a day-long murder mystery – murder weapons included a banana, a sprig of parsley and a pumice stone, so nothing too sinister!! Another part of the new daily routine was sitting together to watch the government updates on Covid case numbers and changes on the lockdown levels.
One of our challenges with our Indian lockdown was getting food delivered to us in the marina. The lockdown here was pretty straightforward though, with supermarkets reverting rapidly to click-and-collect ordering – albeit having to wait several days to get a slot – but there was never any danger of us running out of food. We also tried a great veggie box delivery service called Misfit Garden whose aim is to reduce food waste going to landfill – each delivery came with an explanation why each item made it to the box. These reasons included “too big“, or “too small“, and the first delivery after lockdown also included a lot of veggies rescued from local restaurants that could no longer open. We even got grated carrots and bread rolls from the local subway store! There was also plenty of experimentation with cooking, with us benefiting from having access to a well-equipped kitchen providing an opportunity to trial lots of dishes we hadn’t been able to in Cyril. Particularly spectacular results were achieved with aquafaba meringues – made with chickpea water in place of egg whites. My old tradition of COTD – Cocktail Of The Day – made a comeback too, with plenty of whisky old fashioneds and a fabulous plum cocktail.
Even under level 4, mountain biking was still an option – though it had to be low risk trails to avoid emergency services call outs! With exercise permitted from your house, I enjoyed the opportunity to try out some toys of our MTB(mountain bike)-mad, and very generous friends. This included a kick arse, full suspension e-bike, which has a small but powerful electric motor, giving you a completely different riding experience. It makes a huge difference, powering up the hills, to save your energy for the descents you can ride much further, and return home much fresher, than riding a ‘muscle bike’.
Taupo has some amazing community-built trails through (mainly) commercial forestry land. Towards the end of lockdown, I took the opportunity to rent a very simple HT (hard tail- front suspension only) bike to check out the opposite end of the spectrum! We’ve been aiming to simplify our lives over the past years and having not ridden a HT since I was a teenager, I was curious as to whether this ‘less is more’, ‘simpler is better’, strategy extends to toys! And I loved it! It was beautiful to feel so much more connected to the trail, to climb stronger, to feel the bumps, and to have to work a bit harder to break some of the lazy habits I’ve picked up riding my own full-suspension bike for years. I’m not sure if I’d go so far as to say that being back under lockdown was fun, but like many tough situations in life it is, largely, what you make of it.
There must be a general parallel to life here. Sometimes the simplest things put the biggest smile on your face. Sometimes you need a lockdown to make you try something you normally wouldn’t. And sometimes you just need to miss something for a few years to enjoy it again! Lockdown generally does get you to hit the reset button on the things that you appreciate and are important. Each day as we went for our daily walk/exercise around the streets of Taupo there was a real sense of warmth from people that we passed, some simply saying hi or stopping to socially-distance-chat. That sense of freedom and relief that we had felt when we had left MIQ one year ago had been taken away from us. It had felt stressful in those early days not knowing how long this would last or we felt vulnerable knowing that we had so few choices about where we could go, with all freedom camping and most campsites closed.
As the lockdown was further extended we had to find another driveway, to make room for our friend’s son – himself having been released from MIQ after returning home from living overseas – moving home. Helen lined one up through a facebook group set up for this scenario, but on the day before setting off on the 30 minute drive up the road, it all fell through.
It’s funny, there’s a lot of talk in Aotearoa New Zealand about it being OK to feel anxious under lockdown. And this sent both of us over the edge. We knew that when we decided to live in Cyril, we ran the risk of hitting this kind of snag. But we always factored that we’d be able to handle whatever was flung at us independently. Thankfully, our friends came to the rescue (again!) and a very kind friend of theirs allowed us to park up on the driveway of their unoccupied bach (holiday home) a few doors along.
As I write, Auckland super-city (home of about 30% of our population) remains in tight lockdown level 4, with the rest of the country gaining much greater freedoms under level 2 This has allowed us to hit the road again, traveling a little to the east to the Taranaki region, which we’ve tried and failed to visit earlier. Even better, it’s a part of the country that neither Helen nor I have visited before and pretty much the last area that we haven’t visited on this year long trip. The latest lockdown makes us cautious as we set off on the road again. There are some new rules to combat the Delta variant, including compulsory wearing of masks, and scanning locations – previously optional. But, we are OK with that and to be honest, grateful. The stance here is to eradicate Covid. We like our sports mantras here, and our PM has “the team of five million” committed to a “go hard, go early“ strategy. The vaccination drive has been the real success of this lockdown – now about 70% population has had at least one jab. Without this lockdown these numbers may not have been achievable. For now we are grateful to be given our freedom again and hope Auckland is not too far behind – they are really taking one for the team of five million!
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