After planning a Spring Break vacation down under since November, a time when all the family was rarely available, and all the stars seemed to be aligning, this COVID-19 virus reared its head, causing lots of last-minute decision-making and hand-wringing. At the time of our departure, there were 3 confirmed cases of Corona virus in Austin, all travel related, and 5 confirmed cases in New Zealand, also all travel-related. We made the decision to go ahead and go and take every precaution we could to not bring the virus with us to P&K. We all got funny looks in the airport, especially in Austin, with all our face masks. The travel went well, but one is extremely aware of every cough anywhere in one’s vicinity. One in particular was a couple on the flight from LA to Auckland behind Hannah, Esther, and Sarah, who were coughing the whole flight. Mark tattled on them at immigration, but nothing came of it, because New Zealand was tracking all arrivals and placing everyone in a 2 week quarantine if you were within 2 seats of anyone testing positive. We never heard anything requiring us to quarantine, so they must have had something else causing them to cough.
During the middle of our flight down, the New Zealand government announced that anyone on an overseas flight arriving after midnight on Sunday would have to self quarantine for 14 days. We arrived at 8:30 that morning. If this rule had been in place before we left, we would not have gone.
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