Untethered

Hello friends! We hope that all is well inside of your bubbles wherever you may be.  Like most folks, we are antsy to get on with life.  We are hopeful that by next week, we will be in level 3 which enables us to get coffee or food on a take out basis.  Dan's already scoped out the closest cafe for us to get a steaming hot flat white made with really good coffee beans! Conversations with family and friends keep us smiling.  Too much "news" time is prevented by taking frequent long walks, doing exercise videos and working on learning how to speak Spanish.  Since we intend to travel as soon as the world allows us to do so and we know we will need to have some fluency in Spanish, we figured now was a good time to get started. Our weather has been absolutely spectacular for the past several weeks.  Temperatures make it to the high sixties by mid day enabling us to be in shorts often.  We have made our second trek to the ocean with intentions to do so...

Hello Friends! We hope that you/your families are staying healthy and managing the stress of this strange new world.  Fingers crossed that we may be in the home stretch of the current level 4 restrictions here in NZ.  Thankfully, the number of cases here remain low with fewer than 1500 and 4 deaths. The Prime Minister of this country has done a fine job with managing this crisis and we are certainly impressed with the Minister of Health.  The big question of course, is how do you restart society AND will we be subject to open/closed/open/closed scenarios depending on the number of virus cases that emerge. We have been planning our "get away" to the north island of New Zealand should travel inside of the country once again be allowed.  Our intention is to find a place on the coast east of Auckland where the winter temperatures will be a bit warmer.  If travel is permitted, we'll have plenty of coast line to explore but also be ready to hunker down again if re...

Like many people across the globe,  we are learning to navigate through a world that has been cancelled.  New Zealand is in week 3 of the mandatory self isolation rule.  Still nothing but grocery stores, pharmacies and a few gas stations are open.  Car traffic is minimal and Christchurch feels deserted.  We are allowed to walk outside which has been a nice luxury that some folks don't have due to the type of lock down their country is in or bad weather.  We are having wonderful fall weather with cool mornings but warm sunshine filled afternoons. Hiking 3 to 4 hours every day is our routine.  So far, it has kept us in good physical as well as mental health.  Exploring different parts of the city, we've uncovered some interesting art pieces along with some lovely old buildings.  The Maori culture is represented everywhere here and is an integral part of New Zealand's personality.  The Maori's ancestors are from Eastern Polynesia and thei...

Just 10 days ago, we were exploring Queenstown, NZ with plans to make several stops on our way back to Christchurch where we would return our rental car. But Covid has changed the world and currently all of NZ is in a mandatory 4 weeks of self isolation.  Dan did a hero's job of canceling all of our future plans and finding us a comfortable two bedroom furnished apartment in Christchurch. Today is day 9 of the challenge with only grocery stores and pharmacies open.  We are allowed to be outside walking so long as we maintain 2 metres of distance between others.  The city is mostly empty as we roam around getting our fresh air.  Strangers stop to talk from afar.  Many of them are travelers who are still working frantically to get back to their home country.  The challenge is that all international flights are basically gone.  We are lucky our original plans didn't have us leaving NZ until May 19 for Malaysia.  So the stress of "needing to be...