Lockdown 2020 - The Start

What happened?!  Somehow I stopped blogging since February.  Say what???

I just think I was not in a place to write.  Covid-19 and lockdown happened over that time/  My life also seemed to have been consumed by the contract work I was busy with, so much so that I sadly lost my inspiration to write.  So being in a place of no mojo, I took a break from blogging.  I felt I needed some quiet time, a time to unplug, a time of rest.

As the whole world closed down and went into lockdown, and the pause button was pushed in almost every country and the streets went into an eerie stillness, it just felt as if time was standing still for me too.  It felt good for me to also push the pause button as well and just be still. It gave me time to clear the noise in my head, reflect on my priorities and find my path going forward.

And as you will see in a separate blog post, there have been changes in my life, but more about that later.

First of all, it will be good for me to write about Covid-19 and the lockdown we experienced in New Zealand as it was such a unique and unprecedented world event.  Years on we will still talk about it, puzzle about it, shake our heads in disbelief.  The year 2020;  the world as we knew it;  life as we knew it just completely shut down in response to a virus pandemic.

So just a catch up prior to our lockdown experience .....

So on 29 February 2020, we decided to move to our happy place up north.  It was early but we were both in the mood for a change of scenery, so back to Hihi Beach it was.

It was so good to be back at a place that we love so much.  March was just a glorious month for us - the weather was still nice and warm, the beach just as wonderful as we knew and the park just as beautiful as when we were there last.  

And then towards the end of March, everything changed.  Chaos and mayhem descended upon the community of RV'ers and tourists that make up our circle. 

There was a call on 23 March that New Zealand would be moving into a full lockdown in response to the Covid-19 virus.  Everybody had 48 hours to choose where to live during lockdown and panic gripped the travelling community as so many scrambled to make arrangements to get somewhere.  Campgrounds and parking areas were closing, and thousands of campers and full-time travellers had nowhere safe to go.  Some of our RV community do have homes as bases but there are many like us that have no sticks and bricks homes to go to, so we all needed a safe place to stay and wait things out.

It was very distressing for me to read the posts of so many of our travellers in Facebook Groups who were just ousted out of safe environments and left to fend for themselves.  But total strangers soon offered driveways, paddocks and camping spots to our travelling community.  How awesome of many of these kind souls to make these wonderful safe places available to us.

For us though, things were good.  The owners of our campground said that we could call Hihi Beach Holiday Park our home for lockdown.  It was, of course, the perfect home for us at this very strange time.

So perhaps part of my withdrawal over this time was just my mind coming to grips with how this all played out ..... just how fragile a situation can be .... when everything was normal and then it wasn't.

So to recap here is our timeline from 29 February to 9 June 2020:

29 February 2020:

Leaving Waikato, Central North Island 

and moving back up to top of North Island

2 March 2020:

Back at Hihi Beach with a few days stopover at Whangerei.

26 March 2020:

Covid-19 Lockdown
NZ in State of Emergency and Level 4 lockdown begins
We stay at Hihi Beach for all of our lockdown period.

28 April 2020:
Move down to Level 3.

14 May 2020:
Move down to Level 2.

9 June 2020:
Move down to Level 1
Normality returns, but borders are still closed.