You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone

I’ve taken a different tact with this blog – a bit different to my updates on our southern sojourn.

It’s difficult times for many as New Zealand moved into Level Four Lockdown, to dig deep, to save lives of Kiwis.

We were no different from fellow travellers as we were directed to come off the road.  Our camping areas of choice, ie NZMCA Parks, DOC Camps and Freedom Camps were all to close.

Our main priority was to be the main caregivers to Scotty’s dad who had just come out of a triple by-pass, heart valve replacement and stent.  We were awaiting his discharge from Dunedin hospital so we had to make a difficult choice.  Do we stay at Mosgiel which was our hospital base or do we run the gauntlet back to Invercargill, leaving him in the sole care of the hospital?

We gapped it from Mosgiel A&P Showgrounds to Invercargill, to Scotty’s Dad’s place to be exact.  This was while we still could make the trip.

Scotty had to turn around the next day and make a return trip to bring him home.  It appeared that Dunedin Hospital was in ‘clear out’ mode, getting ready for the influx of Covid patients.

I am happy to report, that he has responded well to our nursing methods and is doing well.

Driveway Dwellers

We have changed from being Road Ramblers to Driveway Dwellers as we take stock of how much the world around us has changed.

As the song goes…..‘ you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’ has never sounded more true.

We went to sleep in one world and woke up in another.  Hugs and kisses suddenly became a weapon.  NOT visiting friends and family became an act of love, not neglect.  Animals can still roam free and it is humans behind enclosed walls.

Suddenly we realised that money, beauty and power are worthless if you are fighting to breathe, fighting for your life.

“It’s going to be hard, but hard does not mean impossible”

Being Driveway Dwellers isn’t all that bad!

Change of Vocabulary

We have become familiar with a whole different vocabulary, where everyday words now have new meanings, and terms that we have never heard spoken more often:

• Covid 19
• Bubble
• asymptomatic
• social distancing
• community transmission
• self-isolation
• essential business
• employer wage subsidy
• mortgage repayment holiday scheme
• be kind
• wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands
• stay home
• we’re in this together
• together we can slow the spread
• 2 metres apart
• essential services
• lockdown
• toilet paper
• flour
• hand sanitiser
• test, test, test

Collecting Memories Not Things

This was pretty much our mantra when we gave up our corporate/business life more than 3 years ago.  Deciding on early retirement so that as we grew older, we would have some fond memories to look back on.  Decluttering our lives, our belongings and our debts gave us the opportunity to travel the world, and for the past 14 months, our motherland.  

Never in our wildest dreams, would we come to understand just how important this was and sooner than we expected.

Caving at Woods Creek Track, Greymouth

We are so incredibly lucky to have some amazing memories that we can draw strength from.  The places we’ve seen and the people we’ve met over the past 3 years of full-time travel conjure up much happiness and contentment in these troubled times.

If we were still living our past life, I’m sure that memories of a 3-hour per day commute on the motorway, sitting in a Cube Farm in an office, or managing 30 staff (meaning x30 headaches) would create quite the same warm and contented feeling in these times of restless unease.

A very angry Cape Foulwind, Westport

Why I Write a Blog

It is a decision I made before starting out on our epic adventures.  When you embark on long-term travel, each day runs into the next.  You come down with an infliction that makes you forget what day of the week it is.  It also gives you ‘memory fatigue’.  Trying to recall where you were and what you were doing at the same time last week……or even one or two days before.

A Lasting Record

By creating a website on the Worldwide Web means that it is permanently floating around in cyberspace…..you know, somewhere up in the clouds.  We don’t need to worry about hard-drives crashing or lost/stolen devises which may hold all our precious memories.

We envisage sitting in our Rest Home, reading our blogs and watching our videos which we hope will bring us great joy and hopefully we would still have enough memory cells to recall our experiences at all the places we visited.  It’s turning out that we need these trips down memory lane sooner rather than later.

Sometimes, I have to admit, that writing up blogs and editing videos seems a chore.  Each blog and video can take me days to write,  to edit photos and videos.  Quite often there are a lot of things I would rather be doing than sitting there, bent over my laptop.  Actually, there are a lot of things I do instead of blog writing and that’s exactly why I’m so far behind on producing them.  Good things take time – and my drafts will always be there when I’ve got the time and inclination to write them up.

I don’t receive any money or kickbacks for publishing my blogs.  It’s all about the memories.

To Inspire Others

We undertook a massive task when we started to research whether we could achieve our goals, dreams and aspirations of full time travelling.  We trolled the internet, spending hours and hours reading travellers blogs and watching their Youtube channels.  Soaking up information like a sponge.  Many of these blogs and videos inspired us and cemented our dreams to go through with our plans and how we were going to make them happen.

My main motivation for continuing with my blogs and videos is the hope that we may, in some small way, inspire, motivate and inform others who yearn to follow a similar road to us.

I don’t get hung up on how many followers I have on Facebook or Instagram.  I can’t even tell you how many ‘hits’ my website has had nor how many views I’ve had on my videos on Youtube.  What I do get a kick out of is the feedback and comments I get when people tell me how much they enjoyed reading my blogs or watching my videos.  It gives me a buzz when they say that I’ve inspired them to visit a certain place or partake in a certain activity.  It makes it all worthwhile.

Our overnight cruise on Doubtful Sound

A Slideshow of Memories

I’ve created a slideshow of every title page of every blog and video I’ve written and created since crossing over the Cooks Strait to the South Island in May 2019.  Each title page conjures up so many memories of the locations we visited.  The people we met, the places we stayed and the spectacular scenery we saw (click on the link below).

Every one of these title pages is a blog that can be found on my website.  If you’re writing up that ‘Post Isolation’ Itinerary, then have a look through the options of places to visit.  Hopefully, they can be of some inspiration of places to look forward to visiting when all this is over.

Sunset at Pakawau, Farewell Spit