Moving to New Zealand

What it is like for a family of five Americans as they attempt to move to New Zealand in the middle of a pandemic.

Photo by Charles Black and courtesy of Chuck Black Photography

“I’m afraid we don’t have any of the rooms you requested,” the dark-suited hotel receptionist told me.

I had dreaded the accommodations we might have to endure. That’s because, for the new two weeks, my family of five would be isolated in a hotel in Auckland as part of New Zealand’s Managed Isolation and Quarantine system that has been very effective at keeping COVID-19 out of the country.

I had applied for two adjoining rooms so the five of us would not be forced to endure “too much togetherness” while we waited to officially enter the country. As my children are teenagers, the rules allow us to occupy adjoining rooms, but not separate rooms. If they did not have an adjoining room, we would all have to spend two weeks cooped up in a single room. A situation my wife had described as, “Not a family enhancing experience.”

I had put my family through a lot so we could live and work on the far side of the world. On August 30th, we had packed half our household into a shipping container bound for New Zealand and the other half into a storage locker. Then we spent the night in a local hotel because it was too depressing to remain in our empty home…