Taking off in a post-Covid world
Last week, I dusted off my passport to put it to use for the first time in two-and-a-half years. I was off to Fiji, on the first Fiji Airways flight out of Wellington since March 2020. And while a Pacific Island getaway couldn’t have been a more dreamy way to dip a toe back into international travel, I have to confess that I had a few pre-travel jitters.
As far as entry requirements go, Fiji’s are pretty straightforward. You need to show you are vaccinated, have travel insurance with Covid cover, a negative predeparture test result, and book in another test for 48 hours after you arrive.
Except eight days before I was due to fly, I tested positive for Covid-19. I thought this would signal the end of my trip before it had begun.
But, as it turned out, Fiji allows travellers who have tested positive and recovered within 30 days of travel to present a medical certificate, which exempts you from the testing requirements. So as soon as my isolation period was over, I went to my GP and was cleared to fly.
I found I was so focused on Covid-19 and navigating the new rules that I completely forgot about other aspects of international travel, such as sorting out foreign currency and data roaming.
And clearly I wasn’t the only one who was a little rusty. At the check-in counter, I overheard the most devastating sentence: ‘‘I’m sorry, your passport expired a month ago.’’
Going through the airport was another weird experience.
I am the kind of traveller who likes to get all the tricky bits out of the way as early as possible so I can maximise my time smelling the perfume samples at duty free.
So, as soon as I was checked in, I made a beeline for security, just like I would have in pre-Covid times.
It took me all of two minutes to breeze through, and then I found myself completely alone in the eerily quiet international terminal, with two hours to go before my flight. Only duty free and Mojo were open. I wished I had got a bagel in the main terminal.
Once I was in the air though, all of the stresses and the strangeness of travel in this new world melted away, and I felt like I could finally look forward to my first post-pandemic adventure.
By the time I was sitting at a beachfront bar at my resort, sipping a coconut and listening to the different accents and languages of tourists from all over the world, I had practically forgotten the past two years ever happened.
But international travel is not the only thing that is no longer a fantasy.
In this week’s cover story, Stuff Travel’s resident scuba diver Juliette Sivertsen shares her experience of becoming a certified mermaid – complete with a tail. Find out more about that on pages 38-39.