8.50am - Wellington City
It's Sunday morning and it's the moment of truth. I'm in Wellington CBD and I am about to go and do my supervised RAT. I need a negative test in order to get on my flight to LA and then on to London later on today. So this is one of the places in Wellington (Chemist Warehouse) that does it. I'm recording this on my Apple Watch so I'm hopefully this is still going to be audible for you but I'm going to go in now. I'm about 10 minutes early for my appointment and let's see how we go …
8.56am
I’ve just done the test. You actually just do the test yourself - the pharmacist was there watching you and making sure your form is good. Just five twists in each nostril on the same swab and now I'm outside waiting. I will see if I just keep that one red line on the RAT - I am I'm hoping they don’t see two lines. Actually pretty nervous now. If I am positive, I don’t think I can fly for at least another 7 days. And that will screw a whole lot of arrangements up.
9.04am
I just got my passport back but I've been told I've got another 15 minutes to wait which is more than a little nerve racking …
9.20am
Oh that's an absolute relief. I've just got my Covid negative test back and I've got all the documentation - everything that I need now to board my plane to Los Angeles and London later on today.
Gosh that was quite nerve racking but pretty simple. You do the test yourself but you are watched by the pharmacist to make sure that you're doing it correctly and they're the ones that do all the reagent stuff back behind the scenes whilst you're outside in the waiting. They see to all the paperwork for you - you do need to take your passport with you to confirm your identity and so that they can put that down on the documentation. I’m assuming that can be cross checked when you're at the airport. Alright, I hope that's helpful. I'm just going to hang out with my family now for the rest of the day and in a much more a stressfree way before I head to the airport around about 4 o'clock.
3.30pm - Wellington Airport
I'm here at Wellington airport and I'm just going to try and check in and see everything that's involved with that. Wish me luck once again.
4pm
Reflecting back on that little experience, walking through the airport maybe about 30% of people are wearing masks here in Wellington. Check-in itself was pretty easy. I presented my Covid vaccination proof - the international vaccine certificate, the Covid negative supervised RAT I did this morning, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) form for the US was all signed and details completed, and the ESTA on my passport was all done. They did the usual thing with the passport and boarding cards and it was all pretty painless.
They had a fish through my stuff in security and had a little bit of an issue with a coin purse that is a little bit too jammed with the silver quarter dollars.
“Maybe take that out next time you go through security”, they said because I couldn't see through it.
Other than that, I am I'm here with a coffee. I'll probably just sort this podcast out and take a few photos on my way through from Wellington up to Auckland. When I get to the airport I've been assured that there will be extra security for people going through to the US and I'll await to see what that's like.
In the meantime, I'll guess I'll have that coffee - a decaf given it's so late at about 4 pm now.
Nerve-wracking pre-departure Covid test