Gail Oliphant loved New Zealand.

Not quite enough to live there, but she came close to that scenario recently.

Oliphant spent nearly 12 weeks in the island nation. She was there when COVID-19 was blowing up all over the world. New Zealand didn’t mess around. They closed the country. She left Tuesday, March 31.

Oliphant had been on both the North Island and the South Island and was in the south when the shutdown was announced.

“I was on the last plane from the South Island to the North Island,” she said. “The South Island has no international flights; you have to fly out of the north.”

So she safely arrived in the north, however, she had been unable to obtain an international ticket in the south.

After a fair amount of wrangling at the airport, including being unable to get into the international terminal to get the coveted ticket home, she finally was able to get there only to find that she had to stand in a long line.

“People from everywhere were leaving,” she said. “All I could do was stand there and wait.”

The stress at that point was whether she would be able to get a seat on the plane. Just in case, she had rented an apartment for a few days – 3.5 miles from the airport.

That meant she would have to walk from the airport with her luggage as many times as necessary to see if she could get a ticket out of the country.

A woman ahead of her got the last seat on the plane – except her credit card was declined. This meant Oliphant was in luck. She was soon on her way to LAX.

“It was perfectly safe for me to have stayed on the South Island,” she said. “The thing is, I was afraid of running out of my medication, and my visa was running out. It was just best that I get to the north.”

The flight to Los Angeles was a mixed bag. Oliphant said about a third of the people on the plane had masks. A passenger a few rows away from her was on oxygen.

“I would have felt a lot better if people would have been wearing masks,” she said. “It is just kind of a weird feeling to be flying internationally in a pandemic.”

While she was in New Zealand, Oliphant had rented out her apartment. When she arrived back in Fountain Hills, they were still there so she stayed at a local hotel. After they left on April 1, she went home, only to discover they had taken every roll of toilet paper in her house.

“That was a funny feeling,” she said. “It kind of surprised me.”

Oliphant said her trip was wonderful overall.

“I hated to have to leave,” she said. “But New Zealand took the coronavirus very, very seriously.”

She said there were places where you had to sign in to enable contact tracing. Restaurants and businesses were shut down entirely.

“When I got back to my hotel on the North Island, hotel restaurants were the only places open for food,” she said. “And what that meant was room service was open, and you could order only one time each day.”

Oliphant’s sense of humor and irony were intact despite the challenges of getting back to the states.

“I was in a situation where a couple from the States insisted on taking a helicopter tour despite the shutdown and the seriousness of the situation.

“They were not going to take no for an answer,” she said.

The helicopter pilot showed up, the couple boarded the bird and were promptly flown to the police station where they were given a strong warning.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with some people,” she said. “They just were determined that because they were on vacation, they were going to get the helicopter tour. Guess they got one.”

Oliphant said New Zealand was a beautiful place to visit with interesting things to see and do. She was joined mid-trip by Fountain Hills resident Sandy Davis.

They spent three weeks touring both islands and enjoying transportation via train, bus and ferry.

“I intentionally didn’t rent a car,” Oliphant said. “Public transportation is just great there, so I wanted to experience that. Plus, they drive on the other side of the road. I didn’t really want to try that.”

Oliphant said she would return in a “heartbeat” but would be glad if the COVID-19 scare was in the rear-view mirror.

“It made for another bunch of good stories,” she said. “But I think not having to worry about getting home would have made it a perfect trip. And it was pretty perfect anyway.”