We awoke to two sharp knocks on the door, which was breakfast being delivered at 8 am to the corridor outside our room. Which was 6 am in Australian time. I think we'll be adjusting to the new time zone fairly quickly with these morning deliveries. The continental breakfast option was standard but quite welcome.
In the light of day we were also able to check out the space outside of our room. We'd wandered outside the night before and within seconds a security guard was explaining that we had to stay within two metres of our door. He also took our room number, which was probably a subtle way of letting us know that we were being monitored and rule breaking would be noted.
It was great to know that we'd be able to get fresh air into the room all day long and be able to enjoy sitting outside. The concrete wall view isn't very inspiring but having some green to look at more than makes up for it.
(far view room pic taken while on a monitored walk later)
The room is a fairly standard size, which is going to be a challenge for three people over 14 days but will be workable.
At 10:30 am we had a socially distanced welcome briefing from people from the health department, hotel and military. They were friendly but also very firm on the key rules: mask wearing outside of the room and social distancing. One of the guests was asking questions and would continually pull his mask down and they'd forcefully interrupt him to tell him to put the mask back on.
We also learnt that we'd be getting Covid tests on Day 3 and Day 12. How exciting. Kind of.
Another interesting bit of news was that if anyone on site tested positive to Covid then we'd be locked down in our rooms until full contact tracing and deep cleaning had taken place. Let's hope that doesn't happen.
A highlight was learning that we could go for outside walks at scheduled times during the day. These had to be booked in – part of the continued omni monitoring that is part of life in quarantine. The walk was quite liberating. It involved a roughly 7 minute walk around part of the hotel perimeter, never out of sight of at least two security staff and with double security fencing keeping us well enclosed in our temporary world.
Another highlight was going into the central garden area. This is just beautiful and can be accessed at anytime during the day, though of course by signing in with a security guard first. This will be another part of our new world that will keep us sane. Check out the Pohutukawa tree (aka NZ Christmas tree) and meditating guy.
We had a nice chat with Howard, one of the Navy personnel on site. It was interesting learning about how the site operates. First of all we learnt that we were in a managed isolation facility, which was a lot more relaxed than a quarantine hotel (which is for those at higher risk of having Covid and involves mainly being kept in the one room for most of the stay). There are about 190 rooms on site and currently there are about 200 people being housed here, though this continually goes up and down as people arrive and depart. They'd had a positive Covid case the week before but other than that they were quite rare events.
Howard also told us that the operating model had evolved over time --- early on there hadn't been a clear chain of command and it wasn't obvious who was in charge. Then the military got put in charge and that sorted that out. In one of a few Navy-meets-civilian moments, he talked about the rooms as cabins before correcting himself.
Later that evening we got a call to our room from one of the onsite nurses to check on how we were going and determine if there were any ongoing health issues. We were also told we'd be having a face-to-face health check the next day, followed by the Covid tests on Sunday.
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