My wife and I found a hidden gem in Queenstown. Technically, it's in Frankton, about 10 minutes from Queenstown, between the airport and Lake Wakatipu. We spent four nights there, with all meals included, and the best part, it was free*!
I should note they didn't have a pool or a masseuse (though they did offer physio and, uh, "colonics") and they only had single beds and shared bathrooms/showers. There was a lounge with piano, but we didn't discover that until the third night. (To be fair, it was behind a plastic curtain that said "red zone" and it took us several days to work up the courage to go through.)
If you want to go, the place is called Lakes District Hospital, but I should warn you they're quite particular about who they let in. Collapsing outside the ambulance bay seems to be a good way to gain entrance, though.
At the beginning of the year, the airlines had a sale and I booked a 3-day trip to Queenstown, including an all-day coach/cruise tour of Milford Sound, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in New Zealand. (And there's a lot of beautiful places in NZ!) Of course that got cancelled and the airline and tour gave us credit, not refunds. A few months ago, there was another sale so I rebooked the flight for November. Then I found out the Milford Sound tour was now only offered Fridays and Saturdays, and the new flight landed Saturday afternoon.
Last month and I got an email that the flight had been "impacted" by Covid-19, so I could accept it or change to a different flight for free. The "impact" turned out to be the flight was ten minutes later, but I took advantage of the offer to move the flight to Friday, and then booked the Milford Sound tour on Saturday. Then I found out that the Airbnb I booked was not available on Friday.
Then I had a brilliant idea: We could rent a campervan. My wife had wanted to do this for years, but pre-Covid, these were ridiculously expensive and often had a minimum booking of one or two weeks. Post-Covid, with no international travellers, they were less than NZ $100/day and you could rent them for a weekend. I booked a 7-meter, three-berth van with a toilet, hot water shower, kitchen and bbq.
A couple of weeks before the trip, my wife developed nausea so the doctors gave her some new meds to try. On the morning of the flight she was feeling ok but by the time we landed, just an hour later, she was pretty miserable. It was a ten minute walk to the campervan pickup and I, being cheap, refused to pay for a taxi. Along the way we passed the hospital and my wife announced she was going there.
Obviously in hindsight I should have gone with her, but I thought she was just tired and needed a place to lie down, so I said I'd get the campervan and meet her there. She later told me that by the time she crossed the street, she felt very ill, and it turned out we were in the back of the hospital so she ended up at the ambulance bay, which was locked. She pushed the button and then laid down on the ground.
Meanwhile, I was two blocks away, completely oblivious. The guy was showing me how everything worked, and when he was showing me how to fill the water tank, the pipe fell off in his hand. He was clearly quite embarrassed by this and went off to find a mechanic. They said it would be forty minutes to glue it back on so I walked back to the hospital. That's when I found my wife in ED, shaking terribly, obviously in a lot of pain. The doctor looked at me and was clearly wondering why I would drag her onto a flight when she was like this. I assured him she was ok when we left.
Queenstown is known for skiing and is the original home of bungee jumping, so I'm sure the hospital is used to tourists showing up with all sorts of injuries, and their goal is to patch them up enough that they can get home. They took the same approach with my wife, though I was still hopeful we could continue the trip. I collected the campervan and even bought some groceries. It then sat in the hospital parking lot for two days before I returned it. They were a bit surprised I returned it three days early with only 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) on it, but they assured me there would be no refund.
They tried her on various drugs and every time she felt a bit better, I'd start looking at booking a flight, but then she'd relapse. Her main complaint was a debilitating headache, but an x-ray and CT scan didn't find anything. They put her on an IV with an anti-psychotic medication that also happened to treat nausea and migraines. It helped, but only for a few hours. On Sunday they tried Oxycontin and she was feeling so well, we talked about getting a hotel room and spending one day in Queenstown before catching our scheduled flight Tuesday morning. A few hours later, she was doubled over in pain and we never got to see Queenstown.
Monday afternoon we made a plan to give my wife all the drugs at 8:30am, get her to the airport at 9:30 for the flight at 10:30. A friend was going to meet us in Wellington so she'd be home by 12:30pm. It was a four hour window but it was the best plan we had. They gave me a prescription for Oxycontin and asked me to get it filled before we flew. It was 5pm, the nearest pharmacy was a 20 minute walk and they closed at 6pm, so not a problem. Except, that pharmacy was out of stock, the next closest pharmacy was a 40 minute walk, and they also closed at 6pm. I called an Uber and we ended up getting stuck in horrendous rush-hour traffic. Thankfully (!) there was a new shopping mall under construction and he took me down a dirt road through the site and got me to the pharmacy just before they closed.
(I'm sure the hospital would have just given me a few, but I'd spent four days feeling completely helpless and they'd finally given me a job to do and I was determined to to do it.)
Tuesday morning went as planned. I tried to call Uber but it turned out they were banned from the airport, and the closest they could drop us was *further* than the hospital! We got a regular taxi and paid $20 to go about half a mile. I'd arranged for "assistance" at the airport which, it turned out, was just the airline giving us a wheelchair to use. We checked in, got to the gate, and then they announced the flight was delayed by an hour. Later they announced it was at a different gate.
A few years ago, we were in Auckland when I developed shingles and my wife drove eight hours non-stop to get me back to Wellington. She wanted to go straight to the hospital but I insisted we go home, so I understood when she insisted she just wanted to go home. Since then, she's had a couple of periods where she felt like she was sliding down that path but has been able to get the pain under control. No doubt we'll be meeting with the doctors and hospice to try and sort this out, but for now she's doing okay.
In two weeks, we're planning to fly to Napier to see friends. It's just for a weekend, but then in January we're planning to fly to Auckland to visit the kids on camp, and in February we're probably going to drive to Auckland to drop the kids at University. Hopefully we can get this under control so it doesn't impact our plans.
* Uber to airport: $32
Flight to Queenstown: $179
Campervan for five days: $507
Groceries: $133
Uber to pharmacy: $15
Taxi to airport: $20
Soy chai latte at airport: $7
Total: $893
So maybe not free, but four nights in hospital in the US would have bankrupted us so I am not complaining.
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