"The whole Covid-19 thing had kind of started, but nobody really realised then what it was going to turn into."
Scarlett’s three-day trip begins with an eight-hour drive to Buenos Aires, a thorough health check there, then an Australian government charter flight to Melbourne with a group of Australians and 12 other New Zealanders, then another flight to Auckland.
There she will spend two weeks on her own in isolation, including the day she celebrates her 16th birthday.
Mrs Norman said getting her daughter home had been a difficult and expensive exercise.
Two earlier cancelled flights cost $3000.
And today’s flights and accommodation added up to a further $4500.
She understood Rio Cuarto had no cases of the virus, but residents there had still been locked down for seven weeks, with even more strict rules than those in New Zealand.
