A trained mechanic, in his younger days Peter Lonsdale bunny hopped around the world.

He worked skifields, taught English as a second language in Europe, tour guided between southern California and Mexico, even managed the former Shotover Jet operations base in Acapulco.

But the ravaging that Covid-19 has dealt the international visitor market busted him, in his early 60s, back down from tour company operator to the sort of job teenagers normally start out on – mowing lawns and trimming hedges.

His work history has been good preparation – though initially Covid-19 took him out at the knees.

“It used to be the old competitions when I was working for this ski business in London, who could have the silliest summer and go to the craziest places.

“We were all off to the far ends of the globe and seeing what we could do, just a bunch of Kiwis all working there and having fun.”

Eventually he found his feet in the early 1990s with a company called Trek America, put down roots enough to own a house in Los Angeles with his future wife Diana, a Mexican.

A move to Mexico was then followed by a proposal in 2004 that Lonsdale open a Trek America operation in New Zealand to complement a new branch opening in Australia.

“Diana said why don’t you go for it. She has a Masters in Business and is an accountant. I’ve had the hands-on experience, so I’m the fixer, good at getting out there and doing it and Diana’s the one with the brains.”

Since a 2010 realignment to Intrepid Travel, due to a buy out of Trek America, the pair have been running 21-day tours in the North and South Island, as well as still operating a tour company in Mexico for Trek America from their home base in Taupō.

The complication that hit their story in late March 2020 is now fairly well established.

“We got a telephone call from the company saying everyone’s tour will finish tomorrow, and you need to take them all to the airport,” said Lonsdale.

“We had one bus in the South Island and one in the North Island, one had to zoom to Auckland, one to Christchurch airport and drop people off simply because the borders were closing… and that was basically the last time we moved our buses.

“It completely closed us down.”

Lonsdale bears no grudge but admitted the news took months to sink in.

“I think there was a feeling of unreality there to really truly believe there had been a virus come and take away everything we’d worked to build up over 15 years.”

For the now 61-year-old, looking more towards retirement than retooling, work became lawns and hedges, while three 15-seater buses sat depreciating on his lawn in Taupō, and one sat idle at his in-laws’ home in Mexico City.

Even the Taupō Tours and Charters bus he would drive himself had next to no business.

It was just survival, Lonsdale said.

Adding insult to injury was there was no real market to sell the buses – no tours operating and at over $100,000, too pricey for the house bus enthusiast.

“It’s been a real shock financially… We were fortunate that we weren’t saddled with huge debt because then we really would have been in trouble.

“We owned what we had so that was a huge bonus and in the end could sit on it and ride it out, but we can’t survive without income, like most people.”

A friend’s suggestion that he look from the “hard yakka” of mowing into residential steam cleaning, has expanded into the purchase of more equipment for gutters and downpipes and now driveways.

“It’s been an extreme change of course and launching myself back to a job that was physical again, at age 61, has also had its own set of changes and challenges.”

But he believed his steam cleaning company, Tundra, was now getting ahead.

“I’m starting to do work for property management companies and advertising locally and just got a website up.”

While all three aspects of his old business were completely closed by Covid-19, Lonsdale hasn’t lost his sense of perspective.

His old company, Trek America, which had 180 vehicles on the road, is gone.

“Camping tours across the United States, Canada, Mexico – I worked for them for 10 years and they no longer exist. Who’s going to jump on a camping tour around North America in the middle of a crisis, it was just unsustainable.”

And while grateful for government assistance he can understand why it is now ending.

“I think with tourism in New Zealand it’s who can hibernate and if you can’t hibernate you have just got to literally drop everything and go into something else. You see Air NZ pilots who are now farmers, helicopter pilots doing other things. There is no longer the work level there was before, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He would like one day to rise from the ashes like a phoenix, he said, “but there are difficult times ahead for tour operators.”

In the meantime he’s running a bit of a life lesson for his four teenage children.

“I didn’t want to go on any kind of dole because I want them to see what is required in such a situation... In the case of adversity you literally have to pull out all stops and go for it...

“I’ve taken them on some of my jobs to pick up leaves and branches, and they go ‘oh it’s not that easy is it?’”

Credit: Stuff.co.nz