A little about us… We first met in 2008 in Wellington, New Zealand at a Couchsurfing meeting, both being new to Wellington and hoping to get to know some people. Julia, originally from Rotorua (NZ), had just moved to Wellington in search of work after travelling around Europe. Richard, who is Dutch was visiting New Zealand on a Working Holiday Visa and was looking for work as well. We both found jobs and later that year became a couple. Richard is now a New Zealand Permanent Resident.

We started this blog before we left on our trip to South America in December 2012, to replace hand written diaries and to keep family and friends up to date on our whereabouts. We are now back in ‘normal’ life or ‘saving mode’ as travellers sometimes call it. The habit of keeping the blog is now engrained and we are going to keep it up, although admittedly with less posting. Working life is often just less eventful than a life on the road!

For now we are both working in IT and our plan is to buy a house in Martinborough in the short term. Martinborough is in the quiet South-Wairarapa, an area to the east of the capital Wellington, over a mountain range called the Rimutakas. The Wairarapa and Martinborough have been our get away from the city for years when we were living in Wellington, we love this area and think it is an under appreciated part of New Zealand, most tourists don’t come here. It has a landscape of rolling hills, farms, vineyards and small towns with ocean to the east and the Tararua and Rimutaka mountain ranges to the west the. The Rimutaka hill provides a barrier to Wellington, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that the bad weather often stays on the Wellington side, so Martinborough can enjoy a warmer, drier climate, which is well suited for vineyards. The disadvantage is the commute. There is no IT project work in the Wairarapa, so we will commute to Wellington. Luckily there is a train, which goes through the mountain, meaning we don’t have to drive the Rimutaka hill road twice a day.

Once we have bought a house and have the mortgage under control we will hit the road again. We have more plans than we can accomplish for a while. We would like to go to Europe for an extended time, live in The Netherlands and use that as a basis for more travel around the region. Richard’s dream is to buy a Toyota Troopcarrier and convert it to an overland vehicle and drive it in interesting places. In the meanwhile we are happy with shorter trips, mostly road trips or camping and hiking trips of some sort, New Zealand is the perfect place for it after all!