A little more about me
I grew up on a dairy farm in New Zealand. My childhood was spent running around barefoot, riding horses through the bush, swimming in the river and calling it a shower. Now I’m grown up, not much has changed. Maybe one day I’ll have a serious job that requires shoes. For now, I carve out a living writing about my passion for van life, hiking, surfing, and generally living life outdoors.
My whole adult life has been shaped around travel
I have spent an unreasonable amount of time travelling. After graduating with a degree in linguistics, I got on a plane to Chile and didn’t go home for more than two years. That set the tone for most of my twenties; travel, run out of money and go back to New Zealand, save up just enough to get by on a shoestring, travel for as long as possible. Rinse and repeat.
In Ethiopia, I fed hyenas from my hand and looked into the maw of an active volcano. In the DRC, I sat with silver-backed gorillas. In Colombia, I lived in a town on the Caribbean coast and spent weekends beach hopping. In Albania, I managed to get fired from a hostel job for which I wasn’t being paid; completely broke, I hitchhiked my way up the coast, sleeping on beaches and building fires out of driftwood. I hiked from the ice cap to the coast in Greenland, a 10 day journey which might be the best thing I have ever done.
I’m old enough to remember travelling before the age of smartphones, relying on beat up copies of Lonely Planet and my own ability to always find somewhere to sleep no matter what hour of day or night I rolled into a town. Now in my thirties, it has been a while since I stayed in a hostel with bed bugs for a few dollars a night. But, I still like a bit of grit, a bit of uncertainty. Leaving a little room for the unexpected to happen.
This website is the result of me not wanting a real job
For a while there, I did have what looked like a normal career. I landed a job in a marketing agency, which led to me working for Jucy Rentals, which led to me working for Tourism New Zealand. Dream jobs for someone who loves travel. The pandemic helped to keep me in place for a while. I gave the 9-5 a go.
But, borders opened up again, travel beckoned, and as always, I heeded the call. I took the leap into freelancing full time – somehow landing bylines in newspapers and magazines like The Guardian, National Geographic, and Conde Nast Traveler – and bounced around digital nomad hot spots like Indonesia, Mexico, and Portugal.
I first started publishing content on this website in 2023, while in Madeira of all places. I had no real idea of what I was doing, but I was driven by the intuition that freelancing long term wouldn’t work; I was cobbling together an income from various freelance writing projects, but the instability meant I was looking for firmer ground under my feet. Having my own publication made sense.
For the first few years, I did what I knew how to do; write search optimised content for the internet. I have a marketing background, so I know how to get a website to show up in Google. I did not, however, know how to write in a way that had actual value for readers.
After a lot of trial and error, the introduction of AI, many months of travel around New Zealand, and a few epiphanies, I finally realised that the real value I can offer people is to write from my own experience (and I know that sounds obvious now, but it was not the advice travel bloggers were sharing at the time. Generic content was a thing long before AI came onto the scene). Which means I might write the most comprehensive New Zealand guides, because I am only one person; but I hope I can write the most trustworthy.
How I choose what to feature
I write exclusively about New Zealand on this website. This is the country I know best in the world. I grew up here, and have travelled here extensively for both work and leisure. I have yet to get bored of travelling Aotearoa.
I only recommend places and experiences I love, and that I think my readers will also enjoy. Where possible, I like to highlight woman-owned, Maori-owned, or otherwise locally/independently owned businesses, or those committed to sustainability and community.
When planning my own travels around New Zealand, I draw on a wide range of places (I love Neat Places for bar and restaurant recommendations, local tourism websites and news outlets for museums, galleries, or other local attractions, word of mouth tips from other travellers for hikes, Cuisine Good Food Guide for restaurants) and my aim is to try as much as I can, and distill the best of what I find into my guides.
That means I do skip over things I didn’t enjoy, or places I don’t think are interesting for overseas visitors short on time. I also acknowledge that I haven’t (and probably will never) see everything. I’m just one source of information — I expect you’ll plan your trip using myriad sources, each with something different to add.
I do not write about topics which I don’t fully understand; a non-exhaustive list of these topics would include Maori culture, travelling in New Zealand as a person of colour, or queer travel within New Zealand.
