by kiwisonadventure

Back in New Zealand… what now?

We arrived home in late March, just 10 days short of being a whole year away.  Leaving Mexico, we stopped in Southern California for a 3 day break and caught up with Patti – we had met her over 6 years previously when staying at the same place on the Greek island of  Santorini. It… Read More

by kiwisonadventure

Mexico uncovered

We often hear bad press about Mexico which can cause some misconceptions and unfounded anxiety about visiting this vibrant country. Just like any country in the world, there are good and bad parts, things you are amazed at, sights that make you glad and very sad, and places to avoid. Our brief experience of Mexico… Read More

by kiwisonadventure

Family reunited…

As we planned our departure from Europe in early February, we pondered the route home. Our daughter lives in Mexico, we hadn’t seen her for over a year or met her boyfriend yet; our son in NZ was keen to meet up somewhere in the world, but was particularly keen for snowy Canada. We decided… Read More

by kiwisonadventure

Expectations and reality

As we adjust back to life in our home country of New Zealand after our year-long adventure, a couple of people have asked me how or if our expectations were met? I asked Chris this and we had a very interesting discussion about expectations and how each of us had quite different views on what… Read More

by kiwisonadventure

Saying Goodbye to Spain

These last few months have gone way too quickly and now we are on our way north  for our final fling in Spain. Before this past year, our only experiences of Spain were brief visits to the Costa Brava and Barcelona, but these gave us enough of a taste to want to explore more of… Read More

by kiwisonadventure

Loving London

A few years back, our plane approached Heathrow over the city of London (on a clear day!) and we got fantastic views of many landmarks. Now, at last, we were going to actually be able to visit some of those well-known places. As we only had three full days we compiled a list of “must… Read More

by kiwisonadventure

Off to jolly (c)old England

What should we do with 10 days between sits in the middle of winter? We’ve seen almost all of Spain so we decided to hop over to see the “motherland”. I have never been to London (or much of England at all) and Chris was aged 3 when he visited London, so we researched our… Read More

by kiwisonadventure

To all the dogs (and cats) we’ve loved this year…

Since our first European housesit in April, we’ve cared for over 30 dogs and cats (plus a few fish and chickens too). Each animal had its own personality and we’ve liked different things about each of them. Even the pets that were hard to love at first grew on you and you end up missing… Read More

by kiwisonadventure

We’ll be going round the mountain(s)

Another road trip beckoned with a week-long gap before our next housesit. This would be our final trip of the year and, with winter approaching, we decided to explore some of the small towns and villages of Murcia, Castille-La Mancha and Jaen provinces. We had just finished a short four-day house sit in Freila, another… Read More