Taking
f light
Auckland couple Katie and Mark Sievers are
living the dream, travelling the world with their
young girls. They tell Monique McKenzie about
the lessons learned along the way
T
racking down Katie Sievers was no
mean feat. Soaking up the sun in
Fiji, with limited internet, she and
her family have been doing what
many of us only dream of – travelling
the globe full-time. Since August
2017, Katie, her husband Mark and their daughters
Poppie, six, and Lillie, three, have spent their days
collecting an impressive number of passport stamps
as they’ve explored 21 countries together. Being in a
position to do so is the result of a lot of hard work
and careful planning.
The high school sweethearts, now both 35, had
never done the traditional Kiwi OE. Katie, who
worked in property management, and Mark, a
builder, spent their 20s growing their business and
getting on the property ladder.
“Mark had missed out on time with the kids and I
had too,” says Katie. “With both girls, I had them
and was back at work a few days later. It was quite full
on, so when we were in a position where we didn’t
have to work, we decided we wanted to have that
time together, give each other and the kids
a different life and learn from the adventure.”
Upon telling friends and family their decision,
Katie and Mark were met mostly with support, with
friends saying it was “awesome”. But she admits there
was also a bit of light-hearted cynicism.“Because Mark doesn’t like crowds, he’s the most
unlikely person to go travelling. All of our friends
thought, ‘You’re never going to make it, this is just
not going to last’, and my dad thinks that I’m wasting
my life. That’s a different generation though, like
‘you need to be grafting or you’re not successful’,
and for most people of that generation, the reaction
was similar.”
But Katie and Mark are proving the naysayers
wrong. In order to make the trip happen, they sold
their manufacturing business and rented out their
home. Katie sold or gave away most of their
belongings and rented a small container to put
everything else into. They were left with two suitcases
and a backpack each, which she says was dif cult to
start with.
“It sounds ridiculous, especially when you travel
and see how little so much of the world lives with.
But it’s quite refreshing; now I have two out ts and
t hat’s it.”
The original plan was to take a month off
somewhere warm to slow down and have some fun
together as a family; if it all became too hard, they
could come home. However, the trip quickly turned
into full-time travel. From Hawaii and the US
through to Central America – Mexico, Belize, Costa
Rica, Panama and Colombia – to a cruise through
the Caribbean followed by Europe, starting »INSPIRATION
SEPTEMBER 2019 / NEXT 45