Next New Zealand – September 2019

‘Travel has also

taught the girls

to treat everyone

the same – no

matter what

background

they’re from’

he’s quite focused, so he found it a lot harder than

me,” says Katie. “Especially if you’re in those typical

gender roles, a dad has an escape going to work –

you get away from it, and even though I was working

too, he didn’t get ‘mummy guilt’. He really missed

going to work and he missed his mates.”

But the highlights have absolutely outweighed

the negatives, and Katie says Mark has now caught

the travel bug. “When he looks at our photos, he’s

like, ‘Wow, thank you, this is so cool.’ Mark’s such

an involved father, the girls are really lucky, and

that’s the thing the kids love, just having him all of

t he t ime.”

The toughest moment of the family’s trip

happened one night in Costa Rica when they were

ejected from their accommodation at 5pm because

Katie’s credit card declined. They went to the bank

to get cash out but, being a Saturday, it was closed

and the maximum they could withdraw was $200.

“The lady ipped out, started speaking Spanish and

kicked us and the kids out. There we were with two

suitcases on a dusty gravel road without street lights;

Mark just said, ‘This is it, we’re going home.’”

Silver linings

W

hat was initially a stressful experience
turned into a silver lining. The family
ended up staying in a hostel that night
and while there met a German family with seven
children who have been travelling the world for 20
years. Known as the Sundance family, their
extraordinary lifestyle has garnered a Facebook
following of 515.5k. Katie and Ka Sundance
actually met in New Zealand, so they had plenty
to bond over with Katie and Mark, plus their littlest
child was about the same age as Lillie. The two
families got along so well that the Sundances are
planning to come to stay with Katie and Mark in
New Zealand.
Katie has developed a following of her own. In
order to keep in touch with friends and family
back home, she started an Instagram account,
@kiwi_and_free. What essentially started as a
family photo album now has 16.4k followers.
Although the family have met plenty of inuencers
and bloggers on their journey, Katie admits she still
nds the whole social media craze “bizarre”.
“We’ve met a couple of travelling families and
they’re saying, ‘I’m on holiday, I’m not working’, but
man, they’re working to get those amazing videos,
shots and content for their blog. The competition in
the eld must be huge. But we’re both terrible at
keeping in touch with our family, we’re not going to
ring every week, so for us it’s a way to keep friends
and family up-to-date.”
Fiji is the couple’s last planned destination, so
they’ll soon head back to New Zealand indenitely
Photography before deciding whetherthey’llgoawayagain »

Supplied

INSPIRATION

SEPTEMBER 2019 / NEXT 47