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We both fell in love with travelling and backpacking long before we fell in love with each other. We traveled several countries in Asia, Central America and of course in Europe. Often we hiked some day hikes, but mostly traveled by public transport and enjoyed all local foods we could find. Xiao long bao, borek, pogaca, empanada’s, baklava, curd and trickle, and freshly made Pad Thai have found their way to our heart (and sometimes our home kitchen). Our European travels often were multi-day hikes, in summer and wintertime. We especially enjoyed our winterhiking in Bosnia, Slovakia and Finland.
Since 2019 Jolanda started keeping a blog on Polar steps. Here are the blogs of our previous big hiking adventures.
Te Araroa
The adventure that all started it. Lets go to New Zealand, they said, it’ll be fun, they said… Little did we know when we went on our first thru-hike. We never hiked for more than a week with our own gear. 4,5 months of physical challenges (one could say abuse), wonderful nature, incredible hospitality, newly formed friendships. During this hike we discovered things about yourselves that we didn’t know and didn’t need before. Yet we started to miss them when we were back in ‘society’…
Kwintsheul – Kandersteg
In May 2022 we started a hike from our doorstep to Kandersteg International Scoutcentre, where we would get married on July 23. 1600 km and 2 months of joy and hiking through europe!