About us elementor - CHRIS AND LAURA TRAVELS

SO NICE TO MEET YOU!

Hey guys, welcome to Chris & Laura Travels. A Travel Blog website dedicated to sharing our travel journeys across the globe, brought to you by yours truly Christopher and Laura.

What you’ll find here are stories from the road from two travellers who share a passion for adventure, eco-friendly/sustainable travel and creating remarkable visual content.

SO, WHAT IS CHRIS AND LAURA ALL ABOUT?

Well if you’ve made it this far then you probably have a fairly good idea about who we are, because chances are you share in our joy for travel and adventure. If were being honest, we actually never intended to have a BLOG website specifically. The Blog journey first started at the beginning of 2020 after returning home from our year long journey from South America to South East Asia.

Creating visual content in the form of photos and videos was our primary focus and where we invested all of our efforts and creativity; and whilst we enjoyed the process of filming and editing across the year, it took a heavy toll on our relationship and our ability to enjoy what we initially set out to achieve: Travel.

The Blog evolved out of a need to have a creative outlet for our travels when we weren’t physically travelling (for one reason or another, mainly COVID). The more we wrote, the more we came to realise the emotion we could convey through writing, and thus hopefully why you’re still reading up to this point! Being enamoured with taking pictures of incredible landscapes, wildlife & travel moments, as well as filming these places & uploading to Youtube was our main jam.

Prior to jet-setting around the globe, Christopher worked as a full-time Paramedic in Melbourne for almost 10 years, while Laura worked in the beauty & skin care industry since moving to Oz. If we wind the clock back a few years, Laura spent her whole life growing up 3 hours North of Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. Exchanging a white Christmas for a Christmas lying on the beach was always high on Laura’s life goals, and what do you know she ended up here!

VERY INTERESTING, BUT HOW DID YOU GUYS MEET?

Ahhh..ours is a love story as old as time. Boy meets girl on tropical island, boy and girl drink way too many shots of Sambucca that were lit on fire! Boy kisses girl, leaves her on the island never to see her face again for 4 years until….one day out of the blue, she uses the power of social media to reconnect with her long lost flame and re-ignite their passion and live happily ever after…..

And thats almost EXACTLY what happened!

You see our story is quite unique and random. Long before Chris and Laura travels came along, in 2012 we were just a couple of young 20 year olds travelling through the South Pacific island of Fiji. One day when the strapping Aussie Chris ventured out to an island called Beachcomber island, he ran into a Canadian called Laura who was all alone on the boat with nobody to hang out with. So 6 hours later and 6 shots of Sambucca, Chris had to leave the island and venture back to mainland.

Laura however was staying on the island for the remainder of her holiday. As luck would have it, we exchanged numbers with the idea of getting back in touch should she venture to Australia. Well, she did venture to Australia but we never got back in contact…

4 years later through the power of social media, Laura reached out to Chris in the search of a local travel buddy. Chris being all too happy to oblige showed Laura his hometown of Melbourne Australia over the course of a month. Little did they both know they fell in love with one another and after ‘settling down’ in the Land Down Under they decided that after 3 years of working their butts off doing an insane amount of overtime and night shifts that it was time for an adventure of a lifetime.

WHAT DID A YEAR OF TRAVEL LOOK LIKE?

Before our year away, Laura and I had both solo travelled the world, everything from Argentina, Colombia and Peru, to the incredible New Zealand, Thailand, Bali & exploring our own backyard of Victoria Australia. But this was all small play. We wanted to go bigger and better. Something that would both challenge us and force us to grow and learn in ways you simply cant achieve from the weekend away. Thus we booked a one-way ticket to Santiago, Chile of what would become the start of a 10 month long backpacking adventure.

We landed in Peru and began the start of 5 months in South America that would see us travel from the Southern tip of Argentina, to the most northern coastal beaches of Colombia. It would see us have our Passports and Visas stolen in the first 2 weeks of leaving our home and safety. Taking overnight buses lasting 27 hours was the norm here.

We partied in Rio at Carnaval & trekked along a Glacier in Argentina. We hiked the Andes mountains of Peru & explored the Bio-diverse jungle of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest & Colombia’s northern Caribbean coastal waters.

Along the way in Ecuador we were given our first ‘real job’ of working with a Hostel & Tourism company called Takiri Travel, where we had creative permission to produce incredible photos and videos of our time exploring Coffee and Cacao farms as well as exploring the Amazon rainforest.

After leaving South America, we made a 2 week long pit-stop on The Big Island of Hawaii’ & Oahu to visit family and friends before jet-setting off again for the remainder of the year. Mexico was next on our list as we lapped up the crystal clear waters of Mexicos Cenotes on the Yucatan Peninsula and explored the cultural heritage city of Oaxaca, known for it’s incredibly artistic ‘Day of the dead celebration’.

After a month in Mexico we had a pit-stop in the Big Apple (NYC) for 4 nights where we were fortunate enough to have free accomodation in the upper east side. Our time quickly came to an end in NYC and we finally headed East for a European summer. 3 months in Europe was not nearly enough, but we managed to take in the gorgeous countries of Italy, the U.K and Portugal.

Funnily enough, we actually got to a point in Portugal where we ran out of money! Yup, you heard it right. Saved our butts off for 2 years to find ourselves stuck in a hostel and broke! With only a couple of days of cash left in the accounts, the Gods came through and we had a very graceful tax return headed our way which ultimately allowed us to continue our travels for the rest of the year.

Otherwise it would have been Adios Portugal!

The last 2 months of our journey were spent in South-East Asia, where we travelled to both Thailand and Vietnam. Laura had the great pleasure of getting acquainted with Dengue Fever in our last 2 weeks of Vietnam, which ended in us cancelling the rest of our travel plans of motorbiking through Northern Vietnam. Thankfully our Travel Insurance kicked in and we were able to get Laura the best care possible, and saw our days resting up in a hotel room to allow Laura to recover before flying back home in late 2019.

WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING NOW?

Here we are in 2020 where COVID-19 has restricted the majority of international travel plans for a lot of the world, and we find ourselves in a position we never imagined. Not being able to travel has been tough on the both of us, however if theres a positive thats come out of all this, the opportunity to reflect on our goals and desires for us and the community we are building has been incredible.

We’ve had the time to create and plan out tons of new and fun ways of delivering content to our community as well as creating and working on ways to expand our brand and show you the natural world through our eyes. So stay tuned as we have some very exciting things headed your way!

And that’s our little travel story thus far! We consider ourselves very fortunate to have taken our massive trip last year and not be interrupted from Covid, but fear not..there are plenty more travels in the works for the end of 2020 and beyond!

In the mean time, if you haven’t already, make sure you head over to our other social pages on Youtube, Facebook and Instagram where we have a more up to date snapshot of our lives.

Happy travels and we will see you on the road!

WHAT DID A YEAR OF TRAVEL LOOK LIKE?

LAURA

Hi there! Im Laura 🙂 Unlike Chris I did not grow up in the Southern Hemisphere, I come from the capital city of Alberta, Canada called Edmonton! I lived most of my life there until I moved to sunny Australia in 2016.

Prior to our travels I’ve had 1,000,000 jobs, but more recently I was involved in the beauty industry both in Oz and Canada. Chris will try and tell you that travelling all year was his big idea, but let me tell you who the brains behind this operation is…yours truly 🙂

I love to exercise, cook delicious vegan food, lay on the beach all day with a good book soaking up the rays, being surrounded by friends and loved ones and taking the pooch out for a stroll along the beach.

I love practicing Yoga first thing in the morning and getting my routine sorted for the day, and if the weather is good, its back to the beach again !!

CHRISTOPHER

Hello ! My name is Christopher, and I am (one) of the reasons Laura moved all the way across the other side of the world to Australia. Before Laura and I took off on our adventure, I had been working full time as a Paramedic for the states Ambulance Service, of which I am still currently employed in a slightly different position. I was born and raised in Melbourne to a big Italian family of 6, and our dog Zac the German Shepherd 🙂 It wasn’t until 2 or 3 years into Laura and I living together that we had decided at some point before we turn 30 we wanted to do a massive trip around the world and exchange our mortgage and “routine” lives for a life filled with fun, adventure, learning and amazing life experience. It wasn’t until a few months before leaving that we decided that we would try and make something of our trip and start a Youtube and Instagram page to document how much fun we were having.

We are by no means professional creators, with degrees or diplomas in any of this, but we had a dream and a goal to give it our best shot and share as best as we could the beauty and experience that is out there waiting for you IF you let go of your fears.

JOIN THE JOURNEY

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