Family Travel Series #6: Helene from Denmark, on being locked down in New Zealand

Whist we cannot travel, we want to remember our trips and dream of the next ones.

I am launching a travel series to read about lovely family experiences all over the world and entertain us.

Thank you so much to Helene for sharing her experience with us! ❤️

Where and when was your last trip before the Coronavirus outbreak? We are travelling and had just arrived in Australia when Corona broke out, and 6 weeks later, we made it to New Zealand 4 weeks before the lockdown.

Tell us a bit about your family, your travel habits, your favourite trips. We are a Danish family of four. Mom and Dad and two boys of 12 and 9 years old. We have been travelling fulltime for 7 months already, and before this, we lived for 4 years in Spain and 6 years in Sweden. Last year, we quit our jobs, our home, and got rid of most of our "stuff", before we started travelling. We've spent over 4 months in South East Asia (Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore), then Australia and now New Zealand.

For us it works well with a variation of how we travel. In SE Asia, we travelled mostly by bus and train. But we are also big fans of road trips, which is mainly how we have travelled in Europe in the past. So, in Australia, we had a 4WD with rooftop tents at the beginning and a motor home for a week. Here in New Zealand, we've been travelling in a motor home until the lockdown.

We also love a mix of cities and nature, so we do both. It's too difficult to pick a favourite place/country, but Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam and Malaysia are all at the top of our list. But each place we have visited has had something special about it.

Our best tip is to travel light... even though we are, we still don't use it all and have given away toys and clothes we weren't using.

Where would you love to go and hide away now? Right here where we are in Nelson, New Zealand. We have rented a house with the most amazing view of the ocean, and in the place with the most sunshine in all of New Zealand.

Where was your next trip planned? How did Coronavirus affect your plans? Did you have to cancel anything? The US and Canada for two months, but at the moment it's not likely to happen on this trip, unfortunately... We'll simply have to go some other time;-)

Share your best travel picture, the one that you keep coming back to, the one that currently makes you dream and smile.

Just wow

Where are you looking forward to travelling to next? The North Island here in New Zealand and in particular to learn more about the Maori culture.

Do you think you will travel more or less? Do you think your travel habits will change? Do you feel inspired to see more? We will continue to travel, explore and learn about other cultures, but we will in particular travel in our home country, Denmark, the next year, as we'll be moving to Denmark after 10 years abroad - and our boys, in particular, have a lot to learn about their home country. This year of fulltime travels has only made us more curious about the world. We still have both South America and North America, to explore... and so many other places... so hard to chose just one place ;-)

Is there anything else you would like to share? We love how the IG (family) travel community inspire us all the time and remind of us good times different places around the world.

Would you like to share your family travel story in this short interview? Get in touch via email marta@uniquetravels.org.

Let's keep dreaming about travelling

Marta x