About us - How we met

I would say that Caro and I are not the typical copy-and-paste travelers most people imagine when they first meet us. After all, Caro is from Germany and I am from Australia, and we met in Iceland at a hostel I was running at the time.

Caro arrived at the hostel with her brother to stay for a night, and besides exchanging a few words, she was just another guest who would leave the next day. Or so I thought. After Caro left, I sent her a message through booking.com thanking her for her stay (a standard message I sent to most guests), not expecting a reply.

Yet Caro did reply—with a picture of my dogs and a thank you for her stay. A few messages turned into chatting and getting to know each other. But again, I didn’t think anything would happen, as Caro was in a relationship and I was in Iceland, considering leaving the country to travel the world. Or so I thought.

Caro, following her boyfriend’s (now ex) suggestion, planned to travel to Iceland for Christmas and New Year’s. At the time, I was thinking of closing down the hostel for that period to relax, drink beer, and play games. Jokingly, I offered Caro a place to stay when she came over.

Honestly, I had only met her once for a brief encounter, and suddenly I was offering her accommodation in Iceland. Surely, she wouldn’t come… Or so I thought.

In the end, she did come over, and as friends, I showed her around Iceland driving from place to place, meeting family and friends, and visiting hot springs. These were basic things, but for some reason, nature turned up the special effects to a million, and every trip became magical.

We sat in a hot spring at -13 degrees Celsius, surrounded by snow, with the northern lights lighting up the sky. We drove toward Vik and experienced a four-hour-long sunset with colors that would make artists cry. We explored the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, where a random horse wandered onto the road and stuck its head into our car for a pat. Everywhere we went, fireworks lit up the night sky.

It truly was magical, and there we were two friends sharing moments most people can’t even imagine. There were so many times I wanted to lean over and kiss her, but we remained friends.

Honestly, I didn’t think I would write this much; I was hoping just to make a condensed version of our story, yet here I am still writing. But in the end, Caro got on a plane, broke up with her boyfriend, and here we are, three years later, traveling the world, house sitting, pet sitting, and living in our T4.

What I’ve learned from this experience is that even the shortest interactions can change the course of your life. A five-minute chat at a hostel turned into three years together, traveling the world and achieving dreams we didn’t even know we had. Life is funny that way, once you stop searching, it seems to give you exactly what you always wanted.