Review Of My Escapades Of 2017 As It Draws To An End

Travels, properties, parties, blogs, friendship inspiration, family and work. This sums up my 2017 perfectly with events! But for more details read on for the review of my escapades of 2017 as it draws to an end.

January to April

January 1 kicked off at the Gold Coast for me, which is a bit of a family tradition. Another week of holidays with family and friends and it was time to head back to work for another year.

Trip to South America

In February, after attending a engagement-turned-surprise-wedding, I packed up and jumped on an Etihad flight to Sao Paulo. Made my way to Rio De Janeiro for a week of relaxation and adrenaline for the Rio Carnival. This was an incredible experience and one that I highly recommend to anyone! Head to the Brazil blog posts here for safety, Rio icons and my carnival experience.

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I spent the next couple of weeks in Colombia with volunteering in Bogota,  gallivanting around Medellin, and exploring Cartagena. I then took a week in Peru to visit Machu Picchu and go into the wild with the Peruvian Amazon. The amazon stay was one of the best things I have done in my life! Head to my Machu Picchu overview and planner.

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Easter was spent with my family and catching up with friends after being away for a couple of months. I celebrated my niece’s first birthday in April.

May to august

This was travel presence time!  I decided to start putting this little website together in May. I came up with a plan of what I wanted to do. It included creating (and for the first time using) an Instagram account and also a Facebook page to get myself on the board.

Many Youtube tutorials were watched for coding on the website, adding widgets, plugins, subscription forms and formatting.

During this time a friend mentioned The Minimalists (doco on Netflix) which I watched and was very intrigued by. I generally have been a minimalist but not on this scale. I started to throw things out and give things to charity that I no longer valued or brought joy to me. This has been so liberating and I will be going through a huge clean out again in the new year.

My second niece had her 1st birthday as well. Thanks for filling my heart with joy and love to both my little nieces.

In August I launched my website and it was received well from my family, friends and others I had started to network with online. It has kept me motivated to keep documenting all my travel and freestyle-type posts for over four months already!

A huge shock came in August as well, when a close friend passed away. It really hit me hard. After it I stepped back from having any big dreams of building up my Instagram account with followers and slowed down on my website too. I needed to reassess and evaluate what was important in my life and who was important in my life. From this I realised to let go of things and people who no longer aligned with me, or I with them. This is another liberating feeling. Letting go equals freedom!

September to november

This period absolutely flew by! I don’t even know where the time went! I had another wedding, away from home for about two months and went to Hawaii.

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Hawaii was absolutely brilliant and I did not want to leave! I first arrived to Oahu and spent about a week there in Honolulu. Traveling all around the island I saw some amazing wild life, beautiful water colors and great surf too (North Shore right before Pipe Masters). I didn’t want to leave Oahu, but then headed over to the Big Island or Hawaii. I spent several days here with a hire car and fell in love here too! More beautiful spots to appreciate and the National Volcano Park was a must see! I really enjoyed my stay in the city of Hilo.

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Next was my favourite island, Maui! I think it wins most people over and it did to a lot of people that I met along the way. I traveled around most of the island as it’s so accessible, especially with a hire car. The highlights here was my time in Lahaina, Ioa Valley, North Shore and Road to Hana. Hana was a huge day but definitely worth it and was so beautiful. The information I was given that day by the tour guide made me appreciate the beauty of the Hawaiin Islands 10 fold! I definitely would love to live somewhere along the way to Hana.  I even loved the big city, Kahului and doesn’t everyone love the gorgeous beach town Paia!

Hawaii is one of my favourite places I have visited in my travels and I cannot wait to go back there!

december

So here we are, the last month of 2017 and it’s now the 18th! This time in two weeks I shall be in Auckland with my mother having a few wines and ready to watch the sky light up with fireworks, music and cheering! During December I will be having my annual Christmas dates with my fabulous girlfriends and trying to pick great presents!

With the Christmas work party done now too, there are only a couple of days of work left before it’s time to pick up the worn-out passport again and head a few hours abroad.

Lastly in the blog world is the current 12 posts in 12 days challenge. A few of us female travel bloggers have banded together to motivate each other to get out a dozen posts between December 12 to December 23. I am so proud of us and glad that I am on track with six posts published in six days (about to be seven for seven after this)!

Watch this space, as I am then having a week or two off!

Thanks for all the support from my loved ones and others I have met on my journey this year. Have a great festive season and you’ll hear from me tomorrow!