The World Pursuit
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The Story Of The Two Of Us Begins Right After College In 2013.
I (Natasha) worked as a waitress to get through college and save a butt load of money. Side note – I pride myself on saving habits and have been deemed “frugal.” Between the sale of my Ford Mustang and my saving efforts, I graduated with a BFA in Film Studies and a BS in Business Marketing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington with $20,000 in the bank.
I had big plans to take that money and backpack the world. I booked a one-way ticket to Iceland, the cheapest flight I could find to Europe. I didn’t have any plans and no end date. Just go until the money ran out.
After graduation and just weeks before I was set to take off for Europe, I went with some friends to a celebration party, and through a mutual friend, I was introduced to Cameron. We chatted, drank cheap gin and tonics, and I told him I was going on a never-ending backpacking trip alone. I told him that he should join me that summer, half-joking, but half not. (I later found out that he thought I was full of crap regarding the trip and the invite).
We went on one date before I left, and he told me that he bought a ticket to meet me in Norway. He also wanted to travel to Europe and figured this was a great opportunity. If we ended up hating each other, we would go our separate ways. We met a month or so later for our third date in the lovely city of Stavanger, Norway, and ended up traveling Europe together and developing a relationship for the next three months.
We said our goodbyes in Greece, and he went home to finish school while I continued with my travels, not knowing if we would see each other again.
Thankfully, it turned into something more! I continued traveling throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. We agreed to meet again and celebrate Christmas in Thailand and New Year’s in Cambodia! It was a fascinating time for us, but Cameron needed work, and I was getting tired of the constant travel. Cameron went home, and I continued to Japan – my dream country before I thought I should put those costly degrees to use and get a job.
We returned to the “real world” together, moved to New York City, and found ourselves a big boy and big girl job in Manhattan. We both had good jobs and fun coworkers, but after a year and a half of living and working in the city, we realized that the rat race wasn’t for us. There had to be something more than two weeks of vacation and working at an office 60+ hours a week while commuting two hours a day to work and living in a $2000/month small apartment.
The Birth Of The World Pursuit
Together we devised a secret plan to save as much as possible and quit our jobs at the end of our lease. Cameron worked weekend overtime hours, and I picked up a cocktail waitressing job in a Manhattan sports bar.
We were going to start traveling again and seek out the greatest adventures we could. In 2015, we bought the domain to The World Pursuit. We had no clue what we were doing, but the goal was to document our travels better than the non-existent job we had done before.
We put in our two weeks notice on the same day, we packed up our clothes, sold what little furniture we had, and bought a one-way ticket to the cheapest place we could find – Latvia.
Honestly, we had very little interest in visiting Latvia, but it was a $200 flight to Europe – just what we needed to start this life of travel. We had no plans and were living life day to day. We traveled around Europe for the next year, writing tips and stories on our blog with little clue to what we were doing but we hoped that others were reading.
We were moving every few days and living on a frugal budget of $50 a day through the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Posting fun photos on Instagram and making about $1000 a month through copywriting and other random internet jobs.
It was enough to keep us going and motivated, so we did something that we both had always dreamed about and bought a one-way ticket to South Africa. We stayed in South Africa (which may have been a bit too long) and completely fell in love with traveling Africa. So we bought a Land Cruiser in Cape Town and decided to tackle the continent ourselves.
It was a wild adventure and one we think about and miss every day. We found plenty of headspace in the African wilderness that we’ve grown to love. When we could find the internet in the African bush, we frequently blogged about our Overlanding trip, called #HashtagAfrica.
We realized there weren’t many people Overlanding Africa, but many wanted to travel there as we did. We camped in the bush, enjoyed many nights by the fire with the hyenas howling in the distance, and enjoyed African safaris in some of Africa’s best national parks. We made sure to keep up with the blog and our social channels as much as we could.
Eventually, the sad day came when we had to move on, sell our truck, and leave Africa, but that didn’t mean we would stop traveling and blogging. Over the next few years, we broke more into the travel blogging industry.
After Africa, we set off to explore more of the world around Europe, North and South America, and Asia. As the blog grew, more opportunities were presented to us — invitations to visit dream destinations, festivals, and hotels.
Still traveling, still on an adventure, still observing all the wildlife we can, and still enjoying each second that we have together on this beautiful earth. It was an amazing time in our lives, and the world felt like our oyster.
We picked up snowboarding, mountaineering, and hiking and have found that sports consume as much of our lives as travel does. Plus as an added bonus you can travel for all those sports!
After another two years of living out of suitcases and backpacks, travel fatigue set in. It shouldn’t be surprising to learn that almost five years of not having a bed to call your own can get pretty old. We knew it was time for a place to call home and started with a list of potential home destinations anywhere in the world.
After much consideration, we landed on the most beautiful place on earth, the Canadian Rockies. Since then, we’ve spent a lot of time in Canmore, Alberta. It marked another chapter in our lives. During this time, we launched a second website to share insights into our second home, The Banff Blog.
While we aren’t full-blown Canadians, we spend plenty of time exploring Western Canada. We consider ourselves very fortunate to live the life that we have. Every day we strive to spend less time in cities and more time in the great outdoors.
