Four people who changed their lives
My dream job in travel
It’s 2am at Chile’s international airport. Riots are raging in Santiago’s capital – and we’re stuck in the terminal.
We could try to leave for a transit hotel but there’s no guarantee they will let us back in. The city is under curfew, meaning nobody is allowed on the roads. Hundred of flights have been cancelled.
Hardly any shops are open because the staff can’t make it to the airport. The 24-hour Starbucks is wrapped in industrial plastic wrap.
I’m enormously tired, the kind of tired where it stings to open my eyes. I’ve just done a 12-hour flight from Auckland, which was delayed 12 hours. So I’ve been travelling for almost 24 hours and face another 12 hours on the airport floor before the flight to Buenos Aires.
I head to the bathroom; fatigue starts to conduct my body in an orchestra of confusion. I put deodorant on my hair and my hair paste on my underarms. I don’t realise until after.
I have a deadline for a travel story, but I can’t find any powerpoints. A Dunkin’ Donuts lies abandoned, with Halloween decorations hanging over the chairs. In the darkness, I sit down and find a powerpoint next to a witch hanging from the roof that keeps banging me on the head. It’s a comical scene, but at least my hair smells good and my underarms are perfectly styled.
Why am I telling you this? Well, I’m a travel writer. I’m in love with everything about travel, the good bits, as much as the bad. I think I have the best job in the world – even when it’s going wrong.
I once spent seven years working for 3News, now Newshub. But I wasn’t fulfilled. Lurking large was the feeling I was wasting my 20s on a job that was too serious.
So I quit – that was almost four years ago.
I decided to do an OE with my partner Radha. About six months in, we realised there was a big gap in travel journalism. There are no shortage of travel writers, but few deliver videos alongside their coverage – it’s a crucial point of difference in a world dominated by video.
So, we started furiously producing video content alongside written stories – and it’s taken us all over the world.
If you’re thinking of a similar career, I have a simple piece of advice: embrace new methods of storytelling and prove your worth.
I put deodorant on my hair and my hair paste on my underarms. I don’t realise until after.