The start of a big adventure

Hi everyone,

This is day one of this blog, but certainly not day one of our great adventure. That started to be exact on the 8th of june 2016. This was the day after we returned from our honeymoon. We visted South Africa and Mozambique. Maybe it is not the best idea to fall in love with someone else on your honeymoon, but how great is it that we both fell in love with the same thing: South Africa.

Before we tell more, let’s introduce ourselfs first. We are Wiebe en Melanie Hofstra from The Netherlands. We are together since may 2011 and we got married in may 2016. We live together with two amazing dogs and three fuzzy cats. Wiebe is 42 years old and he is running his very own law firm in Hilversum. He also does volunteer work in Dierenpark Amersfoort, which is a zoo nearby. Melanie is 28 years old and she is graduating right now in psychology. She hopes to work in E-Health in the practice where she is doing her internship. She is also a volunteer at the zoo. We have a lot of similar interests. That’s easy, we don’t have to mention everything twice and often we think the same things at the same time. We love animals, nature, traveling, diving, reading, board games, walking and (secretly) Netflix. Most of all we love each other and we are so ready to follow our undeniable dream: moving to the country we fell madly in love with.

It all started innocent in January 2016 when Wiebe picked up some traveling guides (who does that anymore?). We were planning a visit to Mauritius or the Seychelles for our honeymoon. In the travelling guides however, we came across a wonderful trip that both included South Africa and Mozambique. So we switched the whole relaxing and doing nothing honeymoon to an active one instead.

We were almost every day busy with the wedding and we feared that we might end up in a black hole after our wedding day. Well that didn’t happen, because the honeymoon was fantastic. It is great that we visited Mozambique but it did not make our heart skip a beat. South Africa did, bigtime! It still does every day. But liking a country for a holiday is something completely different than saying:’Well, let’s go and move to it’.

Well it went something like this. We were looking at houses in the Netherlands. Our criteria: space, quietness, room for animals and a view. Well that is not easy to find in the Netherlands. So Melanie made a joke during dinner at our favorite Greek restaurant:’Why aren’t we moving to South Africa? Lots of space, views, quietness and lots and lots of animals’. Of course she was expecting that Wiebe would be 1) in shock or 2) saying no. But he said:’yeah, why not?!’ Well guess who was in shock instead 😛 This is how it started and the black hole we feared never came. The wedding was a big deal, but  this is simply huge.

On this blog we will keep you up-dated on our adventure. When we have made it to South Africa and we have started our lodge we will use this blog to tell you about our experiences. And better too early than late: if you want to experience that too you can stay with us in the South Africa lower bush! Just a little patience, just another four years before we are able to move 🙂

Wiebe & Melanie