Each week we will be featuring an interview with a member of the Superstar Blogging community. These interviews will highlight the ups and downs faced on the road to success, illuminating helpful tips and tricks along the way. If you want to get inspired and succeed in the world of travel blogging, video, writing, or photography then consider these interviews must-read material! This week we are interviewing Cindy, a member of the Business of Travel Blogging course. She blogs at Free Two Roam.
Tell us about yourself!
I’m Cindy and my husband is Simon. I was born in France and I lived in a small village near Le Mans until I turned eighteen. I then decided that I wanted to see the world, so I crossed the English Channel to London. It was there that I met Simon. After living most of his life in Melbourne he had moved to the UK to work and to explore Europe. We quickly discovered that we shared a love of travelling.
After living together in London we moved back to Australia. We were married there in 2009 and have made our home there for the past ten years. At the moment Simon works as a software engineer and I’m a vet nurse, but in the near future we are planning to travel full time for a while. For now we spend as much of our spare time as possible exploring Australia and other countries.
How did you get started traveling? What inspired your wanderlust?
Cindy: I don’t come from a family of travellers. My family only holidayed in France and we went to the same spot every year. I first went overseas on an organised school trip to London when I was fourteen. I was so excited about going to a different country and I loved every minute of it. Returning home I swore that I would go there again and I began dreaming of all the other countries I would visit once I was older. I had been bitten by the travel bug and it has stayed with me ever since!
Simon: Although I was born in the UK, my parents moved to Hong Kong when I was one year old and we lived there for the next five years before heading to Australia. While in Hong Kong we spent a lot of our holidays travelling to nearby Asian countries, and back to the UK and Spain to visit family. So I was accustomed to travelling at an early age and I have fond memories of those times. I was even a member of the British Airways Junior Jet club and had my own log book and badge to prove it! Since then I’ve always loved to travel.
What are some of your favorite places you’ve been to? Any particularly memorable experiences or highlights?
There are so many places that we love. But if we had to choose the absolute best ones they would be:
- The island of Kauai in Hawaii: The Napali Coast and North Shore are truly breathtaking. We took a doors-off helicopter ride there and the scenery from the air was incredible; the lush green mountainous landscape with waterfalls everywhere and the deep red canyons. It was absolutely unbelievable and we recommend it to anyone going to Kauai. You can read about it on our blog.
- Baracoa Cuba: Baracoa is an amazing place. It’s like going back in time, with no internet, no cash machines and with run-down buildings everywhere. Despite the harsh conditions that they live under due to Castro’s regime, the people of Baracoa are so friendly and their enthusiasm for life is infectious.
One highlight in Baracoa was getting caught in a huge thunderstorm while we were on the beach, and running to the nearest bar for shelter. We arrived soaked to the bone. The bartender poured us some super strong mojitos to warm us up, and then came back later to top up our glasses with even more rum! We also loved it when the locals dragged us up to dance salsa with them in the bars (even though we are both terrible dancers).
- Mexico: Mexico is our happy place. We love everything about Mexico; the food, the culture, the colours, the margaritas, and the weather! The highlights of Mexico for us have been swimming with the turtles in Akumal, and the Sunday night festival in Merida where the main square came alive with street food vendors, live music and the locals were all out enjoying themselves. Our dream is to live in Mexico for six months or more one day.
- Heron Island: We recently came back from Heron Island and we did some incredible snorkelling there. It was some of the best marine life we have seen anywhere and we have snorkelled in lots of spots around the world. The highlight of the trip was the snorkelling, but we were also really lucky to see plenty of sea turtles. We woke up really early at sunrise to watch them slowly head back down to the water, after resting and laying eggs overnight. Read about our trip here!
How long have you been blogging? Why did you start?
It has been fourteen months since we started the blog. I read many travel blogs and one day I’d like to create our own, especially because we plan to travel full time in the future. Since we love to read about travelling and to look at other people photos, we guessed that others might find our stories interesting too. We didn’t realise how time-consuming it would be at first, but we’ve been enjoying it a lot nonetheless.
What struggles have you had during your blogging career? How have you overcome them?
My main struggle has been that English is not my first language, so my grammar can sometimes be questionable! I also hadn’t written much before, so I found it hard to write at first.
I use the Hemingway (recommended in the course) and Grammarly apps to help me with my writing style and my grammar. Thankfully Simon is also here to proof read for me and to weed out any mistakes I make.
I also try to read widely to gain inspiration.
What do you enjoy the most about being a travel blogger?
I really enjoy talking about the places we have visited and giving advice to our readers about what to do and where to go at each place. Knowing that we will write about each place we visit, we end up doing way more activities on our holidays than we used to. It means that they are rarely relaxing but it doesn’t matter — we enjoy action-packed vacations!
It’s also nice to get feedback on our articles, especially if they’ve helped someone. We also have an Instagram account where I publish many of our holiday snaps, and it’s always nice when our followers appreciate them and when we can discuss our common experiences.
In addition to this course, what other resources do you rely on for help/information? What apps do you use that make things easier when traveling?
We read a lot of other travel blogs to find inspiration about new places to visit or things we could try with Free Two Roam. Other than travel blogs, I always buy the Lonely Planet for our destinations and I regularly check Tripadvisor, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Bloglovin for ideas and information. Aside from that, a lot of our friends also love to travel so we’ll often talk to them to get ideas.
I write all the drafts for the post in Pages on my MacBook rather than typing it into WordPress. We use Dropbox to make sure the files are backed up and to sync them to both our laptops. For designing graphics we use the online version of Canva. For example, we us it to create posters that we stick on Pinterest when we publish a new article.
What gear do you travel with?
We always travel with our three cameras, an Olympus EPL7, a Canon SLR EOS 500D and a Nikon Coolpix AW130 for underwater shots. We also take the Go-Pro Hero 4 for our travel videos and a tripod. Of course, we always take our iPhones and MacBooks with us for blogging and checking out the photos and footage we’ve taken during the day.
In the next couple of months we’re going to buy a drone so that we can make some aerial videos of the places we visit.
What are some of your favorite travel publications/books? What are some of your favorite blogs?
– Bill Bryson’s Down Under
– The Guardian newspaper travel section
– Conde Nast Traveller Magazine
Favorite Blogs:
– Hecktic Travel
– Nomadic Matt (of course)
– Adventurous Kate
Why do you keep blogging?
We keep blogging because we enjoy it! It’s something we can share as a hobby together, and the more we blog the more we want to travel.
What is one thing you can’t travel without?
A camera! We love taking pictures and we take lots of them every-time we travel. Sometimes it can take us days to sort them out when we get home, so we couldn’t even imagine travelling without a camera!
Do you have any blogging regrets?
Our only regret is not to have started earlier. We had travelled for many years prior to starting the blog and it would have been great to write about all our earlier trips.
What one piece of advice you’d give to a fellow blogger?
It would be to remain patient. You will not get thousands of readers or followers overnight. It takes months and a lot of hard work (as we are finding out). But the journey to get there is still very rewarding!
Tell us about your blog and where we can find you on social media.
Our blog is Free Two Roam. You can also find us on Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest!