We have a delightfully bright new logo, a pair of South African rainbow nation takkies, a calendar full of South African places to explore and a trip to Canada around the corner – but how did our incredible journey begin?

Our rainbow takkies, ready to walk the world

Two years ago, we were in a dark and stormy place with no apparent way out except straight through the eye of the storm. I have always been a firm believer that you make your own destiny. There is one person who can decide what you want, go out there and make it happen – and that is you.

When things are going wrong, you have the power to change them.

That’s pretty hard to remember when you are worn down and beaten with wave after wave of turbulence.  Our tempest was work related. In theory it should be easy to separate work from home, keep things in perspective and be grateful for smooth sailing in the things that really count, like family, togetherness and health. Easier said than done for us – we live at work, and work together, which makes it pretty difficult to compartmentalise.

As we braved our storm and focused all our energy on fighting the cyclone, we lost sight of the simple little things that make life good.  As we fought through days and months and years of difficulty, we got more and more desperate – this can’t be what life is about. There has to be a way out – a beautiful end to this storm, a rainbow bringing an end to the grey clouds and signifying clear skies ahead.

We were tired of feeling down, and of seeing all the negativity around us.

Adding to the stress we were going through, was the collective stress of the people of our country. Talk of doom and gloom, hatred being spewed on social media. What had happened to our rainbow nation, and how could we go about changing things for the better?

There was no physical or financial escape possible – or none that did not involve giving up absolutely everything and starting over from scratch. This made no sense, with us in our forties and our kids in important schooling years. So how could we drag ourselves out of the quagmire?

How we longed for our responsibility-free youth – the years where we grabbed a backpack and headed off where the world took us, earning a bit here and a bit there and going where we felt like until the money was finished and we got jobs again to stock up for the next adventure.

Those were the best years of our life.

Or were they? What about the years of having kids, bringing babies into the world and taking delight in their development as they formed these perfect little personalities? Every minute spent with these little people is a highlight.

And so started the glimmer of an idea to find our rainbow – the colourful hope at the end of our storm. Although we could not escape our circumstances, couldn’t we take a break from them? Step away completely and get some perspective? Why does it have to be just young people who take a gap year – perhaps the time was right for us to take a year off, to go on an expedition with our kids – searching for adventure , opening their eyes to the wonders of the world and doing something remarkable together.

5 pairs of feet, ready to explore the world

Who makes the rules anyway? Who says that a traditional school education is the only way? What damage would a year off school, or a year of home schooling do? And so the idea of “Chasing the Rainbow” was born. We were tired of waiting for ours – we decided to go out and find it together.

Our idea started to take shape.

We registered a domain, researched how to do a blog, and started planning our family gap year. Our dream was to road trip in an RV through the USA and Canada – starting in Florida in January, and working our way through the Southern states to the Grand Canyon, and then up to Western Canada, heading East over the Rockies and back into the States down the East Coast to Florida again. We would get someone responsible to look after our business and home, and come back feeling refreshed, minds broadened and enriched and ready to tackle anything life threw our way.

As time marched on, I had faith that we would make it happen. The money would somehow work out, we should just push on and things would fall into place. Ralph suggested that we start the blog with local trips in the meantime – things we could do here at home as a family to practise our blogging skills while we built up to our big trip.

So, in April 2015 Chasing the Rainbow was officially launched with a series of videos on fun family days out around Port Elizabeth. We decided to publish on a weekly basis and found that we actually had a lot to say about family adventure in the Eastern Cape and South Africa. The more we looked for material for our blog, the more we found ourselves out and about, discovering new things and having adventures as a family of 5 – very different to our previous year of sitting on the couch on our days off.

Our first 4 blog outings

Our goal shifted from focusing on taking a year off, to concentrating on doing exciting things together as a family, and sharing our happy experiences in the hope of inspiring other families to do the same, while spreading positivity and a sense of pride about our beautiful country.

And what a year we have had!

As our focus changed to family happiness and excitement, so everything else seemed to fall into place. A shift in our mind-set and outlook has led to sunny skies in every aspect of our lives. Our quest to find our rainbow worked – the act of chasing it has brought such pleasure to all of us, that the chase itself is our rainbow – the colourful and bright end of our storm.

The gap year has not worked out yet. But it has become less important, as we have realised that we don’t have to take a whole year off to do something incredible. Everything we do together as a family is remarkable, and our blog and vlog have created a time capsule of our happy family memories.

We hope that as you join us chasing our rainbow, we inspire you to feel powerful enough to  brighten your own lives. We aim to help you forget for a moment about the bad things in our country and enjoy experiences on our doorstep that are so good they attract people from all over the world. And most of all, we hope to motivate you to get out there with your kids and create your own happy family memories.

Thank you for sharing our journey with us, we appreciate each and every one of you taking the time to pop by!

Yours in Travel

Sarah, Ralph, Jacob, Luke & Cian – “Chasing the Rainbow”

We have the world in our hands