My life on flip-flops
A praise to flipflops and travelling and maybe mostly how that goes so well together.
The life I easily get used to living in. The life where I became friends with a cockatoo, a dog, three cats, five goats of which two just born, another dog and two lizards.
The life where I was permanently tanned and the life I made heaps of stories. So I shall tell you a bit about that life.
It all started in January 2018 when I packed my flip-flops and decided to go to Australia for a ‘short’ trip for only a few months. I’ve travelled before and always loved to travel but this time I understood that I wanted to stay here longer. Walking on flip-flops every day feels so good. So I lived in Australia for about a year and travelled to New Zealand, Fiji and Indonesia before I returned, temporarily, back home in the Netherlands.
From the cold winter in the Netherlands, I arrived in midsummer in Australia. With some days temperatures of 46 degrees Celsius, the flip-flop life started immediately. Didn’t know I loved my flip-flops so much. So happy to dig to the bottom of my backpack and unpack my flip-flops in the hope to never put them back. Lived near Melbourne for a while to help with a big project to build an eco-friendly house. Life was good, amazing people, good weather and great sunsets. Working was in other shoes but after work, I run to my flip-flops and we got connected again.
Later I moved on and stayed in Melbourne for a while where I got some ‘nice’ stories about hostel life, for example, a homeless guy who was jerking off on the bed above me, where I saw penguins and where I got totally surprised when a random dude came up to me and asked me out. This all happened on flip-flops; we became friends for life.
Travelled along the east coast up. Came along Sydney, hiked in the Blue Mountains, went to Byron Bay, Gold Coast and then arrived in Brisbane. Life was hard because my flip flop friends and I were more separated, at the hikes in the mountains I wore hiking boots. Byron Bay was ’cold’ and rainy so also no flip-flops there. They started to miss me, I started to miss them. Where was the trust that we always had each other’s feet? Gold coast it was nice and warm again, freed my flip-flops out of my backpack and became best friends again.
After Brisbane, I flew to New-Zealand. A little bit colder since it was autumn already. New-Zealand is beautiful! Nature there is amazing. All these differences. Mountains, rain forest, beaches. More hikes. I enjoyed it. Totally forgot about my friends. Slowly my flip-flops got lower and lower in my backpack and further back in my mind. Became better friends with my hiking boots. Together we hiked Roys Peak, Fox Glacier and more.
At the time we arrived in Queenstown, it started snowing, I unconsciously had switched from friends. My flip-flops, deeply hurt, lonely and squeezed at the bottom of my backpack. We did share anything right?
My hiking boots even joined me on the Nevis swing, the biggest swing in the world. (Although I think my flip-flops wouldn’t like the swing anyway…)
At the North Island of New-Zealand, everything got blurry. I mostly wore the last pair of shoes I had with me, a simple pair of runners.
New-Zealand has a hot water beach. You can dig a whole and make your own hot pool. To this exciting moment, I invited my flip-flops, little unknowing what suddenly happened they just came along with me.
Later it was time again for my hiking boots and together we passed the Tongariro alpine crossing. Beautiful hike! Seriously, amazing. It is over several mountains and through great nature. It’s a day hike, with a lunch break and some picture breaks, it took us 7 hours to get the end.
From New-Zealand, we flew to Fiji. There it was of course back to the flip-flop life. But it wasn’t that easy. Seriously hurt and lost its trust in our friendship. So we had to work on that. Promised for better times and that we were going to work on our friendship.
Slowly the trust came back and again we made new stories together.
First the paradise part of Fiji! On the Yasawa islands where the beach, palm trees, sunsets and cocktails were the daily thing.
Later on the big main island, we saw the real Fiji life.
Back to Australia. I thought by this time everything was fine again and we were as the good old times best friends. Well, apparently I had seriously damaged something. One day when it was very hot, my flip-flops got so hot that they gave me blisters, never done that before.
Well after that we both learned our lesson, we all lived happily ever after and celebrated our friendship on Bali.
So a lesson about friendships, you can’t just exchange your friends. You are friends for life or not, so these days I always wear my flipflops. In the snow, in the shower and even in bed. We share everything!
But to keep my flip-flops happy we try to follow the sun. That is the better flip-flop life. Travel where the sun is, beaches, palm trees and my flop-flips!