I'm Kevin Perry, 52 years, grew up in Portland, Oregon, but now living in Seattle. I’ve had the urge to see the world and travel as long as I remember. As a child, we were too poor to do anything more than camping trips to the Oregon coast, but I was determined to get out and about as soon as possible, so when I turned eighteen I took the money I’d been saving for college my entire childhood, and jumped on a Greyhound bus to Miami instead, with the hope of crewing on a sailboat in the Caribbean. That particular dream didn’t work out, but I had an adventurous winter in Miami Beach (working for a mafia-owned hotel, there are stories, but this isn’t the venue), and then spent three months riding a bicycle across the country back to Portland the following summer. I managed several long trips over the next few years as I worked first through college and then with street kids in Seattle, until about 15 years ago when I took a more corporate job. Taking on a 9-5 job could have killed my chances for taking the long trips that I enjoy so much, but I was extremely lucky in that my coworkers and managers have loved to travel vicariously through me. Together we have conspired for me to be able to take 6-7 weeks off every winter for the last 15 years; which is long enough to go pretty much anywhere in the world.

My name is Jon Collins and I am a keen explorer originating from a small town on the north coast of New South Wales, Australia. After studying in Sydney I have converted very much into an urbanite, working as a sustainability consultant in the city and adventuring into nature as much as possible in my free time. After growing up in a small town, I had a need to understand what existed in different corners of the planet. I spent my time trawling through National Geographic magazines and looking over an atlas, trying to understand how life could differ so greatly across oceans, on top of mountains, deep in jungles and on sweeping desert sands. My inspiration to travel is to understand the similarities and differences of human life across geographical scale; absorbing as much information about humankind whether it is race, religion, culture or cuisine. At the end of the day, we are all human, and the beauty of travel is those small moments when you are able to see a glimpse into someone else’s world which you once thought was so different, but see just how similar it is to your own.