Rachel is 33, from New Zealand. She moved to France near the Swiss border about 10 years ago to work as an Au Pair. She was supposed to be in Europe for 9 months but loved it so much she ended up staying!
Rachel married her husband, Iain in 2009. Iain was born and raised in Switzerland to British parents. Together they have thee young daughters, Holly 7, Chloe 3 and Gemma who is 2 years old. When Chloe was born, they moved out of Geneva to a small village in the Swiss countryside.
For the last 7 years Rachel has worked part time for an Asset Manager in Geneva while Iain runs two pubs in Geneva and has a small on line business.
As a family they are fairly active and enjoy being outside as much as possible. As with most families, they lead a pretty hectic life having to juggling kids, school, work, sport, relationships... A few years ago while visiting friends and family back in New Zealand, the seed was planted to take a year out.
They were looking for a way to 'slow down time'.
When Rachel and Iain first started talking about how they could 'slow down time' It was a case of 'when' and not 'what if'.
They set the then far off and vague date for Summer 2017 to start their adventure.
They wrote down all the places they'd like to visit as a family, the list was massive but they decided it would be better to spend time in each place and really get to know the places they visited, rather than be constantly on the go travelling.
To really get the most from this trip they have also going to be having a focus on helping people along the way.
Between now and summer 2017 they will be cutting back on spending and saving as much as they can, which is tough living in Switzerland. They want to be able to afford to come back to Switzerland so selling up everything and hitting the road isn't an option for them.
The plan is to leave August 2017 flying from Geneva to LA. Where they will do a road trip across the States from the West coast to the East coast. From there they will head down to the Caribbean and be based in St Lucia.
In November they will fly to Sri Lanka for a couple of months. Then it's onto South East Asia where they plan to spend a chunk of time in Indonesia. They are also planning to head to New Zealand for a few weeks to see the family before going onto Fiji for two months. After that its time to head back to Switzerland via LA in the Summer of 2018.
What an adventure this challenge is going to be, going on the road with young children, exploring the world and living life on their terms. Its going to be an exciting journey to follow! Rachel will be setting up a FB page and blog in which they will be sharing more of their trip!