From Up! Magazine
The Love of Adventure
By Lynn Martel
Jan 21, 2008
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, up! taps Canada’s thrill-seeking
couples for their secrets to romance on the road (and on rivers, mountains, and icefields, too)
Colin Angus and Julie Wafaei
The adventurer and the molecular biologist
Colin and Julie met at a bus stop in 2003, both en route to compete in the Vancouver Sun Run. She mentioned she was going trekking in Nepal. He said he’d like to see her pictures—
wink, wink
.
On their first adventure together, a two-day canoeing trip, Colin almost
set the tent on fire.
Julie eventually left her job as a market research analyst for a pharmaceutical company and began helping Colin—whose previous adventures included rafting the Amazon and Mongolia’s Yenisey rivers and sailing across the Pacific solo—organize and complete his dream of circumnavigating the globe by human power.
In May 2006, they cycled into Vancouver more in love than ever, even after pedalling through Europe, crossing the Atlantic for five months in a 24-foot rowboat and pedalling 8,300 km from Costa Rica to Kitsilano. Next month, they’ll begin rowing and cycling from the northern tip of Scotland to the Middle East.
His best travel trait “He’s able to fix anything—my very own MacGyver.”
Her best travel trait “She smells a whole lot better than all my other expedition partners.”
Most embarrassing thing he ever did on the road “In a pharmacy in Spain,
Colin used charades to convey ‘suppository laxatives’ in the crowded room.”
Most embarrassing thing she ever did on the road “In Ukraine, a friendly policeman asked Julie if we had any kids. She thought he asked how many days we’d been on the road, and answered 18. The policeman looked at me with a wink and said, ‘Well done.’”
Most romantic thing he ever did “From the middle of [the] Siberian wilderness, he sent me flowers at work using his sat [satellite] phone. It wasn’t even a special occasion.”
Most romantic thing she ever did “Julie made me an unbelievably delicious birthday cake after three months out at sea in a rowboat.”
Best adventure Five months rowing across the Atlantic Ocean.
Karsten Lleuer and Leanne Allison
Together from the start
Leanne was Karsten’s first girlfriend at a Calgary
kindergarten in the early 1970s. They even kissed. They didn’t meet again until university, when Leanne’s good friend (and Karsten’s boss) told her, “You gotta meet this guy—he’s the male version of you!”
Both loved skiing, whitewater kayaking, canoeing, backpacking and climbing, and in the early ’90s she took him ski-mountaineering. When Karsten, a wildlife biologist, walked, skied and canoed 3,400 km from Yellowstone to the Yukon in 1998 and 1999, Leanne joined him for the journey’s latter, tougher half. Their 2003 honeymoon was spent following a caribou herd on foot across the Yukon and Alaska for five months to highlight threatened calving grounds for a book and a film (both titled
Being Caribou
). Last year, they canoed and sailed from their Canmore, Alberta, home to Cape Breton with their then two-year-old son, Zev, and dog, Willow, to meet iconic Canadian author Farley Mowat,
revisiting his book settings en route.
Her best travel trait “Leanne’s the toughest and strongest travel partner I’ve ever had. I’m continually amazed at her ability to stay comfortable and happy in arduous circumstances.”
His best travel trait “Karsten has great vision, he’s a romantic, and he’s very
determined.”
Most romantic thing he ever did “In B.C.’s Gulf Islands, moments after Karsten asked me to marry him, a pod of Orca whales swam by in the darkness. I don't know how he did it!”
Best adventure Being Caribou.
Weirdest adventure Travelling directly to Washington, D.C., to lobby on behalf of the caribou after living with the herd for five months on the Yukon and Alaskan tundra. “We were still searching for caribou tracks in vacant lots near Capitol Hill,” Leanne recalls.
If we’d never met, I’d be... “Living a life that’s a lot less interesting,” Leanne says. “A lot less complete than I feel right now,” Karsten adds. “And lonely, too.”
Olivier Higgins and Mélanie Carrier
A common vision of adventure and life
At high school in Charlesbourg, Quebec, they were friends who shared common interests—sports and the bigger world. Barely able to speak English, Olivier worked in Banff as an 18 year old in the summer of 1998. The next two summers, he planted trees in Northern Alberta and then travelled around Australia for nine months. Meanwhile, Mélanie spent half a year working in England to improve her English. The next summer, she worked in Jasper, where Olivier spent his days off, and the romance blossomed. With their individual travels done, “we both knew we would be together for our next projects,” Mélanie says.
As biology majors, they studied together on Reunion Island, off the Madagascar coast, and camped and climbed in southwest U.S., Mexico, France and Thailand. For six months in 2005, they cycled 8,000 km from Mongolia to Kolkata, through the Taklamakan Desert, the high Tibetan plateau and Nepal’s lowland jungles, sharing their “vision of life” through their award-winning film,
Asiemut
.
Her best travel trait “She’s a giver, the way she approaches people naturally. They feel she’s a good person.”
His best travel trait “He respects everybody. And he was born with a natural GPS in his head—we barely need a map, even in Mongolia.”
His worst travel trait “He dreams too much about good food, and he’s always talking about it!”
Most embarrassing thing she ever did “In Mongolia she kept showing her little finger to tell our hosts she wanted a small portion of food, until we realized that, for them, that sign meant the food is not good.”
If we’d never met, I’d be... “When you’re with someone with the same interests and passions, there’s a synergy,” Olivier says. “I am sure we would not have done all we did if we were not together,” adds Mélanie. “Olivier helped me have more confidence in myself. It’s a great gift.”
Jerry and Sasha Kobalenko
Adventure meets Victoria’s Secret
While working on his book,
The Horizontal Everest: Extreme Journeys on Ellesmere Island
, featuring his mostly solo journeys to the cold and lonely northern land, Jerry Kobalenko dropped off some film at a Vancouver lab where Sasha was working. For their sixth date, the couple hiked alone for two months on Axel Heiberg and Devon islands.
Sasha quickly and willingly traded her city girl lipstick for a life of Chapstick and adventure, but hung on to (and expanded) her Victoria’s Secret collection, much to Jerry’s delight. Jerry’s stories and
photos appear regularly
in publications such as
National Geographic
, while Sasha helps with post-production and keeps a day job at the
Banff Centre between adventures, which in July 2006 meant kayaking among northern Labrador’s Torngat Mountains and meeting, on average, three polar bears per day. “Adventure brings us closer together in a way that only intense, shared experiences between compatible partners can,” says Jerry.
His best travel trait “He knows how to share the experience with me and not keep it all to himself.”
Most impressive thing she ever did “On northern Ellesmere Island, Sasha carried a 70-pound pack, though she weighs only 125 pounds.”
Most romantic thing he ever did “By the end of our first trip, neither of us had showered for three weeks,” Sasha recalled. “I was wearing rubber boots and pigtails, and waiting for the bush plane. He asked me to marry him. I said yes.”
Weirdest adventure “Trusting our lives to a bush pilot who kept tinfoil in his headphones so that radio waves would not control his brain,” Jerry recalls.
If we’d never met, I’d be... “Still doing what I do, but infinitely diminished; half a soul,” says Jerry. “Living in Vancouver, helping others achieve their goals, hearing about their adventures and wondering what it is
I am missing in my life,” adds Sasha.
Pat and Baiba Morrow
Following their instincts into the unknown
They met during the Canmore Folk Festival, when Baiba left Montréal for a summer job in the
Canadian Rockies prior to beginning an internship as an occupational therapist.
“Baiba was a frisky dancer, even in hiking boots,” Pat remembers; but still, they followed separate paths until 1983.
Their first big adventure together was climbing Europe’s highest mountain, Mount Elbrus, in full storm conditions. The arduous trip cemented their friendship as they discovered a mutual love of pursuing the unknown and following the instincts heightened by leaving the comforts of home.
Since then, they have explored and documented remote places and cultures from the Yukon to Bolivia to Morocco to the Himalayas in numerous
award-winning magazine articles, books and films for clients including
National Geographic
and Discovery Channel.
“I think it’s fair to say that dreaming up and heading out on wild-ass adventures together has helped nurture our relationship,” says Pat.
Her best travel trait “Baiba is a wizard at travel logistics, both in setting up travel arrangements, and making sure things go smoothly once we’ve launched.”
His best travel trait “Pat gets grumpy when he’s home for too long. On a project, away from the mundane routine of home life, he shines. He is patient and
accepts what comes his way.”
Most romantic thing he ever did “Pat took me down to the sandstone canyons of the southwest in his beat-up old van where we got married.”
Best adventure For Baiba, it was their 1987 seven-month circum-Himalayan journey with two friends, which included travelling across Tibet into Pakistan by bike with few permits and no fixed agenda.
Andrew McKinlay and Shelley Ballard-McKinlay
Roommates tie the rope
Andrew McKinlay and Shelley Ballard-McKinlay were roommates in their hometown of Saskatoon before they became a couple. Initially, she thought he was cool because he was into rock-climbing.
A couple since 1986, they’ve climbed all over the world, including Denali, Aconcagua and Kilimanjaro, the highest peaks in North and South America and Africa. More impressively, they’ve climbed in Nepal, Tibet and Pakistan’s remote Karakoram Range, where together they reached the 8,047-metre
summit of Broad Peak, the world’s 12th-highest mountain—a massive accomplishment for any climbers, let alone two from Saskatchewan.
Both self-admitted workaholics (she as a Saskatoon city police officer, he running a busy software company), their adventures serve as their outlet, and their bonding time.
“As a couple, we both lead very busy separate lives,” Andrew says. “Without our adventures, we wouldn't see much of each other. I think our adventures are what keeps us close.”
His worst travel trait “He can sleep like a log, anywhere. It drives me crazy because I sleep like a chicken on a spit, tossing and turning.”
Her worst travel trait “She doesn't like water, whereas I love it.”
Most romantic thing he ever did “Asked me to marry him our last day at base camp at Broad Peak. He filled our tent with balloons and cards from friends, and he’d brought a chocolate cake mix for our base camp cooks to make for dessert. I could have brought it home and used it as a doorstop!”
Weirdest adventure Rock-climbing Jasper when a British Army troop invited them to share some wine and cheese on a white linen-covered table after some big wigs didn’t show.
If we hadn’t met, I’d be… “Still looking for someone to go on adventures with,” says Andrew.
© Copyright 2008 by Up! Magazine