About Me

About Splashpacker – conscious solo female dive travel

Splashpacker is focused on eco-friendly & conscious scuba dive travel, sustainable tourism, and solo female dive travel and scuba dive travel in general. Here you can read more about my background, my journey as a scuba diving instructor, and how Splashpacker was born.

(Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button!)

“I feel it is the duty of one who goes his own way to inform society of what he finds on his voyage of discovery.'”– Carl Jung

 

Born with travel fever

When I was 18 years old, I wanted to get a waitress job to save money to go backpacking and solo traveling in Australia. However, my mother told me that I must go to college, but that I could choose to study whatever I wanted. So I decided to study tourism and graduated four years later with a BBA in Management Tourism at BUas, or NHTV at the time, in the Netherlands.

Solo female dive travel to Egypt made me fall in love with the oceans

After graduating, I worked in the office of a scuba dive travel tour operator in the Netherlands. I went to Egypt alone to do some dive travel as a female alone. I went scuba diving in Egypt for a week all by myself and loved it so much. I totally fell in love with the ocean and the marine life of the Red Sea, but also loved solo travel.

 

Becoming a scuba diving instructor to go female solo traveling and scuba diving around the world

So two years after graduating, and after having worked double jobs for a year, I left the Netherlands to do my Divemaster internship. I worked as a divemaster on Gran Canaria for one year, at the same time waitressing in the evenings to save up for my dive gear and for doing the Instructor Development Course. I wanted to solo female travel and scuba dive the world!

Worldwide solo female dive travels as a diving instructor

Finally, I did my dive instructor course in the Dominican Republic where I worked as an OSWI (Open Water Scuba Instructor) for 6 months before starting a dive instructor job in Mexico. There I became an MSDT (Master Scuba Diver Trainer) and later I also worked in the Maldives, Australia, and did a bit of freelance work during solo traveling and scuba diving in South East Asia. You can read more about the journey to becoming a diving instructor here.

 

 

I did many other jobs whilst working abroad and solo female traveling too

I also worked in New Zealand for a year. Besides working as a diving instructor, I also did many other kinds of jobs whilst I was solo-traveling around the world as a female. I’ve been working as a receptionist in the front office of resorts in Spain, worked as front of the house manager in a breakfast & lunch place in New Zealand, waitressed, cleaned hostels, and worked in an office doing e-commerce in Australia so I could stay longer in the country on visa sponsorship.

I did a lot of solo female dive travel in between working as a scuba diving instructor in different countries

I’ve always traveled as much as possible in between changing jobs and locations. From Mexico, I went on a little trip to Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. I solo female traveled Sri Lanka after working in the Maldives (and returned to Sri Lanka three more times, years later).

I went to Peru as a solo female traveler and I’ve done quite a lot of solo female dive traveling in Europe too, especially in the Macaronesian islands. I also female solo traveled in Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia (Bali), and Singapore, and also did some scuba dive travel in those countries.

 

 

How Splashpacker was born: sustainable tourism & environmentally conscious solo female scuba dive travel

I saw so many destructive and mass tourism destinations whilst working & solo female traveling around the world, that I became motivated to focus on sustainable tourism & eco-conscious scuba dive travel. Sometimes there are those companies that make a big difference for the environment and local population. I try to stay in eco-friendly accommodations and to scuba dive with responsible diving centers during my solo female dive travels as much as I can.

 

Sustainable tourism is more than eco-conscious travel

Sustainable tourism is more than environmentally conscious traveling by staying in eco-lodges and minimizing your carbon footprint, like taking a boat or bus instead of a plane (if you can do so timewise). Sustainable traveling also means supporting the local communities or companies that are involved with ocean conservation or eco-friendly activities like recycling projects for example. I always try to maintain a conscious travel lifestyle during my solo female dive travels. Splashpacker stands for conscious scuba dive travel.

 

Ayurveda for a healthy diet & conscious travel lifestyle

After losing both of my parents to cancer, before I turned 30, I decided to study Ayurveda. I was always a big fan of healthy nutrition, conscious living, and meditation. I completed a one-year full-time study to become an Ayurvedic therapist with the European Institute of Vedic Studies. I sometimes write about Ayurveda or healthy nutrition too.

Safety Stop Book: a memoir of my years as a diving instructor, solo female dive travel & the loss of my parents

Safety Stop is a memoir about more than 10 years of my life. I describe the loss of both my parents to cancer, the fulfillment of my dreams when I worked as a diving instructor all over the world, the solo female scuba dive travels I did, and also the spiritual search and inner journey I started. It’s also a quest for happiness in life and how I discovered that there’s a possibility for a positive transformation in every drama. Click here for more information about the Safety Stop Book.