In 2011 I was in my mid-30s and had just arrived home in Kent after spending two years working and travelling abroad. I had a new teaching contract coming up in the Middle East, but there were delays with the construction of the school and I found myself with three months to spare. I decided to go and hike the Inca trail.
I booked with a tour provider and on the second night, as we all got to know each other, this tall, handsome Aussie with a huge smile caught my eye. Once we hit the road, my attraction to Jarod quickly grew and it didn’t take too long – or too many beers at altitude – before we shared our first kiss.
By the time we made it to Cusco, the capital of the Incan empire, we peeled off from the group and spent a day together. As we sat across from each other at a cafe with the city buzzing around us, I was so distracted by my feelings that I couldn’t even read the guidebook in front of me.
We saw the sights and as we took a break on a bench later in the afternoon, it began to rain. Jarod pulled out this lavender-coloured umbrella, then – and you couldn’t make this up – someone in a nearby house started playing Close to You (made famous by The Carpenters) on a saxophone.
It was a moment of pure stardust; I hadn’t felt anything like it for the longest time.
We were in separate groups for the hike to Machu Picchu, but the chemistry between us was so strong that even after three days trekking, he still smelled delicious to me. I was overjoyed to be reunited with him.
After the trek, Jarod had plans to keep travelling, so I stayed on as long as I could before I had to go home for Christmas and head off to the Middle East. We didn’t see each other for seven months. We messaged and Skyped virtually every day; at the start, I wasn’t sure that whatever we had would last because of the distance, but I soon realised our connection was special.
By the following summer, Jarod’s adventures had taken him to Africa and I went to meet him in Kenya before we both travelled back to the UK for my father’s wedding. As the photographer snapped photos of us, he quipped: “You’ll be next.” And for the first time in my life I thought: “Yeah, maybe I will be.”
For the next 18 months we endured a crazy long-distance relationship: half-term visits in Doha, holidays in Sri Lanka and a few months on his parents’ cattle station in central Queensland. Eventually I got a job in Singapore, Jarod joined me and we spent two-and-a-half years there.
While holidaying in Indonesia, Jarod proposed and we were married in a small ceremony in Singapore Botanic Gardens in 2014. We had a good life there but I had some health problems and life got complicated, so we decided to relocate to Melbourne. Throughout it all Jarod was my absolute rock.
We have had so many amazing adventures together, but I realise now that it’s the days you don’t take pictures that really count; when he tries to make me laugh when I’m sad, or comes to the rescue when, on a very difficult day full of medical appointments, my car has been rear-ended.
It hasn’t been an easy few years, but that magical feeling I experienced under the umbrella in Peru has never left me. When I look back on everything I went through, and how amazing Jarod has been throughout it all, I feel like the pain was balanced out by the joy he brings me.
We now have a lovely home, a cute schnauzer called Bertie and a little black-and-white cat called Minnie. We still bicker, still love to travel and I still love the smell of him.
