How We Became Travel "Vloggers"

We really meant to make this video while we were home over Christmas break, but we really slacked off on making videos while we were home. So we're really sorry about that. But we wanted to tick today to tell you the story of how we got to be here.

Sitting in an Airbnb in Argentina, full time travel, youtubers.

We really don't even know how we got here.

We just thought it was important that you understand, like the why behind what we do. And then also thought it'd be fun to share the story of. Yeah, how we got here.

But first, we are going to have a very local drink.

We bought this at the store and we boiled some water preparing yerba mate. There are even some easier methods like the yerba cup, these special extraction tools.

So we just watched the YouTube video 4 Easy Steps to Preparing yerba mate. We picked this thing up at the store. I think it's like the to go version. I have a good feeling some people are gonna get mad that we're not drinking it out of a traditional gourd, but we don't have one of those. So from what I understand, it's basically like a plant that's ground up in a cup, kind of like tea. And you add hot water.

Smells like a plant. And it comes this special straw that has a bunch of little holes in the end of it. So we're gonna pour some hot water in, stick the straw down in and try the yerba mate. Literally, like 50% of the people walking around the streets are carrying a gourd with this straw in it and a thermos so they can like refill the yerba mate with water. I've been so surprised with how many people are doing it.

You think it needs more water? I don't.

Okay. You want to try it first?

Yeah.

Does it look better if we close the curtain?

I think it does.

Hot.

It's hot. I'm scared it's going to burn me.

We can wait.

We can talk a little more and then you can try it.

Okay. I'm just going to let this steep for a minute. So we're going to start in 2015. We knew we were going to be traveling a lot. We had been traveling a lot. So we want wanted to buy a really nice camera, but we knew nothing about cameras.

So I spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours researching the best possible camera we could buy to capture all of our trips. We ended up with the Canon 6D with the Tamron lint. We got really lucky. It's been an awesome setup. Anyway, we spent way too much money.

On this camera and had no idea how to use it. Before the camera even came in the mail, one of our really good friends, Julianne, who you might remember from Greece.

And New Zealand, she was doing wedding planning at the time. And so she had a bride who wanted a wedding video, but she couldn't afford a wedding video. So she had, like, a little bit of money that she wanted to put towards a video. Julianne didn't know anybody who would do a video for that price. And she called us one day, and she was like, hey, y' all are getting a nice camera, and you're planning on shooting, like, some pictures and videos with it, right? Do you want to film this girl's wedding?

And Nate said yes.

Having spent way too much money on the camera and wanting to make a little bit of it back, I agreed for us to film this wedding.

I was terrified, and I was very mad at Nate for agreeing to do a wedding when we didn't even have the camera yet.

On the way there, we were literally watching YouTube videos about how to film a wedding. On the way there, we showed up that day to film, and she was like, oh, blah, blah. You probably do this all the time. And we were like, yeah. Long story short, by some miracle, we pulled off a pretty good wedding video.

It took me the entire summer to edit, but I learned how to edit that summer because I had to. I looked up YouTube video after YouTube video, teaching myself how to use Premiere Pro. Nate did most of the filming. Cause I was actually in another wedding that night.

She left me in the middle of the day. She just left.

That is how we learned to film and edit in one summer, because we had to. So now I'm really thankful that that happened, because who knows if we ever would have actually learned to use our camera? We probably would have ended up selling it because we were in over our heads. So we like to thank Julianne for being the reason why we know how.

To film and edit at the same time. I do not recommend that anybody agree to film a wedding having no earthly idea what you're doing.

It smells like fresh cut grass that's been rained on.

Smells like it's got, like, a little. Maybe a smoky.

Okay, I got some of it in my mouth. Are you supposed to eat this green stuff?

I don't know. I thought the straw holes were supposed to stop it.

Mm.

Mm.

They didn't. I got a lot in my mouth. The taste isn't. I feel like if I refilled it four or five times. It could be a nice taste.

Oh, that is bitter.

It's really, really, really, really strong. I mean, this is like 20 tea bags worth of tea, I feel like. So it's like having a really dense cup of tea. But I think that's what they do. They just keep filling it up. That's why everybody has the mug. It kind of tastes like somebody broke their cigar off into it and stirred it up.

It's gross, but that's kind of exactly what it tastes like.

We'll call it an taste. Okay, on to the next part of the story. We decided we wanted to travel full time at the beginning of 2015, and we plan to start traveling at the beginning of 2016, which we did. And we knew we wanted to capture the whole trip somehow. I was already writing a blog, which I really didn't enjoy, so we didn't want to write a blog. We also felt like there were 10 million other travel blogs out there.

I'm no good at writing. I really don't enjoy it.

Kara had acquired the skill of video editing, so we thought it would be a fun idea to capture the trip through video, but we had no earthly idea what that looked like. And a few months before we left, I went on this crazy mileage run. But that's another story for another day. And I was watching YouTube videos, and I came across this guy named Casey Neistat. If you're here on YouTube watching this video, I don't think Casey Neistat needs an introduction. He's no longer vlogging, but he was probably, almost without a doubt, the best vlogger of all time. And he is the person that introduced me to the concept of vlogging.

I remember when Nate told me about Casey Neistat for the first time and asked me to watch his vlog. And I didn't know what a vlog was, and I really hated the word vlog.

She literally would not say the word vlog.

I don't know why. I just didn't like it. And I thought it was weird that Nate liked watching this guy's life. I was just really confused. So we watched a couple episodes, and sure enough, I loved Casey and his life. And I didn't know why. Like, we just had this relationship. I felt like we were friends, and all of a sudden, I wanted to watch him every day.

So that's kind of how we came up with the idea of, like, hey, maybe we should try vlogging this trip. We definitely didn't have any intentions of doing it daily.

That Was a terrifying idea. Nate mentioned it one time, and I shut it down very quickly.

The thought was we were gonna take this year off. It was gonna be our only year of full time travel, and we didn't want to ruin the experience by having to spend too much time editing videos every day. That's basically what it boiled down to. So we didn't commit to anything.

We told some friends, like, oh, we're gonna shoot some vlogs while we're on the road, but never really thought that we would be daily vloggers.

I think I need to try it again. Maybe it's gotten better. It's not gotten better. So the night before we left to start traveling full time, we actually filmed a wedding. So the first week of the trip, Kara, the editor, spent her time editing one of her best friend's wedding videos. And since I was the one that had convinced us to start doing the vlog thing, I decided I would try my hand at editing the vlog first vlog. And I published it. And it actually went over really well with friends and family. So I ended up vlogging the entire first week until Kara was done editing the wedding video.

If you want to laugh, go watch our Tokyo videos and see how far we've come.

They were really bad, like, but everybody liked them.

So then we get to the Philippines, and it's my turn to be the editor. Nate and I sat down and had this talk. And Nate was like, I gotta do like, the planning and like, your things gonna be editing. Like, that's your job. So I was like, okay. And I was excited. Like, Nate's were so good. I was a little nervous. Mine wouldn't be as good, but, like, I'd done wedding videos, so, like, I knew I could do it. And probably two or three nights into my week of editing, I kind of had a meltdown. I wasn't having fun. It was really hard to, like, find music that I liked. And just all these little things built up. And I just said, I don't want to vlog anymore. I don't want to be a vlogger. I just want to travel.

Yeah. And I just remember saying, if this is going to take away from our trip, it's not worth it. And for some reason, you push through that night.

I think the changing point for me was around that time we were starting to get people who weren't our friends or family to start watching our vlogs, which surprised me so much because we were surprised at how good they were for us. But we didn't really think anybody cared except for our friends and family. And then people we didn't know started messaging us and commenting on the videos, and it just blew us away.

Basically, the entire first month we were vlogging, we didn't know if we were gonna keep going. And then, like, anytime we thought we might quit, we would get a nice comment at like, the perfect time that would motivate us to continue doing daily vlogs. So really, it was the viewers and all of you who have left nice comments on our channel that really got us to commit to daily vlogging our entire journey.

I feel like it's getting better.

Maybe not.

No, you're on your own there. In conclusion, we bought a camera. We were forced to learn to edit when I crazily. Is that a word? Yeah, when I crazily committed us to filming a wedding. Then we decided to try our hand at the daily vlogging thing. It went over pretty well at first. Then we wanted to quit because it was really hard. And then ultimately, you, the viewer, and all of the nice comments that all of you have given us encouraged us to keep going. And now we find ourselves at the start of year two of full time travel and daily vlogging.

So we wanted to make this video as a story to why we started vlogging. But more importantly, we wanted to make this video to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all of the comments, for all of the messages that you send us. We read every single one. And they just make my day on a daily basis. Like, I don't know what I'll do when we're not vloggers anymore.

We may not be able to respond to all of the comments on YouTube, but the first thing Kara does every single morning when she wakes up is sit on her phone and read all the comments. I read them as well, but she definitely reads every single one of them. So thank you so much for watching our videos, for commenting, for giving us recommendations, for sharing our videos with your friends and your family.

Anything else?

We don't take it lightly.

We definitely don't. I think that is the point of this entire video, is that we want you to know how much we appreciate you watching our videos.

How are you still drinking that?

I just think it's gonna be good one time and it's not.

Before we end, there's one more group of people that we want to say a special thank you to.

Thank you so much to all of our patrons who make it financially possible for us to stay on the road. You know who you are, and we would not be able to continue doing what we do without you. So thank you so much. And if you have no earthly idea what I'm talking about, we'll, like, put a link down below.

I know this is a much different video than our normal vlogs, but it's something we've been wanting to do a long time, so I just want to make sure we do one more big thank you to everyone.

Cheers with the yerba. Oh, don't make me drink it again.

I think it's getting worse.

Also, sorry the lighting got so bad. These videos always take a little longer than we planned them to. And a storm has rolled in and it got very dark very fast.

So now we're just lit by the light of the computer.

Sam.