CURRENT MISSION
Caring for my baby boy Cooper with my partner Shaun

ABOUT ME

In 2012 I moved to Kalgoorlie and started working in Real Estate! It's 2016 and I am still here! My last major adventures (Besides Indonesia trips) were travelling Thailand and volunteering on a medical ship in Papua New Guinea..

I have been lucky enough to get to visit quite a few of my surfers when I travelled to their countries a couple years after they came to Cairns!

My name is Mathilde Francoise Van Dycke my dad is from Belgium and my mum is Australian :)

PHILOSOPHY

If you want something bad enough, you will get it!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I have hosted plenty of surfers and if I've been unable to host then I always try and help out one way or another mostly hiking/camping trips etc.. :)

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Soooooooooo mannnnnyyyyyy!!!! I have hosted a lot in Cairns and Edinburgh, Scotland and i have surfed in Guam, New Zealand, Amsterdam, Sweden, Norway, Spain, France, Germany,Italy, France, Ireland, Edinburgh, Bristol,Berlin, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru and Bolivia!

In Australia I spent the 8 months before I left home hosting a lot of couchsurfers, I made so many great friends and since then have now surfed with many of them in Europe, some of them have even come and surfed with me again in Edinburgh!!!

Interests

Travel, hiking, diving, photography and doing crazy new things like bungy and sky diving etc..

Music, Movies, and Books

Angus and Julia Stone, Ben Harper, The Waifs, Covers/Like a versions..

Books-
The Damage done and Marching powder amazing books!

I think facebook and couchsurfing.org has replaced my reading time and TV time ;)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I can't pick just one!!
I won 2 first class Eurail Passes that I used for 4 months traveling Europe!
I climbed the highest mountain in Queensland on 6th June, 2009 :) 28th March 2009 i skydived at mission beach 14,000ft amazing!!!!! I holidayed and scuba dived in Palau, Micronesia and Easter Island, Chille!
Most amazing of all of course is that i have now travelled 40 countries and lived in Beautiful Edinburgh for 1 year!! I dental nursed at Glastonbury music festival 2010.
The best adventure of my life, I volunteered for the Amazon Hope project providing healthcare to the poor villagers living on the shores of the Amazon river in northern Peru.
I was a dental nurse and it was an amazing lifechanging and heartwarming experience, i would and will do it again in an instance. In La Paz i went inside San Pedro prison and then to a bolivian wedding in the same day!!
I hiked the inca trail to Machu Pichu following my mums footsteps from 5 years earlier with the same backpack!
I hang glided in Rio de Janeiro and road the most dangerous road in the world by bike also in La Paz!

Teach, Learn, Share

TIPS FOR NEWBIES:

The best advice i can give you is too get more involved before your trip! there are over 2,000,000 members now and hosts in popular cities like edinburgh, berlin, barcelona etc etc can recieve more then 10 requests a day, so it really helps if you have some references and cs friends before you travel, ideally the best way is to host people in your city but if you live somewhere thats not so touristy the next best thing is to search the cs groups for nearby cities and go there on weekends and meet up with other hosts and travellers who are there, you can do this my posting a message on the city group or looking for meetup/activity messages that other members have posted, some cities have weekly or monthly couchsurfing meeetups too! Its best to get verifies which involves a small donation to couchsurfing but is well worth it! make sure you profile is complete-i havent had a look at yours yet.. As for Europe best thing to do is get a eurail pass, dont do a tour, bring a backpack not a suitcase, pack as little as possible, thanks to couchsurfing it is also easier and free to wash your clothes at their house, you should travel with a netbook as 90% of your hosts will have wifi and is better to have frequent internet access with couchsurfing, and will save you hundreds on internet cafe! you absolutly must have a mobile phone when couchsurfing there is nothing worse then haveing a surfer you cant contact. whenever possible buy a sim card for the country in so it doesnt cost your host so much to contact you and also other surfers in the area who you can meet up/travel with. Make sure you get an International student id card even if your not a student you can get a youth one which usually works the same.
Get a special book for your hosts and friends you make along the way to write something in or draw a picture etc will be an amazing souveneir for home, unfortunatly i didnt think to do that though i have bought a patch from every country and sewn it on to my backpack. Collect up all your friends and families addresses to send them postcards when your travelling.

MY FAVE PLACES IN EUROPE!
Cinque terre-Italy
Cesky Krumlov-Czech republic
Stavenger and Bergen-Norway
Gallway and Arran islands-IRELAND
Edinburgh-Scotland
Bruges-Belgium
Train journey from Zurich to Milan
Budapest-Hungary
Mykonos-Greece

Good Luck

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Guam, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Poland, San Marino, Scotland, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, United Kingdom, Wales

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, Scotland

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