About Us
Hey there!
We're Cec & Ari. We are two experience-loving Canadians who love to explore and have fun. When travelling, we look to immerse ourselves in the local culture and have a passion for finding hidden gems and off-the-beaten path places.
All together, we have traveled to 58 countries and recently completed our dream trip around the world. We love road trips, staying in unique places, new culinary experiences, discovering local artisans and spending time in nature.
When we're not traveling, you'll find us jamming out to tunes, making sushi and wood-fired pizzas, and enjoying nature at our home on Salt Spring Island.
About Groovy Mashed Potatoes
Groovy Mashed Potatoes is your go-to website for unique travel experiences and fun itineraries. Our travel guides feature the best in food, art, design, local culture and outdoor adventures, helping you craft unforgettable trips.
Every travel guide comes straight from our own adventures and is designed to make planning your trip feel as fun, easy and stress-free as possible.
Our Story
We met at the University of Waterloo back in 2011 when we were 21-year-old undergrads - Ari was studying engineering, and Cecily was studying science. What brought us together? Our shared love for electronic music.
After university, we both moved to Vancouver and ended up taking completely different career paths, with Cecily in advertising and Ari in the music industry. Despite being busy in our careers, we always found time to travel, squeezing in every chance to explore new places.
You could say we were part-time explorers, constantly seeking new experiences and growth. But eventually, the weekend getaways weren't enough, so we decided to take the plunge and departed on a full-time adventure around the world.
Read our full story about how and why we left our career-focussed life behind to travel around the world.
Our trip around the world
We created our dream trip across six continents, exploring 35 countries and checking off bucket-list experiences that would have been impossible on a two-week holiday. It was one big adventure!
It was scary and impossible to know whether the trip would actually come to fruition as planned. But the couple of years it took to organize and save up gave us something exciting to look forward to. The thrill of leaving it all behind and counting down to our departure date is something we’ll never forget.
Venturing into the unknown opened up new possibilities and opportunities that wouldn’t have otherwise existed.
The best part about traveling around the world turned out to be experiencing new cultures and different ways of living.
While learning about Andean culture, we made the decision to get married in the Peruvian mountains by an Andean paq'o during our trek to Machu Picchu. Just us two, surrounded by breathtaking scenery. You can read about our experience here.
During our trip, we came to fully recognize our passion for nature and how essential it is to our well-being. This realization influenced our decision to move to Salt Spring Island on the west coast of Canada, instead of settling in Vancouver as we had originally planned.
We desired to live closer to nature in a community that fostered creativity and a free-spirited lifestyle. We never would’ve considered looking for this if it weren’t for the insights and new ways of thinking we gained from our travels.
Who's Cec?
I'm a free-spirited person who LOVES to plan - a bit of a contradiction, I know! I create plans that aren't bound by strict rules.
Planning and travelling our trip around the world is one of my proudest achievements. It opened my eyes to new perspectives, deepened my compassion for others and had a lasting positive impact on my life. My hope is to inspire others to venture into the unknown and experience the same.
I try to live with an open mind and avoid falling into a mundane or routine way of thinking.
5 Fun Facts About Me:
- I grew up in a small town of 6,000 people in the Canadian Rockies.
- My Myers Briggs personality type is INTJ.
- If I could go back in time I would dance the night away at Studio 54.
- My favourite movie of all time is Aliens, I've seen it over 15 times.
- I could eat perogies every day.
Who's Ari?
I am a go-with-the flow person who has a passion to lead and encourage people to go after their dreams. I always want to be outside, whether it's camping, hiking, gardening or just laying in the sun.
5 Fun Facts About Me:
- My favourite way to unwind is in a Finnish sauna.
- Going to space is on my bucket list.
- When I'm outside, I feel the most creative.
- I love making sushi and dream of training in Tokyo.
- My favourite album is The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd.
Why did we start this travel blog?
We are not museum goers or photoshoot oriented and found that generic travel websites recommended things that we weren't interested in.
While doing travel research online, we were surprised by how repetitive and basic most recommendations were. So, out of curiosity, we checked some suggestions for Vancouver, the city we were living in. To our surprise, many of the recommendations were things that we wouldn’t do as locals, or even suggest to others!
Next, we turned to more alternative travel blogs. While some of the experiences were interesting, they didn't feel relatable to us and felt out of reach - like a two-week cycling trip through Sri Lanka.
We were on the hunt for not just the usual tourist sights, but also those fun, cultural experiences that you also see locals doing. We wanted to immerse ourselves in the local culture without having to stay in one place for too long.
But finding that kind of info wasn’t easy. It took hours of searching through different sources, and it just wasn’t giving us what we needed. We got better at digging deeper and reading between the lines and using those insights to narrow down the best things to do and where to go.
Over time, we learned how uncover unique experiences and hidden spots by asking the right people for recommendations and keeping our eyes and ears wide open while on the road.
The gap between the overrated and the out of reach is what inspired the creation of this blog as you see it today.
Don't get us wrong, there are plenty of incredible touristy things you don't want to miss, such as visiting Petra and Machu Picchu. There is a reason why these places are popular. They are spectacular artifacts with a rich history.
The difficulty is knowing what touristy spots are overrated. Time is critical when you are travelling. For example, one of the most photographed places on Instagram is the Lempuyang Temple gate in Bali. It looks beautifully serene in pictures, however, did you know that people wait for hours in a line up just to take the perfect shot there?
There are other incredible gates similar to it in Bali where you can get a nice picture, without the massive lines. Also, because of its popularity the entrance fee is jacked up. If we recommend a touristy place, it's because that travel experience is unique and worth the hype.
Since I love to plan, I have a passion for curating experiences. I used to create PowerPoints and pitch trip ideas to friends to convince them to travel with me. I even pitched the idea for our world trip to Ari in a PowerPoint!
Over time this hobby has developed into a passion for creating unique travel itineraries and travel guides.
Trustworthiness and Credibility
We've been screwed over more than once by blog advice, like one that suggested we didn't need a 4x4 for driving in Namibia.
That resulted in our Corolla's trunk breaking and flailing around for half a day before reaching civilization and a local to weld everything back together. Namibia's roads are rough gravel not the graded country roads we thought they would be.
On some travel websites, you may find numerous bloggers contributing to one post. What source can you trust? Which writer is most like you? All in all it's hard to decipher.
We are committed to being truthful and recommending only the best of what we discover. What we recommend comes from our own travel experiences and we only recommend things that we think are awesome and worth your time!
There are millions and millions of blogs out there, so what makes Groovy Mashed Potatoes a bit different?
- What we recommend comes from our own travel experiences - we only recommend things that we think are awesome and worth your time.
- We've travelled to 58 countries, which has developed our understanding of authentic travel experiences.
- Our travel itineraries are simple and make the travel planning process fun and easy.
- We feature a mix of unique experiences, from off-the-beaten path places to popular tourist activities that live up to the hype.
- We cover things we are passionate about within food, culture, art, design, music, fashion, hiking, road trips and nature.
- We include hip places with a great local atmosphere.
- Instagram does not influence where we travel. Yes we love taking photos of the places we go to, but it doesn't dictate where we go.
- The pictures on our site were taken by us during our travels (except for a few one-off accommodation pics).
Why do we want people to travel?
We want to inspire people to travel because experiencing new cultures and ways of living can inspire personal growth, lead to a more fulfilling life and develop a deeper compassion for others.
Why Groovy Mashed Potatoes?
Groovy Mashed Potatoes represents a collection of our experiences, ideas and adventures throughout the world. We like to have fun and don’t take ourselves too seriously!
Our travel guides and itineraries were designed with you in mind to create your own groovy adventure.
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