Marieke’s love of travel began with a love of languages, majoring in both French and Russian at Memorial  University of Newfoundland providing her with the opportunity to live for a semester in both St. Petersburg and St. Pierre et Miquelon.  At the end of university she felt the strong desire to explore the world and found herself as a Canada World Youth volunteer in Rio Grande do Sul Brazil in 2006. By day two of the program she realized every 20 year old girl’s fantasy of being swept off her feet by a hunky latino lover and moved to South America to live with him until her foot once  again got that familiar itch.  She returned to Canada and became a sommelier  and returned to Newfoundland to help run her family’s Inn in outport Newfoundland, providing her with downtime in winter to travel.

Marieke is Heavily involved in the Newofundland and Labrador Tourism industry running a restaurant and rooms and 6 vacation homes. Additionally she serves on a number of volunteer boards aimed to develop tourism on the island.

The Borderline Crazy Blog was born after Marieke and Steph met in Galapagos and decided to travel together to Southern India the following year.  Steph’s strength was writing and Marieke’s photography, making working on one blog together perfect.  The trip went so well that joint trips followed every year since and they have explore 9 countries together so far. 

Stephs free travel time has changed, which means time traveling together is more limited, but within those years Marieke met her partner Jon who now joins her on her travels and Marieke, Steph and Jon still coordinate annual travel time together.