About Us
We are Frans & Jaco, a couple born and raised in beautiful South Africa. We love to travel and explore new places.
In 2017 we left “Mzansi” together with our two Airedale Terriers (Rafa & Bella), and little Yorkie Gandhi to explore other parts of our amazing planet.
For three years we lived on the tropical island paradise of Koh Samui, Thailand. From here we explored much of South East Asia and also visited incredible India. It was also during this time we created 9.5 Degrees North (the latitude of Koh Samui), a social media platform to capture and share our travels. At first it was mainly travel videos on YouTube.
The last five years we lived in Porto Heli on the beautiful Peloponnese in sunny Greece. Here we bought a camper and started road trips to all parts of Europe and Scandinavia during every Summer.
In 2025 we’re doing our last camper road trip in Europe before we return to our homeland later in the year; where we will continue our explorations around Africa.
This blog was inspired to capture and preserve our travel stories and experiences, to potentially help other travellers plan their trips and learn from our mistakes, but also a little for posterity in the hope that future generations will see what we were up to before they were around.
We’d love to hear what you think about what you see here, maybe it helped you plan a road trip, or you have a question or suggestion. Whether you’re a seasoned camper traveler, a newbie #vanlife enthusiast or just curios, drop us a line and say “hello” :-)
We’d love to hear from you.
Greetings,
Frans & Jaco and little Gandhi
