As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to keep air travel grounded, so too are the online adventures of those whose jobs were to travel the world.
Sharon Waugh is a travel blogger who has built up a following of more than 5000 people after years of working on cruise ships and writing about her adventures on her blog, The Sharonicles.
Her Instagram posts tell the story of her visits to dozens of countries.
"Between 2013 and 2018 I worked for a USA-based cruise line and managed to see a fair amount of the world in my hours off. I've done a little bit of travelling for fun but it was mostly work that enabled me to see 57 countries before COVID," Waugh told Newshub.
Since COVID, however, the cruising has stopped, but rather than put an end to her online travel storytelling, Waugh decided to do something a little different, and reenact some of her older travel snaps but in the context of a COVID world.
"When South Africa went into lockdown I wrote a tongue-in-cheek post about how to survive lockdown if you're travel-obsessed. One of my suggestions was that people could continue to practise all those cliched travel poses they usually do in exotic locations at home," Waugh said.
"I took a few pictures for that post and then just kept taking them and posting them on my Instagram. They became more elaborate and less about the poses as time went on."
Waugh says ironically, her housebound, lockdown travel snaps have become more popular than photos of the real thing, and they've taken her story to all corners of the globe.
"So far I have made the news in 24 countries, New Zealand will be number 25. I never imagined that staying in one place could take me so far!"
As for her plans when COVID-19 finally loosens its grip on the world, Waugh has her sights set on Aotearoa as her next possible real life destination.
"I really want to go to Colombia and South East Asia. I mean, New Zealand, obviously New Zealand!"
If you've reenacted any holiday snaps, make sure you share them with the Newshub Travel group on Facebook.
