Anita and Janet met their husbands on the same Contiki tour. 26 years later they're all still in touch
A?nita and Janet were both in their 20s living on opposite sides of the world when they signed up for a life-altering Contiki tour in New Zealand.
But the pair not only left the 1994 scenic tour with lifelong memories and a 26-year lasting friendship. Both the women actually met their husbands on the trip.
?Adelaide native Anita signed up for the Contiki tour at the bequest of her mother.
The young Aussie, then 28, was part of a fresh group of people joining the bus that Canadian Janet had already been on for two weeks. But also on the bus was a fellow Adelaide local จC Evan.
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"I started the tour at the end of theirs," Anita says on the group video call with Janet. "They had done the South Island and I was starting on the North Island."
By this point, Janet had already met and connected with her future husband Michael on the trip before he returned to Canada just days before Anita's arrival.
After discovering that Anita was from Adelaide too, it wasn't long before she was introduced to Evan.
On the first day of the tour, the group were visiting a waterfall when the two Aussies had their first sweet interaction. ?
"We were chatting by the waterfall and then he sat next to me on the bus and promptly asked if he could use my shoulder because he was tired," Anita gushes.
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Falling asleep on her shoulder was just the start of the pair's Contiki romance story.
After swapping numbers and returning to their hometowns in Adelaide at the end of the trip, Anita was the one to break the ice and make the first call back on Aussie soil.
The 28-year-old dialled Evan's number after flying back and arriving at her Aussie unit around 8pm in the evening. Not long after, Evan was on his way over. ?
"By the time he got to my house it was about 9:30 and we didn't leave till 3:00am," Anita says, after the pair spent the whole night reminiscing.
"We just chatted and chatted, and he invited me over for dinner at his house one night.?"
For their first 'official' date, the Aussie couple ?went for dinner at a Thai restaurant followed classically by a movie.
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After connecting on a Contiki tour in New Zealand and falling in love in their Adelaide hometown, two years after they met, Evan decided to pop the question.
?In 1996, the pair decided to go to the Barossa Music Festival จC a favourite of theirs after they had visited before.
While their last trip had been more impromptu and ended up with them staying in a last available rundown motel, this time Evan had made sure they secured a "nice place."?
"We went to this lovely winery and we were up on the balcony," Anita retells the story.
"He looked at me and he said, 'I'd love to come back again'."
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"I said, yes, it's beautiful. Let's come back again.?" That's when Evan asked if next time she would come back as his wife.
"So we got engaged in the Barossa Valley," Anita says. The then around 30-year-old put in a first call to tell her mum the news.
The Adelaide couple finally tied the knot at their local church with a convertible Rolls Royce for added dash of luxe, before partying at Flinders University for the reception.
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All this time on the other side of the world, Evan had been staying in touch with Janet and her husband Michael from the trip with hand-written letters.
But after some confusion with changes in addresses and trying to connect using the internet, the pair briefly lost touch. Until Janet found Anita online.
"In [Evan's] last email before he lost access to an email account, on June 21, 2002 he shares that him and Anita are expecting a new baby in the family in October," Janet says.
While Evan and Anita were moving houses and starting their family, Michael and Janet were busy with their careers leading the two couples to lose contact for a few years.?
?"I was looking all over for Evan," Janet says, coming up short with finding any way to contact her friend for a couple of years.
"And then I'm like, what if I look up Anita, and I found her on LinkedIn and she got back to me in like five minutes and then 10 minutes later, we were having a video call.?"
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"That's when we found out you were planning on coming to Canada," Janet recalls over video to Anita, who has two grown-up daughters.
25 years after the four first connected on the New Zealand tour, ?they all met up in person for the first time in Canada last summer.
Janet and Michael spent the week showing the Aussies everything from Ottawa to the iconic Niagara Falls.
"It was like we were doing a Contiki Tour of our own," Janet says.
Now 26-years since that life-changing Contiki trip,, the next step for the friends is another reunion - this time seemingly on Australian soil.
"We're so overdue to go to Australia and it is on the to do list," Janet shares. ?
