Before going on Intrepid Travel’s Classic Peru trip, my only previous brush with group tours was on my gap year, when I bussed around Europe with a bunch of other hungover tourists, while our guide, who was barely older than us, made up obviously fictitious facts about the places we were zooming past. That experience, combined with my very flattering estimation of my own travel ability, meant I felt like I was done with group trips. Like I didn’t need it. Like it’s almost cheating at the game of travel.
But then I hit that point in my twenties where, shockingly, my friends would rather go on holidays with their partners than me. I found out that literally every one of my closest friends was doing a couples’ Euro Summer this year. Overnight, my potential travel companions fell to zero. My friends are busy, my parents no longer invite me on holidays (rude), and right now, I’m about as single as a contestant on Alone. And though I’ve loved solo travel in the past, I feel like I’ve mostly scratched that itch. How can the singles of the world travel without mates?
Which takes me back to group tours. I recently got the opportunity to go to Peru, a place that has sat at the very top of my bucket list since forever, as part of an Intrepid small group tour: a nine-day trip through some of the country’s most famous sites. And in the process, I made some great friends, ate brilliant food, achieved my lifelong dream of seeing Machu Picchu and – most importantly – rehabbed my relationship with group travel. I’m converted. If you’re single, and all your mates have swapped you out for their significant others, don’t put your life on hold. Here’s why you should book a group tour.
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You can travel to places you might not go to otherwise
For whatever reason – maybe scary headlines in the media, maybe dramatic cherry-picked statistics – my desire to go to South America had always been restrained by a slight fear of going to a more “dangerous” part of the world. The Classic Peru trip allayed my overblown concerns, and one of the lasting gifts the tour has given me is the confidence to come back here on my own. So, like learning on a trike before graduating to a bike, taking a small tour with Intrepid – where so many things are taken care of and you’re looked after by an expert local guide – is an excellent way to test-drive a new part of the world.
Size does matter
I had uncharitable preconceptions about group travel. Going in, I was picturing dozens of people forming their own little cliques, with little intermingling. The opposite was true: Intrepid’s small group travel ethos means they cap trips at 14 people, tops. On my tour, including me and Broadsheet photographer Brook James, there were only eight of us; our omnipresent, omniscient, local leader Luis made it nine. Every tour is in the Goldilocks zone of group size: large enough to form a bunch of different dynamics and keep conversation constant and fresh, but small enough to bond. It also made us a nimble unit – we were never waiting around for a million people to get ready in the morning, and we could make decisions as a group efficiently and quickly.
New friends from all over
They say the key to making friends is repeated exposure and mutual vulnerability. In other words, send a group of strangers to Peru. The Classic Peru trip took us from Lima, to Cusco, across the Sacred Valley of the Incas to Machu Picchu. After that, we went back to Cusco and tacked south to Lake Titicaca. In that time – from ordering at a restaurant in butchered Spanish to dismally failing at peeling a potato in front of a Quechua woman – we all had ample opportunity to make total fools of ourselves. It was great. And our group, which was made up of a trio from America, a mother-and-daughter from Perth, and a British woman who, like me, was tired of waiting for her friends’ schedules to line up, were all thick as thieves by the end of the trip. If you’re solo and want to make some new mates on your next holiday, this is the way to do it. And, you’ll have plenty of people to take photos of you – crucial.
Leave it to the pros
I used to pride myself on my ability to plan out trips, but this was back at uni, when I had infinite time. These days, I barely have time to floss regularly, let alone figure out the Peruvian bus system. Who’s more likely to put together a better itinerary? Me, an Australian who couldn’t point to Peru on a map with complete confidence? Or Intrepid, with a team that runs nearly a dozen different types of Peru trips, countless times a year? Case in point: I’d always wanted to spend heaps of time in Lima, Peru’s capital. I was slightly disappointed to learn that we wouldn’t be spending many of the nine days in Peru in Lima, instead focusing on the Andes. Turns out Intrepid knew me better than I knew myself, because I wasn’t the biggest fan of Lima, and I loved every second I spent in the Andes. If I had gone it alone, I would have totally misallocated my time – and cooked what could end up being my one and only visit to Peru.
Your dreams are too important – and expensive – to leave to chance
Machu Picchu is the one place, above all others, that I’ve always dreamed of seeing. And had I gone on my own, I would have completely ruined it for myself. Did you know that there are several different circuits through Machu Picchu, and one of the most commonly booked ones doesn’t even let you into the famous Inca ruins? I didn’t, but my Intrepid guide Luis did, and he got us tickets on a track that took us through its most iconic sights. I also didn’t know that there’s only one bathroom, at the entrance, and you can’t come back into Machu Picchu if you leave. So if you don’t have good bladder management, you could easily spend your limited time wandering around one of the most hallowed places in South America thinking about the toilet instead of taking it all in. As someone who loves to smash juice and coffee at breakfast, Luis tipping me off to this was literally the most valuable travel information anyone has ever given me. And his telling of the story of Machu Picchu also made the place come alive. Others seemed to think so, too: as our Intrepid group moved through the ruins, we acquired a number of hangers-on, eavesdropping on Luis as he regaled us with his knowledge.
The night before we visited, my excitement quickly curdled into the kind of dread you only get when you’re about to find out if something you’ve hyped up for decades is going to be everything you thought it would be. So often, it isn’t. But Machu Picchu was that rare thing in travel: a place even better than I’d imagined. And so much of that is thanks to Luis, Intrepid’s itinerary, and the group I shared it all with. So don’t wait for your friends, or a relationship, to go to that place you’re dreaming of – just go on that group tour. I did, and now my bucket list is a lot shorter.
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Intrepid Travel. Intrepid’s Classic Peru tour is a nine-day, eight-night guided trip that includes all transport and accommodation. Starting and concluding in Lima, it covers all the locations above (and more). Discover more here. It’s encouraged to book at least six months in advance if you want to hike the Inca Trail in the high season, and at least two months in advance to visit Machu Picchu in the high season as permits are limited..
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Publish date : 2024-08-28 20:32:00
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