A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that I travel alone. But I love it. Sure, it gets lonely sometimes, but I get to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it!
The photo above is of the friends I made on my expedition cruise to Antarctica. Lucy and I were roommates and assigned by the ship, so we were lucky because we both got along really well and ate every meal together on the ship. Sarah had her own roommate who she didn’t get along with, so she hung out with us. Sarah and Lucy had been on the same flight from the UK together, so they recognized each other from that, and we all had breakfast together the first morning. Sarah and I even partnered up to go kayaking so we didn’t have to get paired with a total stranger. We met Regis and Hunan (so sorry, if I’m butchering the spelling of the name) over dinner one night and we all shared a table for each meal after that. Jason we met at dinner, as well. So we had a fun little table and it was always great to have someone to talk to or hang out with and share your recaps from the day.
In between meals, we would run into each other in the lounge or on deck and frequently sat together for presentations given by the staff. After the ship docked at Ushuaia, we even spent the day together (minus Jason) visiting gift shops, a coffee shop, and just walking around the town.
Everyone was so interesting to talk to. Each person in the group was well-travelled and had exciting stories to share of their adventures in South America or the Himalayas. So that is what we all had in common – the love of travel.
I think out of 106 passengers on our cruise, 1/3 of them were single travelers. I thought that was a large number, and we met many of them during the cruise.
Here’s a picture of the staff and crew on the ship. There were 103 staff/crew, so we made friends with them, too!
So, traveling solo is not bad at all. You meet people, and you make new friends.
Occasionally, we had some random single people join us at our table when there was room. One of these single people happened to be a female pilot for Southwest Airlines! So, everyone had a unique story! One person that sat with us did not speak any English, so we had to use google translate during the entire meal to get to know her.
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