“I didn't need a perfect plan. I needed a system.”

We also got to allay a certain hidden fear that I didn't realize was quite real and was stopping us from doing our own travel planning, which is, what's going to happen in the event that something happens out there? Typically, when you have an agent, they're your fallback plan. What do I do? Where do I go? How do I do this? And so, Maria also then showed us how we then do the backup planning, mitigate, think through everything, and say, what are the do's and don'ts, what are the things that you need to have as a backup plan? And that really worked well for us. So, it moved us then into a space of Individualized or independent travel does not mean unsupported travel, right? It means being better prepared, and you really are able to know where else do you call, or what should you have on hand, and then should that happen, what will you do? You know, the world is huge, and there's so many hacks coming along that you can tap into, and Maria has a wealth of experience. 90-plus countries, I mean, for sure there's a thing or two she has definitely uncovered that you haven't. And it doesn't have to be scientific, it just has to be tried, tested, and practical, and that she is. So, give it a go, I would recommend it. Thank you.

I couldn't pass because when I was introduced to it, first thing I was like, we have been traveling all our lives. What are you talking about, travel coaching? I was telling my significant other that was inviting me to this, for these coaching sessions, and I was a bit skeptical. But nonetheless, I joined. I joined, and I would say that I wasn't disappointed at all. Oh, we just learned so much. The planning that has to go into travel, because I've never really planned. I'm the sort of person who would decide to travel tomorrow. The surprising thing was that learning that equipped me and my partner so much that we realized that all the information we were being fed, all the knowledge we were gaining, was then suddenly going to become transferable. And what I mean by that is that, from one trip to the other, it's a template that we use for every other trip, which means we have effective planning, we enjoy our trip, we take inventory after our trip. Then we repeat. So we are within budget, we are in agreement on everything before we go, because if you're going on a trip with someone else and you are not on the same page, things can become very complex. And so learning everything that you taught us, which is planning being the most important part of the travel, was certainly very useful to me.

She doesn't book the travel or the itinerary. She really is just a coach. She's someone who will help you to think through destinations, ask the right questions, and help you arrive at a decision that works for you and for your situation. And we had an example recently when we were talking about Vietnam, and trying to look for the cost of the visa, and I thought it was $25, but Maria challenged, and she was like, no, I don't think so. And this is where her experience then comes in, and she's like, that doesn't sound right, can you please go back and check again? And truly, truly, we found that traveling on a Kenyan passport to Vietnam is a bit more complex, and you need an intermediary to be able to get that sorted for you, and that takes time and the cost can build up. So with her help, we were able to explore other potential destinations, and now we're planning to do a trip to Cape Town next month.

And because we've been traveling together, but we use agents, so we wanted to start traveling on our own. So, when we joined the boot camp, for me, I didn't know what to expect, but within the first three sessions before we traveled, the whole idea of traveling had changed. So, the boot camp actually helped us with confidence. Personally, I was able to gain a lot of confidence. We traveled, and there's some days that we didn't have any planned excursions. We were taking a cruise. So, there are days when we dock, we're not taking the ship excursions. So, based on the boot camp, we were able to do our own excursions. We were able to be confident enough to just dock out, get to the port, take a cab, and go to the city within the places where we were going.