Travel
Why I love to travel alone

Why I love to travel alone

For the last 3 years I’ve started to take trips on my own. The first solo vacation was to the Dominican Republic in 2014. It was, unsurprisingly, a holiday focussed on Scuba Diving.

Well technically my first solo trip was in 2005, when I was 19, to New York for an online game meet… But once arrived in NYC I was with friends…. So never mind that now.

Edit: actually when I was 16 I back packed through Australia for a week on my own as well. Annnnyways….

The Dominican Republic trip was absolutely amazing. I could do whatever I wanted, when I wanted. It was incredibly relaxing to not compromise in any way, shape or form. To some that might sound incredibly selfish…. But hurray for being just that, if it even is selfish. At the end of the day I think its perfectly okay to put your own needs at #1 as long as you’re not hurting anyone else around you…

At first it is scary, I won’t lie. Even though I was already well used to travel on my own at that point, I always used to be travelling to someone or with someone at some point.

I wish i had started travelling on my own sooner! It is absolutely amazing how easy you make contact whilst travelling on your own. In the Dominican Republic I immediately started to hang out with the crew from the dive shop and went out for dinner with the president of a motorbike club. If I had been with someone, most likely a boyfriend, I wouldn’t have been invited so easily by these people.

DCIM100GOPRO

The same goes for my trip to Zanzibar, where I met some really cool people I still am in touch with trough Facebook. Like a 15 year old entrepreneur who was already importing cell phones from China before you could say OnePlus. Or this girl from Amsterdam with the most positive outlook on life and an admirable genuine curiosity in people. A guy from Scotland who I just did a few dives with and now inspires me for future trips with his Facebook posts.

Zanzibar

I can go on. Every trip, new friends around the globe! Especially my stay in Costa Rica was very good to me. There I met so many people I’m still in touch with. Karin, who later was kind enough to host me in Las Vegas. Koen, who showed me around New York. <3

Karin, Koen and Jonas

And then there is Cynthia, a girl from LA that I met in a hostel in Arenal. Long story short, she ended up joining me on a volcano extreme hike…. We nearly quit and died 8 times, but didn’t, and reached the top of the volcano. During this hike we also met a lovely lady from Argentina, Mariana. A friendship was born.Arenal All 3 of us ended continuing our travel to Monte Verde (a cloud forest in Costa Rica). We went out for meals, drinks… It was great. On the last day Cynthia and me did a hike in the cloud forest where we met Pamela, another girl from LA. We swapped Facebook details…. And a few months later the three of us we were having breakfast in LA… Cynthia and her family had hosted me the entire weekend in their house in LA. Cynthia And the last night in LA Pamela was also kind enough to let me sleep in her house and drop me off at the airport!!

That’s how travelling on your own goes. Cynthia is now my practice Spanish pen pal and Pamela is landing in Amsterdam in less than a month! I’m super excited.

Some might wonder why today’s post is about such a general topic whilst I am actually I’m Cuba on another trip. Well, that’s exactly the reason. I’m here on my own again, meeting inspiring people! And I fucking love it. Travelling makes you richer, travelling alone makes you twice as rich.

Solo Travel

Oh yeah and Cuba is great too 😉 More about that later.

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