After some solo travel in Iceland, Canada and some of the US I opted to complete the next part of my trip is a camping tour with a company which provides tents and transportation, allowing me to visit some of the USA’s must see locations while getting to spend time outdoors as well as saving a few pennies.
After getting up early to meet with the group I was travelling with, I was instantly regretting my decision and mainly because of the driver assigned to our camping tour. Group travel can have it’s ups and downs and obviously you can very be besties with everyone on a group excursion but this was the first time I had ever had such an issue with the tour leader themselves.
As a tour leader qualities such as friendly and approachable are key but these seemed to be something our driver did quite seem to have a grasp of. A younger girl who was on her first solo tour, our tour leader didn’t quite seem to know how to deal with her first group and so any time she spoke to me, shes seemed to feel talking down to me and slagging off my country was appropriate. Oddly this was often accompanied with telling me I must tip her and tip her lots because she works hard. At this point the chance of that was absolute zero.
While, the first introductions did not go well I was still hopeful that things would improve, that perhaps she was just super nervous about being in change of her first tour solo and hadn’t come across particularly well. While the group was also slightly bigger than had been advertise – 15 people instead of the maximum of 8, this would just mean a few more options for making friends and perhaps a lower change of personality clashes.
My tour is also a highly rated one and so I’m still looking forward to the adventures that are included such as sunset at the Grand Canyon and visiting Yosemite National Park . While there will also be a little overlap with my previous travels such as San Francisco the tour offered a good mix of group and solo time so even with a bad first impression I was eager to get exploring.