π€ 500 OFF Tuscany, Barcelona, Iceland + My worst travel stories
Published about 2 months agoΒ β’Β 13 min read
Hi Reader,
I have just arrived in Japan where I am spending 10 days meeting people, visiting parts of the country I am yet to discover and putting together the best tour ever!
This is my 6th time in the country and I am excited for the many women I will get to spend time with and who will be a part of this itinerary.
Our 2026 tours aren't live yet, but you can join the waitlist to be the first to know when we announce the new tour. There may be a launch offer for those on the waitlist.
And follow me on Instagram stories for a behind the scenes of the trip. I am starting to share the trip from tomorrow.
$500 off Iceland, Tuscany and Barcelona. A last minute offer as we close these trips
Reading a post in the group I was reminded of some of my worst travel stories. I honestly don't have many, especially when you consider how much I travel, but there are a few icky moments...
More of our 2026 trips are now live! Grab your spot.
π₯³ $500 / 500 EUR OFF Iceland, Barcelona & Tuscany
You're in luck π
We are keen to close the above trips as soon as possible so have decided to offer the most generous discount yet: $500 / 500 EUR OFF if you book before the end of the week.
Offer: Book the spots that have the "Special Offer" mentioned on the respective tour pages to avail the discount.
Deadline: 20th April 2025
IMPORTANT: There are limited discounted spots so don't wait till the deadline to book or they could be gone.
π My worst travel stories
After close to 25 years of solo travels, I am happy to admit that I don't have too many wild stories and that rarely have I been in a position where my life was in danger or I felt like something bad was about to happen.
There have been some borderline times when I asked myself "What the heck have you done Mar?", but even those, are few and far between.
This is because the world is, generally, full of kind people, but also because of my fine-tuned BS radar and my well trained gut, that has perfected the art of detecting when something is off.
It's a learned instinct, not a skill I was born with, so you too can train yours with practice.
My lack of dangerous stories is also due to my travel style.
While I travel solo A LOT and have been to probably 70+ countries on my own, I don't take risks and I value comfort.
If I can, I stay at nice places, hire drivers / guides to get around and immerse myself in the culture, and I connect with local women, especially in the last 5 years.
Some of my worst moments have actually been my fault. Others just the result of bad luck.
Like that time I brought a drone into Djibouti, the small country in the Horn of Africa that is essentially full of naval bases from every country on Earth, and obviously, very concerned about spies and terrorists...
More on that later!
Here are some of my worst travel moments:
That time I was interrogated in Australia
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I have rarely had issues at the border or at airports when trying to enter the country (except for the above situation), if anything, when border agents engage and see I am from Spain, football is the only topic of conversation. When Messi played for Barca, that was all anyone talked about.
but I was once set aside, interrogated and all my belongings searched in Australia because I was only traveling for 4 days over a long weekend from Singapore and the officers didn't believe anyone would visit Adelaide for such a short period of time, so surely, I must be a mule bringing in drugs or planning to stay illegally π
The truth is that I was visiting a couple of people I met at the Full Moon party in Koh Pangan two weeks prior. I was only let in after the officers called them and they confirmed my story.
It was infuriating, frustrating, demoralising and a little bit scary.
It also took away all my interest in visiting the country again and, if it wasn't because Meg is Australian, my opinion would have never changed.
This situation, which has never repeated itself again (knock on wood!), gave me me an insight into what every non-white, non-Western person experiences at every airport.
The profiling of border agents around the world is discrimination and stereotyping at its best...how sad that borders are still up, and getting higher, rather than brought down...
The weekly hassles of getting in and out of Lagos, Nigeria
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In 2009, I was staffed at a project in Nigeria.
I flew every week Monday to Lagos and back to Dubai for the weekend, and the airport arrival and departure procedure was a weekly nightmare that I vividly remember still today.
Our client sent an airport escort and security team every week to pick us up from the immigration hall before passport check because of the high risk of kidnapping and robbery at that time and on the route we had to drive.
And every week for 3 months, the entry was absolute chaos.
There were people everywhere, pushing and shoving to get to the passport control area, people jumping the queue, yelling and screaming, people throwing their passports to friends closer to the stalls,...and then when we would finally get out, after a 9h flight and 1h at immigration trying to get our passport stamps, we had to get into a black van with tinted windows and drive without stopping at anything towards Banana Island (that was the actual name of the business area in lagos).
The drive could take anything from 1 to 3 hours depending on traffic, and we were often stuck in jams for up to 3 hours.
We had armed escort; an open truck with armed military-looking guards carrying AK47s followed us (or perhaps they were at the front I can't be sure) the entire way, making sure we arrived at the hotel safely.
It was a scene taken out of a movie...and while they should have made us feel safe, I was terrified every week.
We also had clear instructions not to wear anything of value and to give away everything should anyone break into the van while we were stopped in traffic.
On our way back, the operation repeated itself.
To make things more interesting, the airport staff could never find our bookings.
These were the times when check in processes were done on paper. Yes, an actual flight seating map on paper where agents would write our names.
And every week, we had to dance around the "We can't find your booking" back and forth, and insist until they did, knowing that they wanted a "tip" to speed up the process...
Mind you we were all Emirates Gold members flying in Business Class, but it did not matter. Or perhaps that was why they could never find our bookings...
I can say I was happy when that project ended, and this led to our ongoing joke about the "Emirates moment": the time when the plane doors would close and we could be 99% sure we were on our way home in one piece.
Stuck in conflicts
I spent 5 years working across East and Southern Africa from 2007 to 2011 and those were tumultuous times in the region, with many a coup and a few elections turned sour followed by fighting that dangerously reminded everyone of the Rwandan genocide.
Traveling there every week from Dubai and Johannesburg, I had my fair share of weeks stuck in tense situations.
I was in Kenya during the post election violence in 2007, in Rwanda during the riots of 2009, in Madagascar during the coup, and in Sudan during the 2008 rebel attacks.
We had extraction companies ready to get us out, plus back up cash, an evacuation plan and insider knowledge through the client's security teams, but there were weeks when all European airlines cancelled flights into the country and the only foreigners staying at the hotel were us.
We had to leave early on at least one occasion because there was a heightened risk of the airport closing down and us being stuck in the country.
Looking back, I remember not really being scared, probably because I was young and naive and had never been in a dangerous situation before.
Plus it all felt very far removed from us, even though we could see what was happening through the window of our office or in the streets on our way to work, it never felt like I was actually there...
The media made it look much worse than it was, and that was the first time I truly understood how you can make something small and isolated look like a full blown civil war with just a couple of photos.
I remember my mother calling me terrified at the riots in Uganda while I was stuck at my 5* hotel but sneaking out at night with my colleague to go dance at a bar across the street.
The stupidity of youth... we've all been there right?
As you probably guessed, nothing happened to me and the situation improved in every case and things went back to normal.
If anything, I felt much unsafer in Lagos, where there was no conflict and it was business as usual, than during any of the above incidents.
Infamous motorcycle ride in Uganda
At the wedding, with the dry cleaned suit jacket
This is truly illustrative of a time when I had no fear of anything and felt invincible, pretty sure I would not do this now, but at that point, it felt like desperate times called for desperate measures...
It was 2009 and I had to fly to Paris from Uganda for the weekend for a wedding (already that is illustrative of the insanity of my younger travel years). That involved a flight from Entebbe - Nairobi - Amsterdam - Paris.
It was rainy season in Rwanda and it was pouring like crazy when it was time for me to go to the airport.
I got in the car from Kampala to Entebbe, a 1 hour ride that was usually uneventful, but the rain brought traffic to a standstill.
Half an hour into the ride, we had not moved and my flight was getting closer. Half an hour more and I was entering risky territory.
I saw a boda-boda pass, a motorbike taxi, and decided it was now or never.
I ditched my suitcase with the taxi driver and told him to take it to the hotel, I was returning after the weekend anyway and they knew me after weeks staying there, and jumped on the back of a motorbike in my cream color suit, my laptop bag and my toiletry bag that I stuffed inside my handbag.
I told the driver I would pay him $100, instead of the usual $50, if he got me there in 45min instead of 1 hour, and boy did he accelerate!
It was the most terrifying ride of my life.
We zigzagged through traffic, in the rain, on wet roads, zipping passed loaded trucks...
Yes, you guessed it right, it was still raining, and I was at the back of a motorbike at 100km an hour without a helmet in my cream color suit.
I think you can imagine how I arrived at the airport...
My hair was a mop, I was soaking wet and filthy from the mud sprayed by the back wheels. And I was shaking from the feeling that "I am gonna die here".
To top it all off, because so many people were late, the airport was closed to avoid the mob of angry people outside.
I had to push through and beg to be let in and was only allowed because I had checked in online while waiting.
I boarded the plane, in my crazy-looking state, and proceeded to spend 20 hours trying to get to Paris.
When I arrived, I had to dash to get some shoes and a purse. My friend, who was meeting me in Paris (it was his friend getting married) was bring me a new dress for the wedding from Dubai so I at least had an outfit.
The funniest part is that, in my dirty looks that I had managed to more or less sort out, I decided to go shopping for a purse at the Galeries Lafayette, a really high end department store, because I felt like I deserved a treat.
But because I had used my credit card in 4 countries in the previous 24h (food and drinks in Uganda, Kenya and The Netherlands), Amex thought my card had been stolen and blocked the transaction. Because who can be in 4 countries in 24 hours?
The department store assistant assumed I had stolen the card, and I was almost kicked out.
Thankfully Amex sorted it and the payment went through.
A quick trip to the hotel's hairdresser, a clean outfit, a pair of shoes and a golden Dior purse I still have to this day and I felt like a million dollars again!
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And what about the Djibouti story? There is a happy ending.
As soon as I landed in Djibouti and our bags were scanned, me and my friend got set aside.
I could hear the officers discussing whether we were spies, asking us a lot of questions, inspecting our bags... and I could see that they were not progressing towards the right conclusion, so I broke down to tears.
Yep, one of the few moments when it is invaluable to be a "weak, poor woman" is when things get to a point of no return and you are left with the only option possible: tears and pleading.
Eventually they felt bad, realised we were just stupid but innocent tourists, and ended up helping me get a lock to secure the drone to the table of the customs officer so he would keep it until our departure day.
On our way out of the country, I collected it, in one piece, and checked in for out outbound flight.
I had to take a photo of the airport to immortalise the worst travel decision I ever made...
β³ Last minute availability for 2025
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Many of our tours for the year are full but here are the last spots left on some departures - don't wait up if any interests you:
1 SPOT opened up on our Greek islands sailing trip from May 23 to 30th (Photographer onboard) and 2 SPOTS opened up on the sailing from 30 May to 6 June => Book GREECEβ
1 spot left on Tanzania Value 13 June, 1 Spot left on our Tanzania Value 12 September and 2 spots on our Tanzania Value 29 August => BOOK Tanzaniaβ
1 SPOT left on our Scotland trip 11 to 19 October => BOOK Scotlandβ
2 SPOTS left on our Bali trip 11 to 19 October => BOOK Baliβ
2 SPOTS left on our Australia trip 12 to 23 October => BOOK Australiaβ β
We are progressively launching our 2026 tour dates. Here's what's live already:
ποΈ Kilimanjaro climb on Intl Women's Day: 1 to 10 Mar or 1 to 15 Mar with safari extension >> Book here. Check out the behind the scenes Instagram stories of last month's hike
β΅ Greek islands sailing trip: 29 May to 5 Jun >> Book here [I will host this trip]β
π Cuba: 14 to 22 Feb || 14 to 22 Mar || 12 to 20 Dec || New Year's Eve >> Book hereβ
πͺπ¬ Egypt: 3 to 12 Apr || 9 to 29 Oct || 6 to 15 Nov >> Book here
πͺ Morocco: 2 to 12 Oct || 6 to 16 Nov >> Book hereβ
π¦ Tanzania Value safari + Zanzibar: 28 Aug to 7 Sep (Great Migration) || 11 to 21 Sep (Great Migration) || 23 Dec to 2 Jan, 2027 >> Book hereβ
πΉπΏTanzania Luxesafari + Zanzibar: 25 Sep to 5 Oct, 2026 (Great Migration) || 1 to 10 Nov, 2026
πͺ Oaxaca: 11 to 21 Feb || 5 to 11 Apr || 11 to 17 Oct || 8 to 14 Nov || 29 Dec to 4 Jan, 2027 >> Book hereβ
π¦ Australia: 11 to 22 Oct >> Book here [Meg will host this trip]
π₯ Barcelona & Beyond: 6 to 14 June || 20 to 28 June >> Book hereβ
π¦πΆ Antarctica expedition: 13 to 27 Dec >> Book here [I will host this trip]
π΄ Caribbean island hopping: 13 to 20 Feb, 2027 >> Book here [Both Meg and I will host this trip]
So many of you guessed it right, especially previous guests who climbed with us!
This is one of the photos from our lat month's Kilimanjaro climb. This part of the climb passes through these wonderfully strange fire trees.
Congrats Leah, Michelle, Nikki, Eugenia and Laura.
If you ever wanted to climb Kili, we are your go-to company. An all-female team, a mostly female porter team and the most kick ass guide on the mountain.
Plus, 100% success rate reaching the top since we started in 2021!
This week's photo is below, can you guess where it was taken? Hint: Fire has a meaning in this country, and this is not a fireplace ;)
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βIn case you missed it
Interesting conversations in the group, travel news and inspiration right to your inbox!
The latest season of The White Lotus was filmed in Thailand. Here are all the locations in the series.
Among political instability, international arrivals to the US fell almost 12% overall in March, 17% from Western Europe, 28% from Germany. Read here.
Plane snacks you can and cannot bring on your carry on and through TSA. Read here.β
Uber's 2025 Lost & Found index with the most forgotten items in a car is...well, entertaining to say the least! Read here.β
Countries that are now easier to visit. Read here.β
Our maps are so skewed and western-centric that we actually don't even know how large some countries are compared to others. This nifty map lets you drag countries into others to see how they compare in size. Good fun! See here.β
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ββDid you know....? ββ
Most of the city walking tours that are part of our group trips incorporate women's history into the conversation, as well as stops in women owned businesses.
We do this in Oaxaca, Cuba, Scotland, Barcelona, Australia, Iceland, and beyond. These tours were designed by our teams so they are uniquely designed for us.
History tends to be very male-focused, so our tours aim to balance this perspective with female roles. Others have caught up with this new interest and launched tours which celebrate women and I love it! Check out these women-focused walking tours in Europe.
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Sending love from me and from Meg, from Japan and from Australia.
We hope you have a great week ahead π«Ά
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SFT Co-Founders
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Solo Female Travelersβ C/ Europa 18 5-2, Sitges, 08870
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