After graduating nursing school in 2008, Marci Holden set off to an all-inclusive resort in the Bahamas with her sister. But she had an almost immediate realization that this escape was not the adventure she craved.
In 2011, Holden’s colleagues offered a suggestion that changed everything: travelling with G Adventures. With her birthday month of October opening a window for time off, she took it as a sign and booked a Java to Bali trip.
The five days she spent solo in Singapore before the tour was her first taste of backpacking — a crash course that left her standing in Java with a single, panicked thought: “What the heck did I just do?”
“It just made me realize that I could do anything, that I could just go. Everybody’s like, ‘Well, aren’t you scared of going by yourself?’ I’m like, ‘No, because I’m going to be in a group and I’m going to make friends’” said Holden.
Since then, Holden has made travelling with G Adventures an annual tradition. She has spent her birthday surfing for the first time in Indonesia, visiting the Taj Mahal and even rang in her 30th on arrival to Machu Picchu.
Why travel is the best birthday gift
As a nurse, Holden says travelling with G Adventures has allowed her to relinquish control, feel safe and enjoy the experiences she values the most.
“I spend my entire year looking after other people. When I book a G Adventures trip, somebody else looks after me,” she said.
“Nursing is really hard, you come home defeated, you get really discouraged … So I kind of go on these trips to re-energize and re-juvenate myself so I can continue giving back to all of my patients.”
Over the years, Holden says one of the many factors that have led her back to booking with G Adventures have been the Chief Experience Officers (CEOs) who are local, knowledgeable, and deeply connected to their communities.
According to Holden, each of her CEOs have always gone out of their way to arrange something special on the day of her birthday — even when she was sick one year from food poisoning — they still made sure her birthday cake found its way to her later.
What’s more, is as a nurse, she feels connected to how much care G Adventures pours into supporting local communities through tourism.
Holden says she is at the point where she goes ‘in blind’ to her tours — not reading the itinerary — because she trusts the company to deliver great days.
“When I first started, I would always read the itinerary, and know exactly where I was going every day. I’m at the point now, I don’t read the itinerary,” she said.
Life lessons from the road
Travelling has taught Holden a lot about herself and how she moves through the world.
“I think travel actually teaches you a lot of critical thinking. Because you can have a lot of overwhelming moments while traveling when things go sideways and you don’t know how to problem solve or figure it out, so I think you actually sort of end up building a lot of resilience in yourself,” she said.
Beyond personal growth, travelling with G Adventures has taught her how powerful it is to bond with strangers, with some of her most meaningful relationships being with those she met through travel.
She points to her ‘manpanion’, a 70-year-old retired physician as an example, whom she met while in Nicaragua at a surf camp. The two quickly clicked after learning that they shared a background working in health care and live 90 minutes away from each other back home in Ontario.
“He was like, ‘Hey, I just bought a condo down in Costa Rica, you want to check it out?’ And I was like, ‘Heck yeah,’” recalls Holden.
“And then we just started surfing five or six times a year together. I just went to Thailand with him in February, because he wanted to surf at 70.”
As for her next birthday adventure, Holden will be heading to South Korea and China in the fall with another friend she met through a previous G Adventures trip.
“I wanted to reach 50 countries by the age of 40. And now my goal’s up to reach 75 countries by age 50,” she said.
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