How a solo trip to Mexico led to a lifelong friendship

In 2019, I was 28-years-old, freshly out of a six-year relationship and desperate to do something drastic. Some people cut their hair – I however – booked a trip to Mexico.

At the time, I was living in The Forest of Dean, a small place in the UK that suddenly felt like it had shrunk three sizes. I wasn't heartbroken so much as I was restless, craving something I couldn't quite name — adventure maybe — Or perhaps just proof that the world was still full of possibility.

Mexico felt like the obvious sweet escape to me. I'd been going for years with my family – mainly to Cancún and Mexico City — so the country had become like a second home to me. Something about the warmth of the people, the way music echoes down the streets, the smell of fresh chillies and corn tortillas charring on comals.

Despite having been there before, I felt drawn to explore more of it. If I was going to find myself again anywhere, it was going to be there. The only problem was going alone.

As a solo female traveller, safety is always at the top of mind. Then I remembered that some friends had done an organized group tour the year before to Costa Rica and that most people on it had been travelling solo too.

I started researching immediately, eventually landing on an itinerary with G Adventures that would begin in Mexico City and wind its way through to Playa del Carmen. It promised waterfall sliding, pyramid climbing, and a healthy amount of tacos to eat along the way. I hit ‘Book Now’ before I could talk myself out of it.

The reality of joining a group tour

A few months later, I found myself in Mexico City having lunch with friends who live there, a lovely idea in theory, except that I'd committed a rookie error: I'd forgotten about Mexican time.

There's a huge ‘mañana’ mindset there, where people are never in a rush and emphasise living in the moment, something that I, a time anxious Brit, find both challenging and equally, deeply enviable. By the time they dropped me to start my 14 day adventure, I was the last to arrive at the welcome meeting.

You know that moment when you walk into a room and every single head turns to look at you? That was this. Fourteen strangers mid introduction, all eyes swivelling in my direction. If ever there was a moment designed to make you want to turn around and go home, it was this one. But I found my nerves dissolved almost immediately.There's something about being in a room full of people who are all equally anxious and excited that creates instant comradery.

Within minutes, we were laughing, swapping names and comparing notes on where we come from. Our group was made up of travellers from New Zealand, Australia, Italy, the UK, The Czech Republic and more. In total, we had two couples, a brother and sister, and eight solo travellers. A whole group of strangers who were about to throw ourselves into — in my opinion — one of the most beautiful countries on earth.

What nobody tells you about group travel is that you don't just get to know a destination, you also get to know the people travelling with you. Over two weeks, I found myself in conversations with a heart surgeon, a corporate America baddie working 60-hour weeks, and even an animator who worked on Gollum in Lord of the Rings.

There were three solo women who'd opted for shared rooms, and since it was two people per room, we'd rotate between sharing a room and having one to ourselves throughout the trip. I drew the arrangement that gave me the first night alone and the second night with another British girl named Abbie from Lincolnshire.

Lifelong friendships through group travel

There's something about travel that breaks down the usual social scaffolding. When you're moving through new places together and throwing yourself into new experiences, the normal slow burn of getting to know someone compresses into something deeper.

You end up talking about everything, from the highs and lows, the past you've been through and the future you're quietly hoping for. With Abbie, I felt that ease and sense of comfort almost immediately, and by the end of the night we were talking like old friends.

What followed was two weeks of Mexico at its finest: Mexico City, Puebla, Oaxaca, Palenque, Campeche, Mérida, Playa del Carmen. We climbed pyramids, explored ruins, ate things we couldn't name and ordered again anyway, and watched Mexican wrestling in a state of delighted amazement (with Micheladas firmly in hands).

By the time we reached the end of the road in Playa del Carmen, the friendship was cemented.

The last day had that particular bittersweet feeling that I've never quite found a word for. Rather than sadness, it was more like an awareness that something was coming to an end and that you’d soon be carrying it as a past experience.

I tend to feel things deeply, goodbyes especially, and there's always a strange pang when a chapter closes. But with Abbie, even as we hugged goodbye, I knew this wasn't an ending and that we’d definitely stay in touch.

Reuniting, seven years later

Over the years that followed, life pulled us in different directions in the way that it tends to. WhatsApp messages, Instagram updates, voice notes fired off with big life news. When I ended up moving to Mexico at the end of 2020 for four years — a country that had already claimed a piece of my heart — we still continued to update each other with a voice note here, a flurry of messages there. It was the kind of friendship that doesn't need constant maintenance because the foundation was solid enough to hold.

It was only after I moved back to the UK in 2025 and settled in Bristol that a message from Abbie landed in my phone: She'd love to come and visit. Would I be up for finally having that reunion after seven years?

I said yes immediately — and the moment we were back in the same room together — it was like no time had passed at all.

We dropped straight back into conversation with the same willingness to go deep and then laugh at something ridiculous. And naturally, we fell back into our very own ‘mañana’ mindset, spending the evening at a Mexican restaurant with tacos, margaritas, and seven years of life to catch up on. It felt exactly right.

What I know now, that I didn't know when I nervously walked into that initial welcome meeting in Mexico City, is that friendship doesn't always require proximity.

Sometimes it arrives unexpectedly in a shared hotel room in a foreign city, blooms quickly under travel, and then quietly endures through time zones,life changes and years that pass faster than you expect.

Travel has a way of cracking you open just enough to let people in. The experiences are extraordinary, yes, but it's the people you find along the way that stay with you long after the tan has faded and the passport stamp has blurred.

My advice to you is to be open to them. You never know which shared room, which welcome meeting, which slightly too late arrival might lead you to exactly the people you were supposed to meet.

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