The Hike Like A Woman Podcast

Life Beyond Limits

• Rebecca Walsh

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Could stepping out of your comfort zone in your 40s, 50s, or 60s be the key to profound personal growth?  I think so.

Today on the pod I spill the tea.

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Speaker 1:

Hey, it's Rebecca. Welcome back to the pod. I am coming at you today, on Monday afternoon, june 17. I've been back in the States for a week. I just got home from a family vacation on Friday night. I've been sick and super tired, so I'm going to try to bring some energy to the podcast today, because it's a solo show. You guys, it's just me and I'm going to try to bring it, but just a warning that I'm really tired and not feeling super awesome. So that's what's going on today.

Speaker 1:

I want to share just a few experiences that we had on our Kilimanjaro climb and I want to share those experiences with you. But before we dive in, I want to mention that on Monday, june 24th, at 6pm Mountain Time, I will be live on our YouTube channel and on our Facebook page and what I'm going to be doing is doing a good, old fashioned slideshow. So sharing our experience from Kilimanjaro from start to finish, our experience from Kilimanjaro from start to finish, and I'm going to share with you videos and pictures and stories that you haven't seen if you've been following along on our social media channels, so if you caught our Kilimanjaro climb. We just went to Tanzania. We did the seven day Machame route. Me and 23 awesome, amazing outdoor women did this climb and I'm going to be talking about it on June 24th 6pm on our Facebook and YouTube channels, so make sure you head over to hikelikeawomancom for information about that.

Speaker 1:

But today I just want to talk about why I think it is important for all of us to embrace adventure travel, and this really goes back to my experience going through breast cancer treatment two and a half years ago. So before breast cancer, I kind of mark my life in before cancer and after cancer. But before breast cancer, I always made excuses as to why I couldn't go on big, big adventures. Usually the excuses were like I don't have enough money, I can't take time off work, what about my children? Who will go with me? You know, if my husband and I go on a really big adventure, who's going to be here with the children? And so I had a lot of reasons why I couldn't take those big adventures and go on those big trips that I'd been wanting to take. But after cancer, something, something really changed in me, and it was this realization that life is short. And so we work really, really hard, and we work hard while we're young to save money, to invest, to do all of these things, and then we think we'll just go ahead and enjoy life once we're retired. And then we retire in our mid 60s and then we just don't know. The future is so uncertain. But we retire and then it's like time to go on adventures, time to travel. But but really, why are we not making an effort to go on those adventures and to travel and to do all those really fun things before retirement?

Speaker 1:

For the past couple years, I've been trying to figure out a way to make adventure travel part of my life, without it being too expensive and without it cutting into my everyday tasks and things that I need to get done as a mom, as a wife, as a small business owner. And today I just want to share a few reasons why I think it's important for women of all ages to take time away from our families, time away from work and to spend some time going places that put us a little bit outside of our comfort zone. And I want to talk about some of the advantages and benefits of adventure travel, especially for women who are reaching those 40s and 50s and 60s. You know that those middle aged years of life like let's not, let's not wait until we're retired to do these big things. Let's just do them now. Today I have three tips or three benefits of adventure travel, and the first one is when we go out on a trip in a new place, someplace we've never been before, maybe with some people that we don't even know, it really provides us the opportunity to step outside of our comfort zone and try new things, and I experienced this a ton in Africa when we went to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro.

Speaker 1:

It was my first time in Africa, completely different culture, completely different customs, and it was uncomfortable at first because I felt pretty stretched. I hadn't learned any Swahili, I just didn't know what to expect. But I felt like the moment I stepped off the airplane at the Kilimanjaro International Airport and walked across the tarmac right into the airport as I was going through customs. And then, as we met our driver who took us to our hotel and got us all settled in as soon as I stepped off that plane, I realized that I wasn't feeling as much discomfort as I was expecting to feel. In fact, I felt very welcome and I felt very safe and I felt very comfortable in Moshi, tanzania.

Speaker 1:

And it's moments like that where we get off the plane in a different country, with people we don't know that really force us to step outside of our comfort zone, and the only way that we can grow as humans is to step outside of our comfort zone, to be pushed just a little bit in a direction that's uncomfortable. We don't grow if we're always doing the same thing with the same people in the same place, and so, by embracing these new experiences and stepping outside of our comfort zones, it really allows us to see the world with a different perspective and allows us to grow. The next thing that I love about adventure travel is it gives us a chance to really connect with nature and with culture and with people. When we were in Costa Rica last April, one of the opportunities that we had as a group was to go to a local village and to have a cultural dinner. So we had dinner with several Costa Rican families and they sang for us, they danced for us, they showed us some of their talents and we shared a meal together, and I think being able to connect with people who live in a completely different part of the world over a meal is so special and so powerful, and we also experienced that a little bit on this trip to Tanzania as well, when a few of us were able to go and visit a school. So the guiding company that we used, zara Tours the owner of this company, the founder, is an amazing woman. They call her Mama Zara and she has just this huge heart and she donates a lot of her money to do things like build schools and orphanages and take care of the local community.

Speaker 1:

We were able to visit a school that she had started for children who don't have parents and for children that don't have a lot of money, and so we were able to walk through the halls of this school. We were able to see the playground, the classrooms where meals are cooked in, the tiny, tiny kitchen with a propane stove for 100 students, and we were really able to connect with that school. And it was so powerful, in fact, it was so powerful to experience that school and that culture and these amazing people who work at the school that next year we are donating $100 from each ticket that we sell to climb Kilimanjaro with us in August of 2025. And if we sell that trip out, that will provide the salary for two teachers of that school for an entire year, and so just learning about these different cultures and customs really helps connect us with the local people when we go on these big Hike Like a Woman, adventure trips and to me it shows me that the world is so much bigger than just Rebecca Walsh and little old Laramie Wyoming. It really opens up and brings a totally new perspective, and as I was sitting with my children and showing them pictures of this school, I felt like I was able to share with my own kids this, this unique and special experience, and I can't wait to take them back and show them that school in person. The next thing that adventure travel does for us is it helps build our own resilience and confidence.

Speaker 1:

I was thinking back to one woman who was on our trip. She missed her flight and then she got scammed when she tried to buy a new plane ticket. And then she finally made it to Moshi in time to start the trek with us, but her luggage wasn't there, so she had to borrow clothing and gear from everybody else on the trip. She didn't have her own stuff, and then on the third day her luggage arrived and a porter was able to bring her luggage to her on the mountain, and then she got pretty sick from altitude sickness, and so during this whole trip she just kept having these obstacles, one obstacle after another obstacle, one challenge after another challenge. But she just kept rising to the occasion and she really had a lot of grit. She had a lot of resilience, because I think a lot of us would have been like my boots did not make it. I'm not going to climb that mountain in borrowed boots but she had such a positive attitude and she was so resilient she was able to face those challenges and those uncertainties that often occur during adventure travel. And it was so powerful me to for me to watch her example of how she was dealing with those challenges and how she was overcoming them.

Speaker 1:

And so it kind of goes back to our first point here, when I talked about how new experiences and new adventures really force us to step outside of our comfort zone. But while we're doing that, we don't know what kind of challenges and uncertainties and obstacles we're going to face. And so adventure travel really helps us build that resilient muscle. It helps us become resilient, it helps us become gritty, because no adventure travel experience is perfect. There's something that's always going to go wrong. But by stretching ourselves, taking the opportunity, it helps build that confidence and, like when we talk about how, when you go on an adventure with us, we usually start off as a group of strangers, but after just one day together we become a group of friends. And while I really like the visual that that provides, I like the thought of showing up on an adventure and not knowing anyone but being able to make really good friends I also don't want to discount the fact that adventure travel is one of those things that helps us grow and develop. Personally, I think on adventure travel trips we learn a lot about ourselves. There's some self discovery there, and I also think it's extremely empowering to go on a big trip, to go on a big adventure to visit a foreign country and just to learn so much about ourselves and the other people that we're experiencing that adventure with. So those are my thoughts today on adventure travel and why I think it's important for all of us to just embrace this adventure travel mindset and some of the benefits that I've seen occur when women have joined me on really big, big adventure trips.

Speaker 1:

And if you want to learn more about some of the trips that we offer here at Hike Like a Woman, you can head on over to our website, hikelikeawomancom. I'll give you a brief update here. Right now it is June. We are headed to Alaska the end of August. That trip is booked. It is sold out. It is full. In September, we are headed to Yellowstone National Park for some camping and some hiking and some fun.

Speaker 1:

Our next big international trip, however, is October. So October 3rd through the 10th 2024, we are headed to Peru. We're going to be trekking along the Salcante Trail. So this is a very cool trail. It actually goes up and over beyond Machu Picchu and then it joins one of the Inca trails in to Machu Picchu. So this is going to be a combination of trekking with porters and guides. We will be fully supported. You're only going to be carrying a day pack. So it's going to be trekking along the Salcante Trail. We're also going to be doing a lot of sightseeing in and around Cusco, peru, and just checking out a lot of historic and cultural sites. So that is going to be a very special trip.

Speaker 1:

We do have openings for that trip to Peru. I think we have 10 openings as of the time of this podcast. So if you want to join me in Peru, I literally just bought my plane ticket the other day and I'm so excited. So that trip is going to be October 3rd through the 10th and if you want details, head on over to our website, hike like a womancom, or you can always to our website, hikelikeawomancom. Or you can always find me high at hikelikeawomancom or find me on social media, DM me. I'm happy to answer any of your questions about that. So that trip to Peru, that trip to Peru, is our last trip of 2024. And then in 2025, in February, we are headed to Iceland. As of right now, that trip is sold out, but be sure to head to our website and get on the wait list just in case we have any cancellations.

Speaker 1:

In April of 2025, we're headed back to Costa Rica, one of my favorite places on the planet. In June, we're taking a trip to southern Utah. We're going to explore four or five national parks in Southern Utah. And then in August of 2025, we're going back to Africa, back to Tanzania, and once again we'll be climbing up Mount Kilimanjaro on the Machame route again. And you guys, this trip, trip to Africa this month was so incredible that I cannot wait to go back again with a different group and just experiencing it, experience it all over again. It is a magical, amazing, beautiful mountain to climb.

Speaker 1:

You know our our, our head guide. His name was John and he said climbing this mountain will change your life. To me, the day before the hike, when we were kind of meeting and I couldn't, I didn't quite understand what he said. When he said that climbing the mountain would change my life, I thought that he might just be saying that I couldn't quite understand how a seven day trek on Mount Kilimanjaro would change my life. But it's not until I got home and I sat down and I realized what we had just done, that I realized that, yes, my life did change on Mount Kilimanjaro significantly.

Speaker 1:

On Mount Kilimanjaro significantly, and that's what I'm going to talk about next Monday, the 24th June 24th, at 6 pm Mountain Time over on our YouTube channel and Facebook page. So be sure to join us there. Replays will be available, but you should join in live if you can, because I might be giving away some swag. That's all I have for today. Hey, thanks so much for joining me for this rambling episode all about adventure travel. I will be back next week and I'm going to talk a little bit more about breast cancer next week, so prepare yourself for that one. It's going to be great. Thanks so much, and I will see you out on the trails. Take care, bye, bye.