These Women Realized There Wasn’t A Space For Black Women Within Group Travel — So They Made One

By ALICIA BARNES via https://www.bustle.com

To live the life advertised in most ads for life-changing travel retreats and resorts, it often feels like a person needs three things: A thirst for adventure, the desire to have fun, and to be an upper middle class white woman. Meet those specifications? Then all those experiences that the happy models and actors are having in those ads can be yours. If you’re a woman of color looking to travel alone, however? These retreats look like an unattainable dream. Throughout my life, I’ve felt intimidated by the thought of going on a group travel retreat, scared that I’d be like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, or “othered” in some way because everyone else I see taking these types of trips don’t look a thing like me. Imagine trying to explain why you’re not up for swimming in a waterfall because the battle of detangling your hair afterward is too much?

My experiences traveling in groups have been peppered with situations that confirm my fears. While studying abroad in college, I traveled to Barcelona, Spain with a group of girls who didn’t identify as women of color. Together, we all walked into the city center to explore the nightlife — and while we were all looking for a bar, a man came up to me and asked “how much?” I was flabbergasted, looking around in …

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