If you follow my blog and Instagram page, you know that I recently went on a group trip to Cartagena, Colombia with Chidi Ashley Travels (C.A.T.). I made a blog post detailing our itinerary in Cartagena earlier this month but I wanted to make a separate post discussing my experience with the company overall. I'll get into the details below but overall, I would definitely recommend the company and intend to go on another group trip in the future!
Why Did I Choose Chidi Ashley Travels?
I've actually been following the owner of the company, Chidi Ashley, on Instagram since April 2019 when she did her first group trip to Bali for Spring Break. I saw a person from my school join the trip and it looked like a lot of fun. I wanted to travel more but did not have anyone to go with me. And I am not a fan of solo travel so the idea of joining others on their trips was intriguing. From March 2019 to September 2021, I had waited a long time to finally be able to join. I also really liked that C.A.T. catered to women and promoted a safe space for us to travel the world. And the fact that the company is owned by Chidi Ashley, a successful, young Black woman is the icing on the cake!
Picking a Destination
Anybody that knows me knows that I'm open to a lot of different locations because I want to visit almost everywhere at some point. So I picked my trip based on price. If you are on a tight budget C.A.T group trips are probably not going to work for you because they cost a pretty penny. For reference, the least expensive 2022 trip is to Chiang Mai, Thailand for $1500 and the most expensive is to Greece for $4250...and that doesn't include flights at all! They currently host trips across 20 different countries so I looked through to see what the least expensive options were. At the time, that ended up being either Colombia or Peru for about $1800. And I still had to pay for a flight which pushed my total to at least $2500. Had I planned a trip on my own, It probably would've cost a little over $1000 total (including flight). But my main goal wasn't to save money this time, but rather to meet potential travel buddies and test out group trips as an alternative for solo travel. Although I don't regret it, her group trips are definitely not budget-friendly so I can't afford to join them consistently. Good thing is if you are still interested in her services but can't afford a group trip, she offers private travel planning services for you and your crew. And she does offer monthly payment plans if you are interested but can't pay in full upfront.
2020 COVID Interruptions
I told you that I have been following the company since 2019 so I actually picked my trip way back then and I believe I had paid in full by February 2020. So I had been hype and ready to go for a while. But of course, the pandemic canceled 2020 for most of us and that included her trips. Because the cancellations were involuntary, she offered 2 options to everyone who had already paid money. We could either get a full refund or transfer the money to a future trip. I've been blessed to be in a good place financially through the pandemic and knew that I'd still want to go on the trip when things started getting better so I decided to just transfer my funds to the 2021 trip instead. I was very happy with how the company handled the cancellations by offering full refunds to everyone though. Because some companies out here decided to keep people's money anyway SMH.
Pre-Departure
I believe it was pretty early on that C.A.T. created a social media type group for us to connect, receive updates, ask questions, etc. They also sent everyone a welcome presentation detailing what we could expect and when. At first, everything was going okay. But the company ended up going through a complete website revamp a few months before our trip that seemed to throw things off for a while. With the website change, my biggest concern was that it appeared my payment history didn't transfer over. And I think all of their staff was preoccupied with the website work so they weren't responding to emails as quickly at first either. All of that did get handled eventually though and my payments were still registered in their system so I was good to go. At one point, we also noticed that things outlined in the welcome packet (i.e. itinerary sent out X months ahead of time, roommate list sent out x months ahead, colors for themed outfits x amount of time ahead, etc.) were no longer on schedule. I'm not sure if this also had to do with the website relaunch taking priority or if things took longer to plan than they expected. Either way, we ended up getting everything we needed before the trip so this wasn't a deal-breaker of any sort.
We received our coordinating colors two months out so I still had plenty of time to find outfits. And I believe we received everything else around a month before our trip. They also set up a video call with all of us before our trip so that we could meet one of our hosts, ask questions, and get updates prior to the trip. It was a bit confusing at first but after asking more questions, we confirmed that C.A.T. travelers DO need to get a PCR COVID test within 72 hours of their trip, regardless of what the specific destination requires. At this point all of our questions had been answered, we had all the updates and info we needed, and we were excitedly awaiting our departure!
In Cartagena
Our group used the social platform to add each other on Instagram. We also posted all of our flight info to see if we were going to be on the same flights. This was great because when I got to Miami for my connecting flight, I was able to send a message in our WhatsApp group to locate the people who said they would be on my same flight. We hung out and got to know each other a bit while waiting to board our flight to Cartagena. This is also good if you have anxiety when navigating airports because you don't have to do it alone!
When I landed, one of our coordinators was outside waiting because they had scheduled private transportation for us. We got to the hotel, checked in, changed and then met up for a mini meet & greet session with all 18 women, our 2 hosts (Paz & Aeshia), and our personal photographers (Roger and Aleix). Our planned activities were a good mix of luxury and cultural experiences which I really enjoyed.
I'm not going to go through the full itinerary here but it did end up changing some from what was originally planned. We ended up having to do our themed photoshoot super early on our second full day instead of the first afternoon because we ran out of time after the Palenque tour. Timing also led to some of our breaks being shortened or pushing our next activities back a bit. Their trips are kind of action-packed so if your vacation style is to sleep in and then spend your day by the pool, these kind of trips probably won't work for you. But if you like to be out and about, enjoy excursions, or are Dora the Explorer like me, you should be fine. It's also very important to have an open mind and a go-with-the-flow mentality if (and when) things change. For example, on our last day, our shuttle never showed up to take us to dinner. We were standing around while texting our hosts as they tried to figure out what was going on as well. The driver never responded so we were all really confused. Luckily, the walled city in Cartagena is easily walkable so we just walked instead. I didn't let moments like that ruin my mood or my experience. Instead, we adapted and kept it moving.
The hosts, Paz and Aeshia, were great! They fit right into the group and were so easy to talk to. I also really enjoyed having our private photographers for the duration of our trip! They were really cool and captured our experience beautifully. They were with the group for almost every group activity and even did an optional photoshoot in between scheduled activities (my roommate and I were the only ones that came at first so we got a private photoshoot!). The only activity we didn't have anyone for was the cooking class. On the second full day, we could choose between the mud volcano or cooking class and for some reason, both hosts and photographers went with the mud volcano crew. It kinda sucked because we had nobody available to help us when we were confused trying to find our shuttle and we didn't get any good pictures while cooking. The class with Caffe Lunatico itself was still really fun though...highly recommend!
Post-Vacation
I enjoyed my vacation a lot and was not ready to leave on the last day at all. The hosts were fun, the photographers were great, and I got to connect with so many wonderful women on the trip that I wasn't ready to part ways. But of course, I had to come back to work. Even through some of the challenges I mentioned, we still enjoyed our trip. We also got all of our pictures back in about 2 weeks and of course, they were bomb (check my Instagram to see)! We left positive reviews on the company Facebook page and quite a few of us were already talking about booking another trip in the future (🤞 for Brazil 2023)! It's crazy because I often forget this is still a fairly new company. I'm pretty sure she only did about 5 or so trips in 2019 and did not have a full team of employees at the time. And of course, nothing for 2020. So 2021 was probably her first year running a full calendar of group trips while overseeing an entire staff of people. Congrats to her, that's amazing!
As I mentioned, one of my main goals in joining this trip was to meet potential travel buddies for the future. Mission accomplished! Not only did I connect with some great women, but 3 of us will be headed to Puerto Rico this Saturday and 4 of us are planning a trip to South Korea in September 2022! Success!
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