A funny thing happened on my first all-women trip: I had a good time.
I hadn't planned it that way (the all-women part). Divorced two years, I had signed up for a hiking excursion through the Hawaiian Islands run by an adventure outfitter that catered to both sexes. I figured I might meet some nice, rugged eco-guy and a rain-forest romance would bloom. Alas, so did the 18 other women who showed up at our Kauai campground on orientation night. The only male was our guide -- and his assistant guide was his girlfriend.
We were not amused. But as our group hiked, kayaked, commiserated and laughed our way through two weeks and four islands, many of us developed close bonds that still hold fast today, relationships I doubt would have evolved so strongly from a co-ed trip.
Today, my happenstance all-girl gathering has become a popular wing of the adventure travel business -- one an increasing number of women seek out with great enthusiasm, creating a boom in organized trips for women only.
These women have decided that while it might, as the saying goes, be nice to have a man around the house, that doesn't necessarily hold true on an adventure vacation.
Outfitters say the reasons for wanting to travel guyless
range from the spiritual -- the joy of bonding with other women, for example -- to the practical. Some trip leaders maintain that women conceptualize and master certain skills, such as navigating a sailboat or scaling a mountain, differently from men, and accomplish more in a learning environment geared specifically to them.
Age, too, can come into play; several companies state outright that their trips are for women over 35 or 40 who may be new to the physical rigors of outdoor adventures and don't want to have to keep up with fitness buffs in their 20s. They prefer to get their feet wet, so to speak, with other beginners in similar life situations.
"Many of these women have always traveled with their husbands and kids," says Marion Stoddart, owner of Outdoor Adventures for Women Over 40, in Groton, Mass. "Now their kids are grown and off on their own; they may be widowed or divorced or their husbands may not be interested in this type of adventure experience. As these women see the big zeros in their lives -- 40, 50, 60 -- they are realizing their own mortality and that there are some things in life they cannot postpone doing any longer or they'll never do them."
