Valeria has been leading Intrepid trips in Mexico for nine years, but before that, her life was music. Changing careers felt like a leap, until she realised that guiding travellers wasn’t quite the change of tune she thought it was.
I never planned to become a tour leader. For nearly two decades, music and education were my world. I taught choir to children and teenagers, conducted ensembles, performed, composed and spent countless hours rehearsing and creating.
Teaching taught me something fundamental: the importance of making the implicit explicit – whether guiding a student through a musical phrase or interpreting a piece with an ensemble, I was always trying to illuminate what was hidden beneath the surface.
But over time, the joy I once felt in music started to fade. Juggling multiple jobs and struggling to make ends meet left me drained. Despite how much effort I put in, it never seemed to be enough to live better or feel fulfilled. When my long-term relationship ended, my mental health was in a really conflicted place.
Around that time, my best friend, who had been working as a tour leader with Intrepid for about ten years, finally told me what his job was really like. I had never paid much attention to it before, but when I asked, it sounded like a dream: getting paid to travel, meeting new people and seeing beautiful places in my own country that I had never visited.
It felt like the chance to put some distance between myself and a life that no longer felt sustainable. I needed to break out of that cycle, and this opportunity gave me a way to do it. So I applied.
When I got the job, it wasn’t just about stepping into a new career – it was about stepping into a new version of myself. On the first trip, shadowing an experienced leader, I felt alive again. It was my first real opportunity to provide for myself, to travel as a woman within my own country and to see my own culture with fresh eyes, full of pride.
But it came a wave of guilt, too. I had told myself for so long that music was the only path for me, and now I was feeling great doing something completely different. I had to wrestle with that alongside doubts:
What if I don’t have what it takes?
What if I fail?
About six months in, I started to realise that many of the skills I needed were ones I had already developed through music: listening to the group, understanding rhythm and flow, knowing when to build up, when to slow down, when to let silence speak. Bringing people together to create something meaningful.
I still had those tools – I just had to learn to use them in a different key.
You see, the journey of a trip mirrors the journey of a song.
You see, the journey of a trip mirrors the journey of a song. It’s not just about moving from one place to another or ticking off landmarks. It’s about experiencing – hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, feeling and learning from locals.
And for that to happen, one essential link is needed: the tour leader. A tour leader is the Rosetta Stone, the interpreter of the experience. But not just that. A tour leader is an artist.
Think about music: a conductor understands the big picture. They know that not every note or chord is equally important – but together, they build up to create something extraordinary out of ordinary sounds.
That’s also the work of a great tour leader: guiding ordinary people through an extraordinary experience, allowing moments to unfold naturally, building toward something special.
And that’s where the ‘wow moment’ comes in. It doesn’t happen by accident. Like in music, where a composer creates tension and resolution, a great tour leader builds anticipation, allows silence, lets things breathe, so that when the magic happens – when the group arrives at that breathtaking view, when they taste something completely unexpected, when they share a deep, unplanned moment of connection – it lands with full force.
And like any artist, we must refine our technique, remove ego and listen. We respect rhythm, allowing dissonance and tension – so that we can resolve it, creating harmony.
With that intentionality, there’s impact – on the travellers, on ourselves and on the local people who, whether they seek it or not, come into contact with something new.
That impact is physical – touching, tasting, being there. But it’s also emotional and intellectual – the transformation that happens when two realities meet.
Every traveller brings a new melodic line, and together we compose something unique.
Travel is a force. It is movement, energy, transformation. The question is: What kind of impact do we want to create?
Because tour leading is about orchestrating every effort with the ambition that the tour itself will become a masterpiece. Every traveller brings a new melodic line, and together, within this incredible parenthesis that travel creates, we compose something unique – a song that we all sing together, that we all elevate.
And that’s how, with rhythm, sound, silence, dynamics, tempo and structure, we can jazz our way through a destination, turning it into a jam – fun, authentic, real and beautiful.
And that is art.
As a tour leader, I discovered something I hadn’t expected: the beauty of service. There is something deeply noble about dedicating yourself to making others feel welcomed, supported and seen. It reminds me of what art aspires to do at its highest level – to disappear as ego and become a channel for something meaningful.
Finding a new path allowed me to reconnect with music from a place of freedom and love, not survival. I sing now because I want to, not because I have to. And that’s a kind of harmony I never expected to find.
Valeria leads Intrepid trips in Mexico. Read more about Intrepid’s locally-based leaders and book your next adventure.
