The Caribbean: A Girls Trip with Virgin Voyages (ft. Maya Valentino)

Many believe that creative energy flows through us and around
us at all times, a force we can tune into
if we're willing to let ourselves hear it. So what
happens when a trip we thought was just for fun
asks us to rock to a different rhythm, one that
reconnects us to ourselves, to the people we love, and
to the parts of ourselves we didn't realize we've been
missing a hoy sailer. This is Wayfinder, Life changing travel.
This podcast goes beyond the guidebooks into the heart and
soul of real life travelers as they journey around the world.
I'm your host, Daniel Scheffler, and I have seen firstthand
how our stories connect us and inspire us. Today, I'm
chatting with treasure shopper Maya Valentino about her first journey
board Virgin Voyages, a cruise experience that surprised her not
just with entertainment, design, flavor, and celebration, but with space
to slow down and reconnect parts of herself she hadn't
heard from in a long time. What first brought you
into treasure shopping and sharing your findings with the world.
I grew up shopping sweet.
When I think of shopping.
It's more than just buying things and accumulating items and
being fashionable. When I think of shopping, I think of
my childhood with my mom. We would shop all the time,
like it was our favorite thing to do, and we
would make a whole experience out of it. Our favorite
place to shop is Italy. That is our place. So
we would shop locally, San Francisco, local shops wherever, but
then doing it abroad was like our thing. And so
I then transfer that into posting these beautiful moments that
I've had with my mom online. And so that's kind
of where this treasure hunt shopping started. And I have
to give thanks to my mom for my shopping addiction.
That's so sweet. It's nice to have a parent that's
a shopper, like I grew up with a mother that
loves to shop too, And for a gay boy, that's
the dream. And my mother has really lovely taste. There
is something special just to spend time, right, Like, it's
not the shopping, it's the spending of time that's important.
The shopping is just a bonus.
Exactly, it's the best feeling nice. Okay, so you were posting.
Yes, exactly, I've been doing it now for two years beautiful,
and it's been something that has really evolved through my
community that has really given me the feedback that I've
so longed for. I am a theater girl at heart,
and so that was my career before my career now,
and so I now take that side of me and
put that into the shopping so it's even more dramatic
and fun and exciting. And I love being a storyteller. God,
I love Yeah, that's kind of my thing.
Nice. Okay, So then what brought you into cruises in
the first place.
I love this question. I feel like everything goes back
to the roots. My first vacations were cruises. I've been
on now thirty cruises and I am now twenty eight
years old. It's a lot of cruises, a lot of cruises.
My mom was a extremely hard working mom. She is
a business owner, and she always had to find specific
times for us to travel. And when we traveled, it
couldn't be too stressful or too much needed to be
one area. Everything is there, her kids are safe, husband's good,
we're all good to go. And the first place she
thought of was cruising. I see all the time, I'm
a cruise girl.
Period.
I'm a cruise girl down, I'm obsessed. I'm the fandom.
I'm a cruise fandom girl.
So I love that that's where it started from.
Yeah, wow, that's sweet. I guess it's that thing like
people love the idea of unpacking once and having all
the things there and you don't really have to think
about it. It served to you in a way that
feels so amicable. Yeah, so I guess this is what
your hard working mom wanted.
Yes. Absolutely.
As experienced as Maya wa with cruise travel, nothing quite
prepared her for her first trip a board Virgin Voyages,
a welcome answer to her mother's birthday wish.
It was for my mom's fifty fourth birthday, and she
wanted to experience a new cruising world because it is
a new world again.
I've been on thirty cruises.
I've done every cruise line known to mankind my entire life,
so I've seen the evolvement from early two thousand's to
now we're in early twenty twenty six, and my mom
was like, I want to try something new.
I'm fifty four, I'm a cruise girl. What can we do?
And my mom was like, let's do Virgin voyages.
So you took for her fifty fourth birthday a girl's trip.
We did a girls trip.
It was me, her best friend, and her daughter, and
we flew in from San Francisco. We landed in Miami
and we stayed a few days before. So that's how
it started. And man, we were not expecting what we
got to experience.
On Virgin Voyages. The creative experience begins long before the
ship leaves the pont.
Before we even walked onto the ship. We were blown
away by how easy the process was. Me and my
mom were looking at each other like, are we doing
something wrong? Why does it feel so easy and effortless?
Literally from the second that we walk through those gorgeous
doors and right above in big red bold letters, it
says a hoy sailor, and you're like, oh, thank you.
Thank you so much. It's iconic.
And what I loved about it is from the second
year dropped off to the front.
Door of the port, you are greeted immediately.
And everybody was so nice, they were so happy to
be there, and I'm like, Okay, this is amazing.
You're already feeling the essence of voyages.
You get to the top of the escalator excitement, it's
starting to really bubble within you. And then there's the
boat and all the check and stands and it is
so easy. You walk in, you give your passport, you
give your information, you get your wristband.
That's it so easy, it's beautiful.
Once you get your wristband, you go another iconic escalator.
Just I love how it's like this.
Dramatic, beautiful moment that like there's small moments, but they're
really big, Like I always remember the escalators because you
realize that once you go up one, you're getting ready
to have another amazing experience. And so the last escalator
takes you to the bright red bridge that takes you
to the boat.
And my favorite part.
Of that bridge, I don't know what it is about that,
but the sound of the luggage rolling through and like
hitting the little bumps. That's my favorite part because you're like,
I'm getting ready to have a good time, Like let's go.
That's like my sign, like girl, we're about to get lit.
Let's do it.
So literally you're cutting the corner making your lass right up.
This bright red, beautiful walkway.
Are the iconic Virgin Voyages cast and they're full on
giving choreo. They're getting five six seven a love and
not only are they dancing and giving energy, they're seeing
how you're doing. They're greeting you. And it's not just
the cast, it's also the team. You can tell that
their managers are greeting you. Their hospitality team is greeting you.
It's not just like fluff and it feels like you're
in a dream. It's like you're cheering me on for
walking onto a ship. This is pretty dang cool.
They're just doing it in a way that takes the
annoying piece out of it, because it feels like there's
more of a joyfulness, and then the staff are joyful.
I mean, it is special. There's something to be said
if it's so obvious and you feel.
It right away, Yes, one hundred percent. There is something
that can be taught as well about experiences and how
rich that can be and how it can change somebody's life.
You don't know what somebody is going through, or maybe
the anxiousness of getting onto a boat or getting onto
a flight.
The experience is.
What people hold on to, and so when you initially
step foot out of that car and you're immediately greeted
and have good experiences. It makes you want to tell
everybody about it.
And the welcome doesn't stop at the entrance. Even the
rooms on the ship are all carefully designed to turn
small moments into storytelling experiences.
This is one of my favorite parts.
You open your door, your stateroom door, just to get
to your room. The curtains open by themselves, so as
you're opening the door.
It's like, oh, it's so amazing.
You are greeted by this like virgin VOYAGEUS curtain choreography.
This is stuff you see in the movies. It is
like full production moment.
It's a sense of drama.
Yes, it truly is. They've mastered the art of experience.
Then immerst invergence creativity, Maya found herself reconnecting to a
part of herself. She didn't expect to uncover.
Every single experience. When it comes to all of the arts,
was incredible. They truly understand artists and artistry. I'm a
theater girl through and through. That was my stick. Once
I graduated college, I was getting ready to move to
New York. I got casted in a show where I
met the most amazing choreographer, Annie Tage, and so when
I got on the ship for the first time. I
remember that Annie Tage did the choreography for one of
their shows on board. So we're going to different shows
and having the most amazing experiences. They're doing circus acts,
there's dancing, and there's a drag queen on board. And
so when I finally got to the point where the
friend of mine, Annie Tage, it was their show that night,
I was like, Okay, I'm excited to see this, but
I don't really know much about it. The show was
an interactive piece where you don't sit down. It's called untitled.
The set pieces move and the audience moves with the
set pieces. It is truly a work of art. It
goes on for about forty five minutes. There's dance, there's acting,
there singing, and not only were the artists on stage
experiencing it and having a great time on stage, you
as an audience member, got to be a part.
Of the creative. And that's what stuck out to me the.
Most was as an audience member, it's rare to be
able to get up and dance and move and interact
with the actual creatives on the stage. I mean, Virgin Voyages,
they're killing it like, who comes up with that?
It's genius.
I ended up meeting with the cast and we ended
up knowing the same people. We following each other on Instagram,
still connected to this day. It was really awesome to
see an experience as a.
Creative besides the spectacle happening around them. Maya's biggest takeaway
from the voyage was the quiet time, the stillness she
found while swaying above the ocean with her mother at
her side.
Every single balcony on the ship had a hammock. It's
genius because when you're on this ship and you're sitting
on that balcony nestled into the hammock, the feeling and
the rocking of the ship with the hammock, I can't
even I wish I had a better vocabulary to describe
what it feels like. Not only is it the gentle
rocking of the hammock, it's the air that is like
brushing your body and you can feel the humidity on
your skin. And then to top it all off, is
the sound of the ocean. You are literally being rocked
by Mother Nature. To sleep, the best sleep I've ever
gotten a virgin voyage is hammock period quietness and calmness
was what I took from this trip, just to take
in these moments with my mom and create more memories
and to be in her energy. To be in her
space is the biggest blessing, just to be around her.
My mom is one of the most hard working people
I've ever met my entire life. She works her butt off.
She never gets a day off. She is an innovator,
and she's a businesswoman. And at the time, there was
a huge shift in the industry because there was a
lot of laws changing, and I remember, as a woman
of color owned business in the Bay Area where it
was extremely difficult on my mom to make sure that
she was providing and catering and educating her agents. There
was a lot of stress. And so this trip in
particular to celebrate her birthday, was genuinely taking in each
moment because I know we don't get them often and
being present so we can hold onto these memories forever.
So when we were on the ship, I'll never forget
the moments where it was just her and I on
the balcony.
I'm in the hammock, of course, she's on the chair.
We would just talk about everything and it was so
nice to not be able to talk about business, just
to talk about us, to talk about life, to talk
about relationships, to sit with her and make memories together.
It is something that I can't describe because my mom
is everything to me, So I could get emotional talking
about it because she's my superhero.
So yeah, please do get emotional. That's so beautiful. And
that's the thing that I guess travel does, right. It
gives you these moments where you can tap into that
emotional piece and that healing moment.
Yeah, I would agree. The interesting thing about this cruise
and it being her birthdays, we always talk about the
years before, especially her childhood, and my mom grew up
eight years out of her life in the Philippines, which
was something that you don't hear often. My mom was
in boarding school for a good chunk of her life.
And so when we have these moments, I can unpack
this like beautiful side of my mom that not a
lot of people know about. When we speak about it,
I get to dive deep into who my mom is
outside of just being my mom, who she is as
a woman and how.
She got to the point that she is today.
Because that conversation that we had on the ship about
where she was from and where she was going to
school and the teachers that she had, and she went
to school with nuns. Literally two years later, my husband
and I got married in the Philippines, so it was
a full circle moment. And because of what my mom
has shared with me during these intimate moments where I've
learned so much about her and her heart, I feel
like I've taken that culture, that side of myself, and
like i just want to scream it to the world
because I'm just so proud of that because of what
my mom has taught me about it.
That's great. It's amazing that travel can create these quiet moments.
Sometimes you need to be out of your normal day
to day. My husband and I sometimes when we're traveling
and we're not doing day to day normal stuff like
waking up, going to the gym, doing the dog walk,
dou out of all that stuff, it offers you a
quiet moment when you can discuss things Like we just
sat at the beach a few minutes ago. I'm in
Minotica right and he was sharing some things that he
was dreaming about, and it's like, well, I haven't had
a moment for this We've been traveling and having friends
and we have house guests, and I was like, oh,
we haven't talked about this moment. Yeah, and it was
like we needed to leave Madrid and go to the
island to like have that quiet moment to talk about it. Yeah. Well,
that's the great thing with urgent voyages. You do all
the fun things and you're having all these wonderful experiences,
but then they create these moments like having the love
balcony with the hammock and the room that just has
that good energy. It gives you that place to just
go and have that quiet moment.
Yeah. You can pick your moments on the ship, which
is awesome.
You can party, you can see the show, you can
run around the ship.
Yes, yes, it's all that exactly.
But those moments when you're in the room or on
the balcony, it's just you too. The world is shed out,
you're in the middle of the ocean, and sometimes just
the quietness, not even talking to each other, just being
around one another. And then the stillness even though you're still,
but the world around you is continuing to move and
to flow.
That's what really stuck with this trip for sure.
Beyond the design entertainment and moments of connection. Another part
of the Virgin Voyages experience reveals itself through the cuisine.
If you want to enjoy culinary mac pieces, Virgin Voyages
hands down again. Thirty cruises, multiple cruise lines, nothing like
it because there's a plethora of choices and each choice
is perfect. There's this fancy little app that Virgin Voyage
just has, and you can put in a reservation for
any restaurant that you want to go to.
So number one, that's.
What sets it apart is because you can make reservations
for restaurants. It's not like all buffet it's all super accessible,
which is like the best part. In the amount of
different restaurants they have on board. It was a shock
because most cruises have maybe two and then you have
to pay an extra fee. There's no extra fee. Everything
is included. You can eat at any restaurant you want.
It's flavors you've never had before. It's being able to
taste things that you wouldn't normally taste when you're at home.
And the desserts, the desserts, the desserts. I've been to
Paris multiple times in my life. I'm a Paris girl. Down.
Dare I say, truly, Virgin Voyages is giving Paris a
run for their money when it comes.
It's crazy, I know, I know. And not only are you.
Getting these vibrant and beautiful sweets while you're eating at
every restaurant on the ship, you can also go upstairs
to something they call the galley. They have this big
clear glass case full of these beautiful desserts. They have
all these beautiful designs and like flowers that are edible,
leafs that are edible. Last time we were on the ship,
my husband and I got seven different desserts and sat
in our bedroom and just like scarved it.
Down nice and each one was incredible.
What do you think about the excursion offerings on board?
Did you plan ahead or did you just go with
the flow?
We went with the floe, and that's how we normally
set up our cruising experiences.
We don't like to have a plan.
The plan is to not have a plan, and so
this time time, the only thing that we did was
going into Coasta Maya to do a land and beach tour.
My mother planned this and she was like, Okay, we're
going to go to some sonotaes. Enjoy that and then
wherever the tour guy said for us to go to
the beach, we will then do that. We ended up
at this incredible beach club in Coasta Maya. It was
right on the coastline. There was multiple different, bigger hotels,
but there was like this tiny, intimate, little beach club
that had one couple and the four of us, and
we're like, we're going to make the most out of this.
Let's have a good time. And we genuinely ended up having.
The most insane day ever because the team that was
catering to us and giving us the best time and
feeding us and loving on us.
They outdid themselves. Truly.
We swam for genuinely four and a half half hours,
We snorkeled, and we had the best time. And then
they brought out the tequila. They were like, let's do
a tequila tasting. We don't have to buy anything, but
we just want you guys to try the tequila that
we have. And we're like, oh, no problem.
One.
A couple of minutes later, another couple of minutes later, another,
and lo and behold, we were having the time of
our lives. We really were, so naturally, we're going to
buy the bottle at tequila. But my mom's best friend
was like, listen, I've been looking at this hammock that's here.
It's a gorgeous hammock. It's bright orange and bright yellow.
And she goes, I really want to buy your tequila,
but can we do a package deal? All I need
is just two tequila's and a hammock for one price,
And they're like, you know what, we can do that.
So now our number one tagline for this trip is
two tequila's and a hammock.
And for travelers looking to find their own version of
two tequila's and a hammock, there's always the beach Club
at Femini, one of the popular excursions exclusive to Virgin
voyages where the festivities end only when it's time to
return to the ship.
Beach Club at Biminy is one big party.
It is party town like if you watch movies.
If people on a beach, they're in like their best dress,
they're enjoying. There's like floaties. It feels like you're in
a movie. The best part, too, is the food. So
they have food that it's like its own little section
with a bar, and it's the most flavorful. It's like jerk,
chicken and rice and beans and like all these Caribbean flavors,
and then the drinks are fruity and fun and cold.
And then they have this floaty party that is otherworldly.
I've never seen so many floaties in a pool in
my entire life. And there's a DJ with live dancers.
Then if you want to take a step away from
all that, because it can be a lot, they have
this super calm, bright blue beach where you can just
sit down, feel the sand in your feet, the warmth
of the Bimini air, and just sit It's perfect.
You got the party, you got the food, you got
the music.
You also have the calm after all that celebration. The
most profound piece of the journey for Maya was the
space and permission Virgin Voyages gave her to just slow down.
We live in chaos a lot of the time, and
my mom is always doing something. She's constantly going like,
what's next, what's next, What's next? And I am a
carbon copy of my mother in my own business, and
I'm like, what's next, what's next, what's next. And during
that trip we got to actually experience what's happening right
now and taken each moment with each other, and I
would say having the quality time with her was something
that I will hold on to forever and we have
now ever since that trip made it a point that
every single year we do a little birthday special surprise
for her or birthday something that's just her and I
just so we can get the time. Time is something
that we hold on too dearly in our family because
we feel like I think everybody feels this way, that
there's just not enough time for a lot of it,
and so we make the time every year. And it
really started from the Virgin Voyages cruise.
I like that.
I hear you went back on this cruise for your honeymoon.
Can you tell me just a little touch on that.
Yeah, number one Virgin Voyages. It's a word of mouth thing.
There was not an ad that graced my fee that
maybe me want to go back on. I just knew
I wanted to go back on because of the experience
that I had. So my husband and I once we
got married in the Philippines, we hopped back on this
same the exact ship, same stops, same everything, and had
a completely different experience.
It was different people, different things.
Like that's the beauty of it right, exactly exactly.
Honestly, I thought that it was going to be exactly
the same, and I was very wrong. Compared to last time,
where it was more go, go go, we did have
a lot of like relaxing moments and moments to ourselves,
but with my husband, we really did nothing, and it
was so nice to do nothing, to enjoy the room,
enjoy each other and honeymoon.
Maya's connection to Virgin Voyages didn't end there. In fact,
most recently she returned to the ship in an entirely
new way.
So not only have I been on the ship twice,
once with my mom, once with my husband, I also
just got back from the Virgin Voyages Creator Crews, which
took the Internet by storm, and it was.
One for the books.
I'm not talking like party, it was like crazy, like
why No. What I'm actually going to talk about with
this creator cruise, briefly is the heart of Virgin Voyages
in how they look at their community.
I have been on a few brand trips.
In my career so far, and this is the only
brand trip I've ever been on where I have seen
black and brown creators, people of every size, disabled folks.
It was everyone and anyone, and it was the most
diverse and inclusive crowd I've ever seen put together in
my life. And the one takeaway from every single sailor
on that ship was a diversity because Wow, it was
amazing and the way that they did it was with
so much intention and heart and it wasn't fake. They
know their community, they know their audience. It was history truly.
If you look around now is there is really not
a lot of trips or brand events that looked.
Like the Virgin Voyages creator cruise.
Virgin Voyages to me, feels like a curated experience for
any cruiser at any level of cruising. If it's your
first time cruising, you're gonna love it. If it's your
thirtieth time cruising, you're gonna love it. And compared to
the others, I would say that Virgin Voyages is a
company that cares about their actual clients and the consumer
and they put them first because not only are you
experiencing all these different incredible things on board, but the
team that actually is on the ship loves what they do.
So you not only get to meet the people that
you're traveling with or whatever, but you're meeting people from
all over the world that love to talk to you
and spend time with you. We were talking to the
bartenders or the people that were at the test kitchen,
talking about their families. Everyone was so personal, so happy
to be there. I think that's what stuck out the
most compared to other cruise lines is the people that
work for Virgin Voyages are proud to work.
For Virgin Voyages.
Next trip, I'm coming with you. Will you send me
an email when you're going next? I want to come
on when you're going and we need to.
We actually need to, Like I'm making soory, like I
can see it's now laying in like the hammocks.
Oh yeah. For Maya, what began as a birthday trip
with her mother soon became something far more meaningful. While
she savored the delicious meals, decompressed in the balcony hammock,
and danced with her girls on sun soaked beaches, what
she carried home was far less tangible. A renewed sense
of creativity, a childlike joy she hadn't felt in years,
and the rare opportunity to connect with her busy mom
within all the different rhythms of life available on the journey,
because while we can plan a whole itinerary, we can't
always predict what will inspire us along the way.
My message to future travelers on virgin voyages is to
come with no expectations whatsoever, to enjoy the ship for
what it is, to enjoy the experiences for what it is,
and to come in with an open heart and an
open mind because you genuinely never know what you can
find and explore.
Wherever your journey takes you next. May it reconnect you
with the parts of yourself that make you most excited
for what's coming up ahead. Wayfinder Life Changing Travel is
a production of Iheart's Ruby Studio. I'm your host Daniel Scheffler.
Our show's executive producer is Sierra Kaiser, supervising producer Kelly Kyle,
and story producer Ryan Amador, with post production by James
Foster and editing by Sierra Sprein. Don't forget to subscribe
to Wayfinder, and please rate and review the show wherever
you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.