In 2007, Will Loyd waltzed into his high school Spanish class, excited that there would be a guest speaker from Walking Tree Travel — at the time, it indicated an opportunity for him to zone out and not really pay attention. But when the speaker started talking about white water rafting in Costa Rica, Loyd’s excitement transformed into genuine interest.
“I was excited about this presentation for the wrong reasons,” Loyd said. “I was all about white water rafting — that’s what spoke to me — but that is not the main takeaway from my experience in the program.”
Loyd graduated from the University of Oregon in 2012 with degrees in political science and Spanish. He is now a director for Walking Tree Travel, a Denver-based travel organization dedicated to authentic cultural immersion for young adults. After seeing the presentation in his high school Spanish class 10 years ago, Loyd embarked on Walking Tree Travel’s second-ever immersion experience.
From Argentina to Morocco, Walking Tree Travel opens the door to numerous travel destinations around the world while providing a secure platform for young adults to embark on an adventure abroad. Each excursion — whether it’s an organized class trip or individual enrollment — involves a team of experienced leaders who are familiar with the culture and language of the corresponding destination.
“You have this following of energy and positivity with you, which is really cool and powerful,” Loyd said. “That’s the transformative nature that these programs provide.”

Each retreat varies in length, with some as short as 10 days and others as long as one month. Trip details — such as lodging and meals — are mostly pre-planned with free time allocated for daily excursions such as surfing, ziplining or white water rafting.
But Walking Tree Travel also makes a point to directly engage in the communities they visit, whether that means working with elephants in Thailand or building community gardens in Costa Rica. “The volunteer work that we can contribute is really a collaboration between us and these community members,” Loyd said. “That’s the goal: to connect.”  
Although Walking Tree Travel primarily works with high school students, the organization offers opportunities to college students and graduates through junior leader positions. While a junior leader role does entail some leadership responsibility, second-language skills or prior experience with the company is not required: The position is designed to be just as immersive and exploratory as regular enrollment. 
“With any destination, with any focus, we are always looking for competent, fun, well-traveled individuals,” Loyd said. “The idea is to continue to create these travelers and conjoin this network of like-minded people.”
Walking Tree Travel was established in 2005 by high school friends Paul Laurie, Luke Mueller and Gabriel Duncan. After traveling individually for a few years after college, the three came together to unite their experiences and their goals.
“We were discovering that (a) we all wanted to travel, and (b) when we were traveling, we didn’t meet that many Americans on the road,” Laurie said. “If we did meet them, we didn’t think they were traveling in ways that were particularly beneficial to themselves or the communities they were visiting.”
The organization’s mission is “to inspire students to become global citizens by taking an active interest in the world around them.” To accomplish this goal, Walking Tree Travel offers symbiotic cultural immersion, leadership activities and conservation programs.
“Our main goal is cultural engagement, and that’s done through a lot of different lenses,” Laurie said. “It’s a really valuable tool for people to learn about the international arena.”

Recently, Walking Tree Travel partnered with the Smithsonian Institution, offering even more opportunities to high school students through Smithsonian Student Adventures.
“The collaboration is really exciting because it basically means there’s more structure behind us,” Laurie said. “We will be able to infuse our program with the expertise and knowledge of different places on the ground, and collaborate in some really meaningful ways.”
Though the partnership is exclusively designed for high school students, the two organizations share the same values, and Walking Tree Travel continues to cater to a wider audience.
“Students can really take out of this as much as they want to. We give them the tools and resources to delve as deep into this as they like,” Will Loyd said. “The idea of going on trips is valuable in and of itself, but going into a program where you’re a traveler and not a tourist — that I think is where the value is really realized.”