AirGuides Trips Created By Storytellers, So Let's Go! with Tony Carne | TNN80

Telling stories is one of humankind’s abiding, defining impulses. So when you become a travel storyteller, you’re tapping into one of the deepest and richest veins of the human experience. Truly great stories succeed in extracting meaning from the everyday. They are also the record of two corresponding journeys: a journey in the outer world and a journey in the inner world. And the travel writer’s story is built upon the interplay between these worlds and journeys.

Tony Carne, Chief Operating Officer of Airguides, takes us to another mesmerizing episode of The New Nomad with Allen Koski. They talked about understated yet spectacular places all over the world and the people they meet on their travels. Our two nomads regaled the audience with their experiences and challenges they encountered. The ultimate potential of great travel storytelling and the sacred mission we storytellers share is to make us all think about how big the world is and to give us all a kind of hope. So tune in to this week’s episode and prepare to be intrigued by the place we call home: Earth.

TIMESTAMPS:

[1:28] Travel bridges the generation gap

[8:30] How Airguides support artists

[11:05] Travel is a learning experience

[18:58] Bonding over beer

[21:27] Food is the universal comforter

[31:07] Swimming with whales: an experience of a lifetime

GUEST BIO:

Tony Carne is a serial entrepreneur/Intrapreneur within the travel and food sectors. He is the Chief Operating Officer of Airguides and a C-level tourism executive with a passion for innovation that drives all-win outcomes for all stakeholders, including (and especially) the locals where tourism takes place.

Once a proud employee of a BCorp. Member of the Intrepid Hall of Fame (1 of only 11 across a 30+ year history). Public speaker and thought leader in the field of Tour Operators, Tours and Activities, and Sustainable Travel.

LINKS:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-carne-b8851b6/?originalSubdomain=au

Airguides: https://www.airguides.com/

Follow Insured Nomads at:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insurednomads/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@insurednomads

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0nVZ-b1GGWpR3BBdFPrnDA

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/insurednomads/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/insurednomads

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/InsuredNomadsOfficial/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/insurednomads

www.insurednomads.com

Transcript

Tony

Welcome, and thanks for joining us at The New Nomad Podcast, the podcast that tries to give you the confidence, the intelligence, the information that you need to visit the world in a safe and exciting way. Today I have a great guest, Tony Carne of A- Air Guides is joining me. Tony has been many places. He's, he's, we were having a great conversation before the podcast started about many of the different places. He's been also worked with world class storytellers, great content. So we're gonna have a free wheeling conversation. Tony, thank you for joining me today. I know that you're in Melbourne, we were talking a little bit of tennis beforehand. But before we get into that, tell people a little bit about your travels, because you've you've been traveling your whole life and this is an inspiration to our listeners.

Tony

Brilliant. Yeah. Great to be with you, Allen. And thanks everyone else for joining along and listening in. Yeah, as you said, yeah. Like, I'm not a new nomad, old nomad, for sure. I've been traveling, you know, since I left high school, essentially. You know, I University dropout, which is probably not the the thing that I'm most proud of. But what I did discover early enough in my life was that the passion I had, the thing that motivated me most was travel and experiencing the world. And so as soon as I could, I left Australia, and spent essentially my entire 20s working and traveling, did a lot of that, out in the UK lived out there for four years, and traveled through Central America for a year on the way home from the UK. And then when I got back to Australia traveled around Australia for close on 18 months, selling hammocks, funnily enough that I picked up after adding the ad in the in the Central America. But essentially, my life was all about get any job didn't really matter what the job was, it was generally in hospitality, and which was a great breeding ground. Yeah, hospitality and tourism. Tourism should all be about being hospitable to your guests, etc. So it was a great breeding ground for that. And I'd worked those jobs for a year and have a pretty low key life for that year, and then save as much money as I can and, and head off again, you know, and I just did that year on year out right through to my early 30s. And I was actually when I was traveling around Australia has had a combi van on route of a cliche, really that and I was picking up backpackers to, you know, share the experience with share the cost and whatever. And I was actually born in a place called Alice Springs, which is, if you don't know, right in the very center of Australia, you know, as close to the middle of nowhere as you could possibly get. And I was driving into that town and went to visit some old family friends of mine. They said, What are you up to? And I told them the I'm driving around, picking up backpackers and having great time, they said, Well, it's a job here. And so is it. Yeah, like you should go over and see this crew called Adventure Tours Australia. They take backpackers out to Ayers Rock Uluru as we know it, and out into the Outback on camping adventures. So I took their advice and did that and finally found myself a job in travel having been traveling for so long, which I guess was maybe inevitable, but also, you know, just one of those sliding door moments that was a stroke of luck that really changed my life from then on.

Tony

are you unique in the Australian mindset, because when I've traveled, I've always run into Australians, they're always wonderful to travel with, they're really engaging. I also enjoy beer. So I usually have something in common with them. Do the most Australians take time to travel like this are unique because I run into great people all over the place, I'm not quite sure if that's unique or not?

Tony

So my, in my generation, it definitely wasn't, you know, I would say probably half of my peer group went somewhere. And because we're a long way away, and we have relationships, being part of the Commonwealth, for example, where we have an opportunity when we're under 31, to go and work in London, lots of people take that opportunity. And the reason is not so much to live in the UK, per se but it's the fact that the UK is so close to Europe and you go over and spent a year a lot of people do a Post University kind of their first job out of university that I'll go over and, and get a job at kind of a grounding job in their field and, but take that year and spend those weekends you know, jumping on a train and heading over to Paris or, you know, flying over Turkey for four days or whatever it happens to be to experience as much as the world as I can. But also I know there's a whole other demographic that go to the States. Not so easy to work. And they probably do that more as a as a leisure thing. But yeah, people like I said, they'll sign up basically their whole or university career or their early career and then say, or I'm going to take all this money and head off for a year and see where it takes me. That's quite a common experience. These days, I'm not 100% Sure, like a lot of those things exist. And yeah, but we'll see what happens, you know, the world's changing, which is kind of what the New Nomad is all about. And what I see the future being, you know, I've got an 11 year old daughter, I'm so excited for her, you know, for someone like me, not that I had many career aspirations when I was young, but if I did, I would have had to make that choice between Korea or travel. And the future, you know, my daughter's future is you I have to make that choice. She can choose her career, and go travel and live where she wants to have experiences with other cultures, but still build her career. Yeah, and do those things asymmetrically without having to compromise, which is it's so exciting. It's so exciting for that, that new generation coming through.

Tony

Well, I think you and I are pretty much the same generation. I mean, I remember those days of traveling when you didn't have a phone, you really didn't have a security blanket, you didn't have a translation tool. You had traveler's checks. And you just, you know, you hope to get through, I completely agree with you. I think one of the things that's come through loud and clear, right is technology has really given us a great opportunity to experience travel differently. And what I thought was really cool about Air Guides, that also now we have an opportunity to have a more, I would say sustainable and focused and unique travel experience. So I'd love to hear about your ideas. I'm certainly your previous travel has helped inform you on air guides and what you're working on today.

Tony

100% 100%. It has and look Air Guides was founded back in 2017. By a great couple, Vivian Paul, very similar to me, they just love their travel. They get out there and do it type people, but you know that they engaged in their travels around 2017-2016 with a lot of people that were, I guess, the original digital nomads, and these were creative people. So you know, writers, photographers, videographers, these type of people. And I guess what I realized was that these people had spent a lot of time developing their skills, but they weren't being viewed as professionals, when they went to offer their work to others. And Paul, and Vivi thought that wasn't fair. And so they wanted to create a platform to change that mindset. So that, that those that wanted to engage in the travel industry, which requires, it requires great imagery to sell it. It requires engaging video, and it requires great stories, to operate and to and to get customers. So why isn't that appreciated in the industry, and they wanted to change that. So they created a platform where they would create trips based on the experiences of what we call storytellers. And that's now branched out into chefs and professional athletes and, and all sorts of people that you know, have a connection with another place through their, through their work or their skills, or whatever, and have something to offer and teach people who want to get involved in passion travel. So I mean, the original idea of Air Guide is all about, you know, helping digital nomads to make a full time professional career out of the travel industry. And like to give you an example that, you know, I guess we're really proud of is we work with some incredible people that are just amazing photographers and their first and foremost artists, I guess. And like any artists, they're not likely to struggle for them. But yeah, working with us got a great guy by the name of Mark Fritz who, who works with us and working with us doing four tours with us a year, and bringing his audience along on those tours, earns him enough money for him to be able to spend the rest of the year concentrating on his art, you know, and to us that's like just the ultimate in success, you know, he gets paid a professional wage for the quality of work that he does. And it allows him to continue to, to work on his art and that's what we're all about, essentially. He's got a massive following. People want to come and travel with him. People don't learn from his skills in photography, so he's adding benefit to the travelers and we and he gets to go to fantastic places to do that. So we do in places like the the Great Barrier Reef here in Australia, we can just see, you know, basically the ultimate under underwater marine life and that's what he brings to those customers. So yeah, it's it's super exciting. And that's what we're all about facilitating digital storytellers to tell their stories and make an earn out of it.

Tony

it. The curated travel, it makes it makes so much sense. Because first off, you really get to the meat of the matter. What I also think is great is if we can get more people moving away from buying each other, like gifts that are like physical nature, like, here's your new suit, or here's, you know, something and add more of these experiences, right, I think we probably will have a better world. And I think you've had some thoughts on how travel leads to a greater understanding and empathy. I'd love your perspective on. I mean, somebody has been traveling a long time. I find if I had a trillion dollars, I know I would need a ton of money for this. I would love to be able to say to everybody, every person on the planet has to travel, at least for three months to a different country. Just to see humanity, and the things can often be done a different way and still be okay.

Tony

For sure, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Like it get get out of your comfort zone, like travel should be a growth thing. It should be a learning thing. Yeah, one of the first jobs I had in travel, I joined a business called Intrepid Travel. And to be fair, I didn't know a lot about them when I when I first joined. But I'd been doing the tour guiding work out in Central Australia and worked my way through that and didn't want to go back there again. And so, you know, I had this opportunity to do something with Intrepid and I did went through their training, which is quite rigorous, because you're leading groups of your, your fellow citizens out in potentially iffy places. And so they want to make sure that you're you're across the details of safety and security and that you're, you're a good person in yourself. And I just come back from South America, and I looked on their website and they had South America on that website. I'm just gonna turn around. Y'all. Wait, the Spanish was Florida. This is gonna be great. But did they did the training and, and everything and they said, Yep, we'd love to have you on board. And I'm like, beautiful. Okay. Well, we have to Quito Caracas, Buenos Aires, I'm ready. Let's go. And they said, You're off to Cairo. And I? Cairo. Okay. Cairo, in Egypt, Cairo. So I had been to Egypt probably wasn't the number one in my favorite travel experiences. But I was so invested in his process. By that point, I'm like, Sure, let's go. And for me, going out to Egypt, again, sliding doors moment, or a twist of luck, or whatever you want to call it was just an incredible and life changing experience for me. And, you know, we're talking 2002 hours out there. You know, the, I guess the sentiment towards the Muslim world wasn't overly great, you know, post 911, and all those kinds of hangovers. They were happening. And my job was to get people to love Egypt. So I would have groups of foreigners 12 People arrive, you know, with all their ingrained biases and their their natural reservations and their, you know, somewhat fear of what might be ahead. And I had 15 days to turn them around the absolute passionate advocates of the people in this place. And so that's what I saw my, my job as and, you know, the beauty of the way that Intrepid Travel works is, of course, we see the sights, yeah, but we do spend a lot of time meeting people and my job out there was the field facilitate those relationships, those conversations, and, you know, we'd go into people's houses and have meals, we'd stay over at locals houses, we, you know, we kind of tried to build that, you know, that experience you might have out backpacking as best we could in a small group. And, you know, my favorite experiences are always when guests going, we're going we love Egypt, you know, we were so happy we came on this trip. And yeah, that would have got the email addresses back in the day if you know, some of the locals and they're still conversing to this day. And I guess one kind of example that really bears it out, we used to go out to a place called Sibo, which is out in the western desert out near the Libyan border. I called time travel, like you're gonna see where you are literally landing 100 years ago. Yeah, the main mode of transport is donkey carts. It's quite a conservative place. The women are covered as they they traveled the streets, etc. And we go, as I said, to someone's house for dinner. And, and the women would come in and serve the entire group, you know, in a room, the men would eat this, but the women wouldn't. And that's just the way it was. But after dinner, the women were from our group were invited out to the kitchen to do the dishes. And, like, three hours of non stop laughter going from that back to General I'm jealous because I wasn't there. I didn't get to experience it. I wasn't already out there. But talking to the ladies afterwards. They say, you know Like saying the ladies come in kind of all covered and what have been dropped the food down when I went out the kitchen, there's all these beautiful ladies uncovered. Just having good time. Yeah, you know, and they spent three hours out there doing the dishes, just having an absolute ball with each other, even though they couldn't really communicate from a language point of view. You know, they just got through and they didn't know, our group, ladies didn't want to leave. And on Tuesday, I'm sure when people ask those ladies about their travel experiences, that's the travel experience that I talked about going out into the kitchen to do the dishes with another bunch of ladies and to me that's, that's how that's the transformational power of travel. That's what it's all about.

Tony

It really resonates with me. Because the places that I've been most uncomfortable about going to I've had the greatest experiences. And you mentioned Egypt. I mean, I've been to Egypt had a great experience. But I remember the time I went to Jordan and ambled outside of my hotel, outside of the bubble, so to speak, to go get a haircut. And here I am in the middle of Amman, guy with a straight edge razor, cut my hair. We can't i can't speak Arabic, he can't speak English. We're pointing you know, I'm getting my getting that that thick coffee. And yeah, it was one of the best haircuts I had. And he kept back to the hotel. And one of my co travelers who was afraid to go sees my haircut is like, That's tremendous. Can you bring me there? And so I took them back. And it was such to the barber, it was such a they almost had tears in their eyes that I felt enough of the haircut that I paid him that I love the haircut so much my friend did he wanted to come back. And well, yeah, well, they were kind of my friend was getting haircut was guy goes to the back room, comes out with a book of American movie stars in the book must been from the 50s in the 60s, because kind of like history ended at Humphrey Bogart and Rock Hudson. He's just pointing, saying good, you know, I mean, and it's those type of real experiences right, Tony, that you get into, and I'd love you to comment on, you know, the places that maybe you were the most uncomfortable. But you had a great experience. I mean, obviously you told but Egypt, but I'd love to hear some of your your tales on that.

Tony

For sure. Like yeah, I guess my formative trip was through Central America. And, you know, you talked earlier about, you know, the transformation in technology and how information just at our fingertips, like when I went I had some mates who went the year before. And I tore a bit of paper out of foolscap book, and I said just Can you write me down some things that I think I should check out when I'm down there. They wrote three things on this bit of paper that was my research into arriving into into Mexico and I left England in January, it was freezing cold. We arrived in Mexico City, the weather was beautiful. We had no idea we didn't speak Spanish. Well, they were bloody hopeless, really, but and within a couple of days were like, well, let's just get to the beach. And we're like, well, what's the beach? And I said, Well, I don't remember back in you know, when I was about seven or eight, I used to watch a show called The Love Boat. Yeah, and I used to always, always finish in Acapulco. Yes. Where's Acapulco, let's go there. We headed out to Acapulco a quarter price out there and look within you know, we paid for our first night of accommodation in a hotel and and then went down to the beach and got some beers out of the you know, the convenience store and sat on the beach and a bunch of Mexican guys came down to us and like look pretty sketchy. A bunch of cops basically that came and sat next to us and and we had beers and they had beers and like having trouble opening their beers and again, you know, these these kind of pivotal moments in your life. The door the key was attached to a bottle opener for our hotel. So we just opened up their beers for them and and and that was it, you know, like suddenly we're best mates. During the conversation these guys said to us, you know, we're saying stuff he said how much they said I can't go it was $30 and they said oh, there's an apartment next to us that's available for $50 a month we're like $50 Wow let's go up and look and literally we moved in the next day and lived in this apartment block with all these guys for we lived in this apartment with all these guys but for the next month and it actually changed the way we travel so from then on we just all we knew we could go places and rent a house for a month and to me that's like you said earlier it's about that kind of immersion into into places so we just rent a place for a month was always $50 Yeah, aeons before Airbnb etc. and really got to know the community and embed ourselves in them. And by the end of that we could speak Spanish and then thank God.

Tony

it's, you know, it's classic is, I mean, those are the types of experiences when you get out of the bubble, you know, with us, we always say, yeah, let's get out of the bubble, you really get an understanding that and also, the other thing we try to do is, you know, I always assume positive intent. Even if it's a scary looking group, I'm going to assume positive intent until that moment that I might have to run for it. Which doesn't happen, which doesn't happen very often, right? I mean, most of the time, people are very good thing. And I think the the amount of empathy that grows you, you in Egypt, you had the same epiphany many of us are now having is that we should be eating less meat, we should be eating more vegetables, related foods. I'd love you to share with our audience, your thoughts on that, as many of our people are very much into health, and sustainable, sustaining the environment, etc. I couldn't agree with you more, I'd love you to share. 

Tony

For sure, yeah. So it's kind of a multi faceted story, I guess, my my wife is a lifelong vegetarian. So she's kind of really the was the pinnacle, but behind my awareness of it, and in Egypt is not an Egypt is not a vegetarian country. It's a country where people don't have a lot of money. And therefore, the daily staples of what you eat in Egypt are all vegetarian. So you know, falafel, or deep fried cauliflower, or lentil soup, or whatever it happens to be Kashri is a big kind of pasta dish that they have over there. These are all the staples of daily life, and they're all vegetarian, now, the majority of the population will eat meat, but they'll do it during the feast periods. So the end of Ramadan, and that kind of stuff, is when is when you eat your meat. So what they've developed is this culture of just incredibly tasty, delicious, more beautiful food. And, you know, I've worked for 17 years for Intrepid doing a few different things there. And then obviously, the pandemic came along, and travel stopped. And, you know, I took that opportunity to basically take a redundancy and so I had some money. And what I really wanted to do next in my career was do something that was positive for the environment. As I said before, I've got an 11 year old daughter, you know, the world's in a bit of a mess at the moment, you know, and when she's kind of, you know, starts questioning, what did you actually do to help through through those tough times when the, when the world was in a bit of a crisis? I want everyone to have a positive answer. So I took my thunder team money, and I started an Egyptian street food shop 250 metres from where I'm sitting now, to give the community here, where I live in a suburb of Melbourne, the opportunity for when they're making a takeaway choice to come and have a fully vegetarian takeaway choice, but not one that you need to compromise on one that was delicious and beautiful and tasty, and that you want to come back to over and over again. So yeah, that was kind of my motivation for starting that business. And kind of going back to hospitality where I started in the beginning. Yeah, and just just wanted to, you know, do something that followed a passion that was tangentially related to travel that, you know, I also have a love of food and cooking. And I wanted to scratch that itch. So you know, I got into it. Absolutely and no regrets there

Allen

isn't amazing. You know, one of the things about travel, we always talk about meeting interesting people, but interesting foods. It's just one of the great even the basics. I mean, I think about you mentioned Egypt earlier, I remember when I was in Egypt, I just the hummus was not like the hummus I get here in Delaware. You know, are you are you going to go to Italy and the mozzarella is not like the mozzarella you get here and you know, it's it's it's really an incredible experience, isn't it some of the different foods you come across and you see how people use food differently.

Tony

And that's, that's part of it. Like it's a big part of you know, that learning that things are done differently in different places and, and you have an opportunity to do something with that knowledge, you know, you might come to back to your hometown, and then go search out a little deli, you know, that's run by an Italian family that, you know, has made the effort to either recreate, you know, that mozzarella locally or imported from Italy itself or whatever. You know, that's how people change their their habits and you know, that that knowledge transfer, you know, help support those small businesses and you know, everything about it is good and particularly your empathy and understanding that you develop by, you know, engaging with other people who are, who are different from you, and everybody's got something to teach somebody else, you know, you just got to be open to learning it. And that's the way I've always looked at life. And, you know, I'm always there, waiting to see what it is that, you know, the person that I'm meeting next has to has to teach me, and hopefully, you know, they're getting something from me as well. We both walk away when it's,

Allen

well, it makes me really think of, I went to Vietnam a couple of years back and had Fah I never even knew what it was. And now I'm back in Delaware, and a cold day, you know, let's find that Vietnamese restaurant and you have a great understanding for me. It also takes you back to that trip, which is, which is wonderful. Which leads me to a time in our podcast that we ask people who is traveled as you as learned as you have things is to share maybe an overlooked person place experience, that that some of our intrepid travelers out there, even less intrepid travelers may overlook? So I would love to get, you know, some of your ideas on overlooked.

Tony

To show up, yeah, look, I guess the wind into the hole, remote experience, there's a, there's a guy called Sam Keller, who's doing an amazing thing called Working Without Borders. So he's deep into the remote scene. And as I said, I've you know, I'm a father of an 11 year old and what Sam's doing is, he's creating experiences that help families, trial remote living, you know, so essentially, he'll build an experience that is suitable both from a working environment, great internet, proper place to work for the day, but also experiences for your kids who are essentially taken out of school to, to go and have this month that so that they are continuing to learn, but learn in a different way than they would if they were just sitting in their class at school, and what the experience does is gives those families an opportunity to understand is this the life for them, you know, they might weighing out, you know, should we just rent the house out and hit the road? You know, which is a scary thing to do. Like, even you know, I'm well traveled, but I have that fear for myself, and you know, my daughter's education and that kind of stuff, you it's normal and natural to have those. And, you know, what Sam does is help people to go and try our, you know, and do it in a safe way. And you can go away and come back and evaluate that month and decide, yeah, that's the life for us. The kids are thriving, they enjoyed it, we understand they didn't go backwards in their education, we had a good time, that works happy. Let's continue doing that. Or it didn't work. And you know, you haven't given up your house for a year and got nowhere to live in and whatever. So I highly recommend people go and check out Working Without Borders with with Sam Keller, I think he's doing some some great work. He's working with some other very intelligent people. Guy called Paul Bennett. And he's also from the travel world. He's sailing around the world, on his on his boat at the moment. And the problem he had was education with his kids. So he's using all his smarts and, and in technological knowledge to to build a process that helps with remote learning, etc. So yeah, there's a couple of people go and check out they're doing incredible things. And they're in the right spot at the right time. Yeah, the world is definitely moving this way. And good luck to them, because they're good people as well

Tony

as the places you've traveled to. Do you have an overlooked travel location that you've been to, that people should look into? I'm sure you have a few. Okay,

Tony

last one. Yeah, sure. The last one I went to blew my mind, actually. So that was a long time going. They've traveled through Central America. And I've been to South America previously, for a year or so. But I've never made it to Ecuador. And of course, everyone knows Galapagos, you know, it doesn't need the need much introduction. But, you know, mainland Ecuador in Quito in particular. You know, really, I had such a good time. I don't know whether it was, you know, the the two year layoff of not being able to travel anywhere, or for me, it was actually three years of not really getting out of the country and just being so excited to be back out there. But I don't think so. I think it's, you know, is genuinely, just an amazing city where, you know, it had a little bit of edge to it, but not, not one, like nothing scary. Nothing. Nobody ever approached me in any way that was anything but friendly. That also had some great things that I wasn't expecting. I had absolutely thriving craft beer scene with some of the best micro breweries that would be you know, that wouldn't be at a place in Melbourne or, or a city in the states doing fantastic beingvery cool places. Yeah, had great, great restaurants. And I think if I was to pick up and go somewhere as a remote worker, it would be very, very high on my list, there's a place to hang out because the, the weather's the same temperature every day. So you know you're in for it's in the mountains in a beautiful valley. It's got everything you need. Go check it out if you've got the opportunity.

Tony

So we're gonna have this in our liner notes, AirGuides.com, how can people find you any more information about Air Guides that will share because I know our listeners are always looking for interesting adventures, and adventure, train, travel, experience that sustainable with folks that really have a great understanding things, share how people can can take advantage of what you're offering, and also catch up with you in which I did on LinkedIn, by the way, which is always a great way to show people.

Tony

Totally, always happy to make connections on LinkedIn. If you are a storyteller with a with a with a reasonable sized audience, please get in contact, we'd love to chat to you about how potentially we could connect you to the travel industry and help you earn a living out of it. Definitely interested in hearing from people from that perspective. And for those that just want to have a look at some, we create our products based on our storytellers experiences. So you know, some of the stuff we've got up there at the moment is swimming with humpback whales, seven days, you everyday you go out on a boat, there's a place in Tonga, where the humpbacks go and do their calfing. So they've got their babies with them, and they just basically hang out in this bay for a number of months. They're incredibly curious animals. And so they come to you essentially, and there's just at the moment, I haven't seen people for three years, and there's just, you know, there's hundreds of them. And you go out there on that particular experience with a underwater photographer who's the best in the business. So if that's something you're interested in, taking amazing photography, but having just the most incredible wildlife experience and supporting a country that not only had COVID laden, under underwater volcano erupt on them, which basically decimated their country, from a tourism point of view, they've been down and out for a long time. And we're very careful with Air Guides to ensure that the money you spend with us, you know, the absolute majority of it ends back with the local people who need the support. So, but we've got lots of different experiences there. You know, if you're interested in food, we work with great chefs on trips around the world, where they're imparting their knowledge, and skills and what have you, as part of the part of the experience, so there's just a much deeper and richer experience than just kind of wandering yourself around by yourself or what the internet can tell you that check us out AirGuides.com loved comm Have you had trouble with this, or if you'd like to work with us, reach out to me happy to chat too. 

Allen

Perfect, perfect. Well, I appreciate you, Tony, you know, sharing with us appreciate you traveling like this, you know, the the empathetic the, the kind of getting out of the bubble. This is this is what we're all about. And, you know, we'll put it this way. You're an early adopter in that and people are catching up to that. Some of the travel stories that we shared today. So to our audience, we really appreciate you listening to The New Nomad today. The way people find this podcast typically is word of mouth. So please, if you enjoy this, please pass along The New Nomad podcast or folks learned a very great deal today and we hope that we'll continue to share travel stories with you in the future. Thank you, and we appreciate you joining us. We appreciate Tony's time. Have a great trip. Cheers.