The World Nomads Podcast: Holiday Best of Part 1

Speaker 1: Welcome to the World Nomads podcast delivered by World Nomads, the travel, lifestyle, and insurance brand.

Speaker 2: There's something about the islands here that touches peoples' souls.

Speaker 3: Hopefully we're making an impact in the world that people will stop killing and culling sharks.

Speaker 4: It looked like snot and it smelled bad, but don't let that put you off. It was good for you.

Speaker 5: Where else in the world are you going to see the condor three meters right in front of you?

Phil: No, absolutely.

Speaker 5: There, 12k out.

Kim: I'm not sure if I want to see the condor three meters in front of me.

Denise Hardesty: So many things in our society that are throwaway and we see those things on our beaches, on our coastlines.

Kim: Has anybody ever popped themselves?

Speaker 9: And then the Germans come off as cold.

Speaker 10: I think it's important to remember what has happened, but also look forward into the future and be positive about it, and I think that's what Germans are.

Kim: It offers travelers the opportunity to teach English to children and experience the ... Oh, that's going to be on it.

Speaker 11: Speaking of teaching English.

Kim: Yes. I've got to learn to speak it.

Speaker 11: We were all told that you can't take a leak into the river. You can't urinate into the river, because there is a parasite that will swim up your urine stream.

Speaker 10: Yeah, Phil, you-

Kim: An idiot?

Speaker 1: It's not your usual travel podcast. It's everything for the adventurers and the independent traveler.

Phil: And I think it was Minora and [Majora 00:01:30], I think they are, and they are very popular with Italian tourists. But they are not in the Western guidebooks.

Kim: They can't be called that, that's-

Phil: Yeah, yeah. Downstairs stuff.

Kim: They can't-

Phil: No, no. Okay, for the opposite of that. They were beautiful, yeah, yeah.

Madeleine: Yeah, and those-

Phil: I know Kim's lost it. Kim's going all anatomical and she's lost it. Anyway.

Kim: There's no place called that surely?

Madeleine: Yeah, it's Minori and Maiori, yeah. It's M-I-N ... Minori-

Kim: Yeah, but that's not what Phil said.

Madeleine: Oh.

Phil: Okay, all right then.

Kim: All right.

Phil: Maybe-

Kim: Let's get back to was ... What guidebook were we looking at? I absolutely love that. That would have to be one of the all-time greatest bloopers.

Phil: It makes me laugh every time. As I was explaining before it's like you are on it straightaway, and it's that slow realization of what I've actually said for me.

Kim: I'll tell you what, before you even hear from me, my eyes were popping. I could not believe it. And if you don't know what we're getting at, then you haven't listened in your sex ed classes.

Phil: Yeah, that's right.

Kim: Welcome to the best of the World Nomads podcast as we look back at not only 2018, but some of the highlights when we first launched in 2017. That was actually a classic from a chat with Madeline who runs Italy Beyond the Obvious, a travel planning service that is just for Italy. And it was during that podcast we spoke with Elena who ate a sandwich in Italy that made her cry. A little bit like that blooper.

Phil: Yeah.

Elena: Well, the thing about food in Italy is that it's so fresh. And so much of it is local because Italians take this incredible pride in their food. So in Cinque Terre, they have what is traditionally called poor food. They say that it's very like a simple food, but it's just ... I mean, you take a couple ingredients like lemons, basil, potatoes, and some anchovies, and you throw it all in a dish, and it's just exquisite. I mean, these people know what they're doing. And-

Kim: Yeah, it's a real family experience, too, isn't it?

Elena: Yes. Yeah, actually at one of the ... I spent several afternoons in kitchens in Cinque Terre on this trip, and one of the times I was in the kitchen with three generations. So I had a grandmother, a daughter, and her granddaughter all in the kitchen together, and we were cooking, and it was wonderful. It was very Italian to have all of the family there.

Kim: Tell me about pizza. Did they really invent pizza, the Italians?

Elena: I don't actually know the answer to that entirely, but-

Kim: Hang on. Hang on, Elena, Phil will. Phil knows everything.

Elena: Tell me, Phil.

Phil: Yes. The Margherita pizza is very definitely an Italian invention, because it's the colors of the Italian flag-

Kim: Right. Okay.

Phil: ... with the white cheese, the red tomato base, and the green basil leaf or basil leaf as you ... And it was invented as a dish for Queen Margherita, hence it's called Margherita.

Kim: Right. Is there any-

Phil: I'm sorry.

Kim: Is there anything Phil doesn't know?

Phil: I'm sorry.

Elena: I have heard that story, but it's one of those things you have to wonder if it's an Italian myth. But I know that there are, and particularly in Naples, they've come up with a whole definition of what a pizza is, and it's a pretty touchy topic depending on where you go.

Phil: Well, I was there a couple of years ago, and I've got young kids. They would've been five and nine at the time. So it was pasta one day, pizza the next for like two weeks. And with gelato at the end of every one of them, but we were doing a lot of walking, too. And they said the best pizza they have ever had in their lives was in Naples, of course. The home of it.

Kim: Well, of course. Of course. What are some of the rules? I've been told you can't have a cappuccino with a meal.

Elena: Yeah. There are quite a lot of rules, and it takes some time to learn them when it comes to food etiquette in Italy. The cappuccino, for sure, is one. I love a good cappuccino. It's something I definitely picked up in Italy, but you are supposed to have it on its own, perhaps with a croissant or a piece of toast, maybe with Nutella on it, in the morning. But absolutely not with a meal and never after 10:00AM.

Phil: Can I ask one question? You're quite a well-traveled person as well, Elena, so what's your secret to travel? What do you try and do that makes travel the best it can be for you?

Elena: Well, for me, I plan all of my travel around food. Maybe I don't pick the city necessarily based on the food, but when I know where I'm going, I will make an itinerary for my day that is essentially what is going to be the best thing I eat that day. And so I'll pick out, what's the best place that makes bread in this city? And then I will start my day there, and I'll get a good coffee and some good toast, and then it's guaranteed to be a good day.

Kim: In all your travels then, which country or which nationality has the best food?

Elena: I've got to be partial to Italy, of course.

Kim: Correct answer.

Elena: Yeah. I can't even tell you. I spent two weeks in Sicily at one point, which was incredible, and had multiple life-changing experiences when it comes to food. I actually had a sandwich that made me cry tears.

Phil: What?

Elena: Yeah. It was so moving. It was the best thing I've ever eaten, and I had the best pizza of my life in Sicily.

Phil: No, no, no, no. What was in the sandwich? Come on.

Elena: Oh, it was probably like 20 ingredients. It was not a slap-it-together sort of sandwich. It was this wonderful little place down in Syracuse right near the water. And you stand in line, which is the only time you're going to see Italians standing in line for food. Because that's very, I think, a California or American thing generally to think food is worth standing in line for, but this place is worth it.

And you stand in line, and as you're standing there, there's a little counter out front, and there's this little old man standing there. And he's there pretty much every day because I follow them on Instagram, so you're guaranteed to meet him pretty much if you go there. And he's there with his whole family. I met them all. There's mother, grandmother, daughter, husband, children running around, and it's the older man that's making the sandwiches.

He's got this whole selection of ingredients in front of him, and he just pulls everything together. I didn't tell him what I wanted at all. I was like, "You just make your sandwich." It had like six kinds of cheese on it, probably four kinds of meat, a dozen different types of salads and greens, some tomatoes, fresh herbs from the garden nearby. It [crosstalk 00:08:17]-

Phil: I know what you mean. I'm with you on it.

Kim: I cannot believe you cried. That's so good.

Elena: It was embarrassing. I got my sandwich, I took a bite of it, and I had to go sit in a corner far away from the people because I was crying.

Kim: Yum. I know what I feel like for dinner tonight. And you've revealed that you're a huge Italian fan.

Phil: Yep.

Kim: You've eat it a lot at work actually. You get Italian takeaway.

Phil: Yeah. Yeah, I do. There's a good one just around the corner. It's pretty great.

Kim: You can't go past it. Now this next chat was one you were a fan of.

Phil: Yeah, Dr. [Denise Hardesty 00:08:54]. She's the principal research scientist and team leader with CSIRO's Oceans and Atmosphere. Her current research project focuses on plastic pollution and illegal fishing. We spoke to her about the environmental crisis that is the proliferation of single-use plastic after a photo emerged of a tide of plastic floating off Honduras.

Denise Hardesty: It's pretty confronting, I think, to see the amount of plastic in those photos or, it's not just plastic, it's building timbers and all sorts of things that really have been washed out there. It's an astonishing amount from the photographs that I've seen as well.

Phil: Right, and that's partly due to the really bad hurricane season they've had this year. Is that right?

Denise Hardesty: That is my expectation. That seems the most parsimonious explanation. Sorry, I shouldn't say those sorts of things like that.

Phil: No, that's all right. We've got brains, we're okay, we're with you.

Denise Hardesty: No, but I realize I do talk in the geek speak a little bit. Yeah, I mean, my understanding ... The first thing I thought when I looked at the photos that they were shown to me was, "Oh, yeah, well we've just had huge storms come through there. This is clearly a result of those storms washing, destroying buildings, destroying homes, destroying restaurants, and businesses, and everything along the waterfronts in these islands. And that it's washing out to sea and just creating these huge rafts of material floating around out there.

Kim: We've had storms here and just walking to work this morning, and I walk along the beach, there were just pockets of debris. And amongst it are plastic bottles, sunscreen, bottles, knives and forks, plastic knives and forks. What sort of stuff did you see?

Denise Hardesty: Well, we find everything from cigarette butts, and beverage containers, and cans, and broken glass, and things like that. Everything from that to toothbrushes, and cigarette lighters, all sorts of floating things. We've also found, which I find really interesting, we find intact light bulbs.

Phil: What?

Denise Hardesty: In places, yeah, it just [crosstalk 00:10:54]-

Kim: How do they even end up in the ocean?

Phil: Well, I guess, they float when they get thrown away. They go down the water and into the ocean.

Denise Hardesty: Exactly. So those things float as well, and you're going to find those as you were mentioning on your walk along the beach this morning. You're going to find those in those accumulating areas. Those areas that we call sinks that are basically going to respond or absorb all the local trash that gets washed up in there. In those sorts of coves and gully ways that are just going to accumulate all that trash that flows down the rivers, gets out into the coastal margin and washes right up on those beaches.

Phil: But I guess the most worrying part of all that is the stuff that gets called disposable, but isn't. All that plastic stuff, all the bottles, and the throwaway cutlery, and things like that. That's the biggest concern, right?

Denise Hardesty: Well, you know, the proliferation of single-use items in today's culture is a real problem, given waste mismanagement, given actually what the true cost or true value is of these products that we make, use, dispose of. If you watch one of those videos that shows the making of a plastic spoon and how it gets made. The chemicals that are used, and how it's packaged, and then transported, and the miles that it takes to get to a place to end up in a plastic bag in a supermarket so you can buy it for 10¢, as an individual item. Then I think the tagline for one of those videos is, "Is it's really too hard to wash?" That metal piece of cutlery that we use and can reuse. I mean, I actually have cutlery that sits in my bag. I have bamboo stuff that I've had for, I don't know, 15 years or more that I can use and reuse. That works beautifully for me.

I think that when we talk about this single use items of beverage containers and so many things in our society that are throw away and we see those things on our beaches, on our coastlines, along our waterways and rivers, and floating out there in the ocean sometimes.

Kim: It's hard as a traveler though, when you go to countries and you need to watch the water, for instance. So it's very convenient to buy a plastic bottle of water. I guess it then comes down to how responsible you are with that plastic bottle once you're finished with it?

Denise Hardesty: How responsible you are, what you can do around that. In a lot of places they have the large refillable 20 liter vessels that you can use. Sure, many places that we go, if you go to hotels and things like that you're served things in plastic bottles and things. So I suppose you can ask, you can make responsible consumer decisions, and try to make the choices that are in accordance with your values. And you really can do the very best you can to make sure things are disposed of properly and appropriately in places where there isn't clean drinking and where some of those issues are a really significant challenge.

Phil: I think, you know, a lot of people have got the idea about the plastic bottles. I mean, I see lots of people using reusable, refillable drinking bottles, like metal ones or whatever. I figure we need that sort of consciousness to be spread across other things you do. Like you say, you pack your own knife and fork in your bag. I mean, it's not that hard, you can go to the camping store and you get a really lightweight one, can't you?

Denise Hardesty: Yep. Yep, you can. I mean you can get something or you can get something that's durable, even if it is lightweight. And if you don't want to eat off of plastic you can ... I mean, really, does it weigh that much to chuck a metal fork, or a spork, or a spoon in your bag and just use that?

Phil: Spork, spork. You just took me back to my childhood. Thank you very much for that.

Denise Hardesty: Exactly-

Phil: Mum had a really good-

Denise Hardesty: ... well, they make [inaudible 00:14:26] camping shops.

Phil: Mum had a really good set of splayds. Do you remember those?

Kim: No, I don't.

Phil: They were like a little fork with a knife edge on it, awesome.

Kim: Oh yes, yes. I do remember that. Okay, we've come up with some solutions. And that is just us three sitting here having a chat. If the world doesn't band together, what the future of our oceans with this particular problem?

Denise Hardesty: Wow, it's not just going to be our oceans, it's going to be our land, it's going to be our rivers, our streams. It's going to be everywhere, right? With the proliferation of thin, lightweight plastic items that we use and throw away, our land is going to be full of it, our rivers are going to be full of it, our oceans are going to be full of it as well.

Kim: Yeah, we can each do our bit, and I think the message is getting out there. Okay. It's the feasting season, so time for some light relief and a look behind the scenes of making the World Nomads podcast.

TeachPTY is a social enterprise that offers travelers the opportunity to teach English to children and experience the ... Oh, that's going to be on it.

Phil: Speaking of teaching English.

Kim: Yes. I've got to learn to speak it. The ... Oh, no.

Phil: Done it again.

Kim: No, here we go. Third time lucky.

Phil: Well, now it's off the coast of Honduras. Honduras.

Kim: And we are in charge of a global travel podcast?

Phil: There's been an article doing the rounds recently and it's quite shocked quite a lot of people, we told you about it in the beginning. Just off the Honduran island of Roatan, Roatan? Can I just say, I can't wait until we get to Iceland?

Kim: Oh, Iceland is already causing me sleepless nights.

My name is Kim and the man sitting across from me is Phil, who's kept our listeners waiting two weeks for his answer to the travel quiz question, Phil.

Phil: Well, it was just too good, wasn't it? Either that or we're-

Kim: Hopeless.

Phil: ... hopeless something or other. We got a bit carried away. We got to [inaudible 00:16:21] ... Let me turn that off.

Kim: Ingo-

Phil: Do you want me to help you there?

Kim: Yeah, yeah. Would you mind? I've practiced this.

Phil: Ingolfur Bjargmundsson, Ingolfur Bjargmundsson. Ingo, how are you mate?

Kim: Plus we've got Phil's Travel News, Ask Phil, and Phil's Quiz Question.

Speaker 1: And now, Ask Phil.

Kim: That's for Ask Phil.

Phil: Oh. I'm Phil, hang on, hang on. I'm lost.

Kim: Ingolfur Bjargmundsson. Who knows? Speak German.

Phil: Bjargmundsson.

Kim: What is the answer to your quiz question? Yay, we remembered it.

Phil: Hey, I've forgotten.

Kim: If you've forgotten.

Phil: All right, the name Guatemala is thought to be derived from an ancient Mayan language and means "Land of many trees." Bit of a hint there about a place being heavily forested, but how much of Guatemala is forest?

Kim: [Guatafala 00:17:17]?

Phil: Guatafala is morest. I'm doing that little video. How much of ...

Kim: In 20-

Phil: Geez. No, sorry, okay.

Kim: You're an idiot.

Phil: You know what? Stop now, seriously. We're going to have to take that out.

Kim: I know we are.

Phil: We're going to have to take that out.

Kim: Yeah, I know.

Phil: Because you know what, they won't let it go.

Kim: They won't like it, no. I'll cover it up.

Phil: Okay.

As the famous psychologist Frank Smith says-

Kim: He's a psycholinguist.

Phil: Oh, sorry.

Kim: It's fine.

Phil: As the famous psycholinguist, Frank Smith, say, "One language ..."

Kim: You can't even speak [inaudible 00:17:56].

Oh, Phil, how we end up getting a podcast out each week actually astounds me.

Phil: I know. We should have put a collection together of our pronunciations as well.

Kim: Oh, that's one we need to work on. We're shocking at that. Look, we couldn't do it without our World Nomads team, along with the guests that we have and our partners as part of our podcast episodes. But this was a favorite of mine with Ellen Hall, our editorial producer in our North American office. She was on the street with Andrés Brenner in Argentina.

Ellen Hall: So I am here Andrés Brenner and he is our ... I'm going to let you introduce yourself. So-

Andrés Brenner: And hello Ellen, I am Andrés Brenner. I'm 33 years old. I'm from Argentina. I'm a filmmaker and traveler. So basically, what I do is I travel around the world, and I try to look for interesting stories to share with people. Just travel, find stories, film, and then share them with people, mostly through World Nomads.

Ellen Hall: Actually, you were one of our Film Scholarship winners, correct? What year was that?

Andrés Brenner: Yeah, it was in 2013. I applied for the Travel Filmmaking Scholarship. I won, so I went to Mardi Gras, to New Orleans with Brian [Rapsidy 00:19:17]. It was amazing. It was like a big push for me, the World Nomads, for making scholarship, and since then I have been working with World Nomads. Right now I'm shooting micro docs about cultures around the world. So basically what I do is, I travel to different countries, I look for stories there. I film these stories, and then when I come back to Argentina I edit them, and then World Nomads share those stories online.

Ellen Hall: So, you are from Buenos Aires, so you were born here? Is that right?

Andrés Brenner: Yeah, I am from Buenos Aires. I was born here in Palermo, where we are right now. It's a nice neighborhood. Actually, when I was born here, long time ago, it was not ... It has always like a beautiful neighborhood, but it was not as touristic and fancy as it is right now. So right now, I don't live in Palermo anymore. I live a little bit more far away. But I do have Palermo in my heart, you know? Like I used to be ... What today is Palermo Soho, there used to be nothing here, just houses. So most of the shops and restaurants and bars that we see today in Palermo Soho ... Some years ago when I was a kid, there was nothing, only houses. Actually one of my good friends' house, right now is a restaurant here around the corner. So and I was telling him the other day, that this square here, which is like the main area of Palermo Soho is a [Spanish 00:10:58]-

Ellen Hall: Yeah.

Andrés Brenner: [Spanish 00:10:59] square, that one when I was 15 years old, we used to come here and there was nothing. We used to come here with a guitar, to play guitar at nights, to have a drink. But, it was, everything brought by us. There were no bars, nothing.

Ellen Hall: Wow, cause it is really hopping now, it's totally different.

Andrés Brenner: Now is a place where to be, if you go out in Buenos Aires at night, you want to have a drink, or you want to eat something, not everything, but many things happen in Palermo Soho.

Ellen Hall: Yeah, we've been having a great time here. But, there's lots and lots of great neighborhoods in Buenos Aires. Where would you suggest that visitors come if they only have a few days, where can they come and get a really good, authentic Buenos Aires experience?

Andrés Brenner: I think San Telmo, is important to go to San Telmo. It's very nice, it's where you can find more of the traditional culture of Buenos Aires. Like the tango scene. Also for food, there are some street markets during the weekends. That's an interesting place to get to know you, it's like a must, you know? And then other neighborhoods of the city, of course, Palermo.

And then, if you have one spare day, one extra day, I would really do recommend to go to Tigre, it's a city like an hour ride in a train. And then, there you can take a boat, and you can get to visit the thousands of islands that we have here. We have a big river coming down from Brazil and there's a big delta. This delta finishes in the Rio de la Plata, between like the delta. The delta is formed by thousands of islands. There is people living there, like locals, it's very interesting. It's like a completely different experience, but still close to the city. So you can do it in a day tour and it's very nice.

I think Argentina, it's a very interesting country. It is so big that depending on where you go, you get to see so many different things. For example, when you travel to the north of Argentina, the culture is completely different. It feels like, for people who is not from here, from Argentina, maybe they can feel like a different county, because food is different. The people is very nice, I think people is very nice all around the country, but you see a difference. You see a difference. The north I love the Patagonia, Patagonia is amazing. Also, that Patagonia for me, I think it's more about the landscapes. In the north you get landscapes and you get also the culture and the people.

Ellen Hall: I don't want to take up too much more of your time, but do you have anything about culturally that you think people should know before they travel here?

Andrés Brenner: I think people is, people here is very, very open. Buenos Aires is a very cosmopolitan city. There are many people who speak English, so shouldn't be too difficult to travel to Buenos Aires. I can recommend for people who love food to go out. There is kind of two different scenes. There is the typical fancy restaurants, especially in Palermo. It's what we call the Palermo Hollywood style of restaurants. And then you have the traditional restaurants, which we call [bodegónes 00:24:32]. I would definitely recommend travelers to go and try one, two, or three bodegónes. The bodegónes, they are like old buildings, traditional restaurants, maybe they have been there for 50 years or 60, I don't know. You went to a bodegón and you will feel like the walls, they speak. Because, usually, they have pictures, articles from the newspapers, t-shirts from futbol players that are friends of the owners of the restaurants. They will hang there, it's like a living museum, you know?

Ellen Hall: Well, awesome, this is wonderful.

Kim: I want to hear, in 2019, more chats outside with that great kind of ambiance sound, because you really felt like you were there in Argentina, didn't you?

Phil: Yeah, we'll do more of that for sure.

Kim: Yeah, so thanks for that, Ellen. Another of our team we catch up with regularly is Christina Tunnah, the general manager of the Americas.

Phil: Tanzy as we call her, features in our episode on the US, where she told us about artisan America and some interesting cowboy culture. We were lucky enough to have her in this studio at World Nomads headquarters, in Sydney, which was lovely.

Christina T.: Hello.

Phil: Now listen, last time we spoke to you we were talking about loving places to death and you said, "You've got to let go of the bucket list basically, because that's like ... You've got to start looking for things outside of that." And I remember the comment where you actually said, "If you like wine and cheese, then basically any village in France will do you," so you know. But let's talk about the USA. Okay, you've got to tick off those things. You've got to go to New York, it's fantastic. You've got to go to San Francisco. You've got to do those sorts of things.

Kim: Aren't you even planning Disneyland?

Phil: Yeah, because I've got kids, but under protest, all right. Give me a break. Let's talk about where you live for a start. You're in East Bay, San Francisco.

Christina T.: I am, Berkeley.

Phil: Berkeley.

Christina T.: People's Republic.

Phil: Sure, okay. But it's not really on the tourist trail, is it?

Christina T.: No, well, yeah, no, not really. If you read any guidebook on San Francisco very few will tell you to see what's going on in Oakland and Berkeley. But I think more and more if you have a special interest, if you're into food, or if you're into skateboarding, or into hiking, then you'll know that these are the places that you're going to want to go to. So Oakland is on fire. Scads of restaurants opening up, micro breweries, cideries, coffee shops, coffee roasteries, it's fantastic, yeah. It's really great.

Kim: Now touching on that, the microbreweries. And you featured again, well, actually Christina's been on a couple of the podcasts. It was the Christmas episode when you talked about bees in Brooklyn. And we've had a further conversation about this actually, this sort of growing artisan culture in the US.

Christina T.: Yeah, no, it's huge. I think you'd be really hard pushed to go anywhere in the US where there isn't that element where you can source artisan foods, cheeses, wines, liquors, anything like that. The Brooklyn one was the ... Well, there's always the microbreweries, but the beekeepers on the rooftops where in Industrial City, or it's City of Industry. Industry City, ICC, is a little suburb area in Brooklyn where you can go and see all these artisans making the chocolate, or the bees. The bees, the honey is made from different hives that are placed all over Manhattan. Or actually the five boroughs. And they get the combs, and they manufacture the honey, and they sell it in these sort of test tube things-

Kim: Wow, cool.

Christina T.: ... and every batch is going to be different, because, of course, bees are spitting out what they're taking in. And sometimes what they're taking in could be like really odd red colored things and they had this one honey one year where it was bright red and they couldn't figure out why the honey was red. And it was because right next to the beehive building was a maraschino factory and so the bees were-

Kim: Cherries.

Christina T.: ... hanging out by the sweet stuff outside the factory and then, of course, out they spit some red stuff.

Phil: Yeah, I mean the big centers are San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York. Give me something California-wise. What else have we got there?

Christina T.: Well actually some really cute agricultural ... People don't think about this with Californians, but there's a lot of cowboy culture. So you go further up north, there'd be a lot of outposts that are very much they're driving ... They're cattle ranchers, they're driving the herds through the great expanses of northern California and, of course, that leads into Nevada. And every year, in January, is the cowboy gathering and it's ... The official name I'm butchering, but it's the week where cowboys from all over the country come and-

Phil: Is it the broke-

Christina T.: ... they do country-

Phil: ... the Brokeback weekend?

Christina T.: It's the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering and it takes place in Elko, Nevada. It's poetry, but it's also music, seminars, and workshops. And you can go and learn how to make cowboy hats. You can learn how to do rawhide braiding. You can learn how to fix your spurs. It's just amazing. It's a gem in the calendar for visiting California and incorporating Nevada and a bit of that Americana.

Kim: But cowboys and poetry?

Christina T.: Yes, because they have a lot of spare time. They spend all their time out, as Phil clearly knows from his single source of one film, that they spend a lot of time out on the range. And so they entertain themselves around the campfire with stories, and they create poetry, and they have a lot of time to reflect when it's off-season. So when it's winter there-

Phil: Cool.

Christina T.: ... that's the time that they're not out grazing and running their herds and so it's a really, really strong tradition and it's just a magical, magical gem.

So when people are thinking about coming to San Francisco, don't just come in the summer when it's actually really cold. Maybe come in the winter and do a bit of skiing in Tahoe. Go to the Elko, the Cowboy Gathering and it's really a fantastic trip just therein. Northern California, another great example, is there's a whole volcano trail. Volcanoes. California. Who knew? Exactly.

Kim: Yeah, my eyes have-

Christina T.: Exactly.

Kim: ... my eyes have popped.

Christina T.: Right? So it's, again, I can't emphasize enough, get off that beaten path. And while I agree there are some amazing things to see in these iconic places, but please go to northern California and hop in a car and take that little right turn off of Weed, which is ironic because now it's legal. But Weed, California.

Kim: Oh, that's right, it is too.

Christina T.: And all of that road going up through Klamath Falls, up through Bend, Oregon, over and up into the state of Washington and then you cut back into Seattle, is ringed by volcanoes. And even in the middle of summer they still have snow cap on. It's just stunning, stunning stuff and nary a tourist bus will you find there.

Kim: Before we let you go, this is your opportunity to spruik those places. Is there anything else on your list there that you have in front of you that you'd like to share?

Christina T.: Well, I just, you know, there's just so many different things around. It depends what you like. If you're into a bit of Americana, then I am a big fan of the Sturgis motorcycle gathering in South Dakota, which happens every year. And it's where all the motorbikers come, and it's they're driving Harleys and Indians and all kinds of imports. That's a cultural event that you could incorporate with visiting Devil's Tower, Devil's Monument, Mount Rushmore. So there's a lot of things that you can cluster together. The Harley Museum is in Milwaukee, so you can really combine great stuff in little pockets of ... I mean, the Fermentation Festival. There's great stuff that you can do there.

There's Vermont and New England. I'm a big fan of music as a motivator to travel and a great one to consider is Galax, Virginia, which is the Old Fiddlers Convention.

Kim: The Old Fiddlers Convention?

Christina T.: The Old Fiddlers Convention, and it's again, a week worth of people doing a competition for money. And they're doing it on playing things like the dobro, and mandolin-

Phil: Wow.

Christina T.: ... and fiddles and they have flat shoe dancing. And it's outdoor and you can camp, or you can stay in one of the nearby hotels. But it's out in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains and it's just Americana.

Kim: Sounds cool.

Christina T.: And it's great. And no one goes there but real people.

Kim: Real people. Real people.

Speaker 11: Real people.

Kim: That's, that's ... We're real people, aren't we Phil?

Phil: We're real people, yes. I'm an old fiddler myself.

Kim: Oh, geez.

Christina T.: Verb more than noun.

Kim: Phil, Phil, Phil.

Phil: Hey, it's awesome to see you down here in World Nomads' headquarters and great to have you on the show again.

Christina T.: Thanks for having me.

Kim: If you have an idea for a guest, please email podcast@worldnomads.com.

Phil: Yeah, great. You can get us by subscribing on iTunes or download the Google Play app, and you can also yell out to Alexa and Google Home to play the World Nomads podcast and there it'll be straightaway for you.

Kim: Yeah. We'll return in 2019 with more fabulous destinations and amazing nomads, but for now it's merry Christmas from the World Nomads team.

Phil: Happy Holidays.

Speaker 1: The World Nomads podcast, explore your boundaries.