Seven continents, traveling overland, no jet planes. Chip Walter, esteemed science journalist and author, Emmy Award-winning NatGeo filmmaker and former CNN bureau chief, celebrates the highs (Antarctica), the lows (peril in Peru) and lessons learned after four years on the road alongside his wife, Cyndy, their overland journey chronicled in their amazing Vagabond Adventure blog.
Chip Walter, celebrated science journalist and author, National Geographic documentary filmmaker and former CNN bureau chief, embarked on an awe-inspiring journey with his wife, Cyndy, crafting a once-in-a-lifetime global expedition amid the turbulence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 720 days, they achieved the extraordinary feat of traveling around the world sans jets, spanning 125,000 miles across six continents and 41 countries through a medley of transportation modes, including buses, ferries and even camels. Chip shares tales from his adventurous childhood in Pittsburgh, where his curiosity and love for exploration first took root, and how these passions eventually led him to a career in journalism.
Selling their home to embrace a nomadic lifestyle, Chip and Cyndy’s odyssey began in Newfoundland and took them through diverse landscapes, from the American West to Baja, to Santa’s Workshop in Finland and the deserts of Morocco, to Egypt, South America and on to Antarctica. What began as a fluke is now a comprehensive chronicle in 37 journals and a blog, Vagabond Adventure (vagabond-adventure.com), filled with videos, photos, postcards and near-daily posts. These experiences serve not just as travel logs but as reflections on the pressing issues of our time, such as climate change. A firm believer in the power of storytelling, Chip brings to light the urgency for advocacy and action.
Travel, in its purest form, serves as a transformative force, a theme Chip passionately elaborates. Immersing themselves in varied cultures and societies over two years, Chip and Cyndy discovered the profound ability of travel to break down racial barriers, expand one’s worldview and instill humility. Chip articulates with vivid anecdotes how true engagement with the world cultivates not only appreciation but also a deeper understanding of humanity. This episode promises to inspire listeners to step out of their comfort zones and explore the tapestry of unfamiliar cultures, enriching lives while making us more interesting and compassionate individuals.
Chip’s blog:
https://vagabond-adventure.com/
Find out where Chip and Cyndy are now at Polar Steps:
Chip's books and more:
[00:00:34] Christi: Welcome to Moving Along. Today my guest is Chip Walter. He is a science journalist and speaker filmmaker for PBS and others. Former CNN Bureau Chief, National Geographic Explorer, professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and an author and writer.
He is the author of five books nonfiction, all of them science oriented and one novel called Doppelganger. I understand his second novel is in the works. articles have been published in National Geographic, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Scientific American and others. I wanted to talk to Chip today because of a project That he and his wife Cyndy embarked on in 2021, kind of in the midst of COVID, although I understand that it had been five years in the planning before that was to travel around the world visiting all seven continents, beginning in North America, visiting a hundred countries, never by jet, all ground in sea travel. And I was like, wow. What? An amazing goal. What a, what a plan. I like risk takers, as you know, and this struck me as a big risk. Well, so far, Chip and Cyndy have been 720 days on the road, land and sea, 125,000 miles, six continents, 41 countries. You can even track them live on a website called Polar Steps.
Kind of like, where's Waldo? Where's Chip and Cyndy? Now you can find them. They have traveled by bus, ferry, ship, train, and as Chip says, shoe leather, also horseback, mule, and camel. On his blog, Chip posts, photos and videos with his filmmaker's eye, you really feel like you are right there. personal favorite, the dog sled trainers.
Okay. You guys have to absolutely have to see this video. His blog is a gold mine of unusual destinations. I'll tell you a few Santa's Workshop in Finland; Croatian Palace; Paul Bowles' Tangier; Mesa Verde, Colorado; Patagonia; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's ranch, which they finally found in Argentina; and even Antarctica. Welcome Chip.
[00:03:32] Chip: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. That's a, that's a great, I mean, you, you really captured what we've been through and that's not easy to do after four years of this.
[00:03:41] Christi: It seems like an amazing, amazing journey, and I want to talk more about it, but let's see. You grew up in Pittsburgh, a wonderful town, three rivers, right? Grew up in
[00:03:56] Chip: Right, right, right. Love Pittsburgh. Yep. The Monongahela, the Allegheny, and to form the Ohio River. So they're big rivers.
[00:04:03] Christi: They are big rivers. Well, let me ask you, what did travel and moving mean to you when you were a child?
[00:04:11] Chip: Yeah. I, I was just curious. So I, I just loved to move around. there's a story. My mother tells that whenever I was I guess about three, three and a half, she had gone downtown. running errands downtown. We lived in an apartment and the, the woman that had the apartment downstairs is sort of a woman I knew.
So I walked downstairs. I wanted to go find my mom but it was only three and a half. So I went down to this woman and I said, Hey, where's my mom? And, and she was just doing the laundry and she said, well, I think she's downtown, honey. And I said, okay, thanks. And I went and I got two cookies and I got on my tricycle and I started to go downtown.
The problem was I was nowhere near downtown. I was miles away from downtown, but there was an area that was urban next to where we lived. And I just got on my trike and, and went out after her. And the next thing I knew, a policeman was holding me asleep and in the police station. And luckily, I, I, I knew what street I lived on and they figured out where I was, So I, sort of a metaphor, you know, it's, it's a metaphor. I ju I just, I mean, as soon as I knew about the rest of the world, I was just fascinated with it. I, when, you know, when, as soon as I started reading about Africa or and I remember my mother, as we were driving toward the ocean, I said, what's it like mom? And she said, well, when you get there, you see water and all you see is water all the way to the sky. And I thought, wow, that, that's a lot of water. that was a great image to me. And so those kinds of things, I guess kind of get in your bones as a child.
And so I, I just always wanted to travel One of the reasons I became a journalist was because I thought, ah, well, this is a way that I can, I can learn a lot of things period, by being a journalist because I'll get paid to learn essentially. But to travel and get paid was a real bonus, and it was conscious. I, I thought if I can do the kind of journalism that will allow me to go to exotic places, then I'm in.
[00:06:16] Christi: You got in at the ground floor of CNN,
[00:06:20] Chip: Yeah. Yeah. I worked at a place in Pittsburgh called KDKA, which is a big CBS station here. and I was the assignment editor, which means you have probably the worst job in the network,
[00:06:30] Christi: But you have to read all the press releases.
[00:06:33] Chip: Yeah. Yeah. You read all the press releases. You're the, guy that has to tell the reporters and the camera people what to go cover, so that you actually have, something on the news.
and so there's a lot of pressure all the time, every day, anyhow, I got a call because serendipitously I had helped a woman in New York who needed help with some things that were being done in Pittsburgh. And it turns out that she became the right hand man of the founder of Cable News Network. She called me up and she said, Hey, we're we're starting this network. It's a 24 hour news network. I'm wondering if you'd like to come down to Atlanta. That's where we're gonna be based and see if you're interested in joining the team. And I said, sure. You know, I mean, why not? They were gonna pay for it. So I went down and we walked into this small building that looked like the Bates Motel with a single light bulb in it.
they interviewed me and I was like, is this for real? and they said, oh, well, come on, we'll take you to where we're building, the whole location. And they had, they were building on Techwood Drive. It was the first place that CNN had all their offices and the studio and all that.
they said, well, we're gonna offer you more money and do you want to come down? And I said, yeah. And my, my boss I remember said to me goes, oh Chip, this is a bad move. He goes, they're gonna be gone in three months. And I think, I think we're now at 20, 35. 35 years.
[00:07:57] Christi: years. That's right.
[00:07:58] Chip: he wasn't right about that. But I was there June 1st, 1980, two
phones in my ear and I was on the, the national assignment desk. And then I later became bureau chief. At a couple of different bureaus.
[00:08:11] Christi: You were in San Francisco, right?
[00:08:12] Chip: I, I ended up in San Francisco. I was in Los Angeles, and I created the bureau in Atlanta. That was, the headquarters was there, but there was actually no bureau. and then I ended up in San Francisco. By that time I was pretty burned out. So I, I moved on and that's when I got into documentaries.
[00:08:29] Christi: Was the science already there or the science just kept piquing your curiosity?
[00:08:36] Chip: Well, I was always curious about things, but I have to admit I was an English major, so it wasn't like I had, you know, a science background. I had a journalism background. But whenever I got my first job doing documentaries for PBS was actually WQED, which ironically did the National Geographic specials and was based out of Pittsburgh.
I was in Los Angeles. So they had a big bureau in Los Angeles where they did a lot of the National Geographic specials. so we developed a couple of series there. And the first one I worked on called Planet Earth that won an Emmy. And, and then I worked to help develop a couple of other series after that for the next several years.
And they were all science or science based. And we worked with the National Academy of Sciences. So we were working with the top scientists in the country or the world. and so it was very rigorous science, but you had to make it fun. You had to make it interesting. I thought that was a great challenge and it, so I learned a lot.
And that is what led me eventually to to writing science books. 'cause I just came to believe that there were a lot of big questions to be answered, but I didn't feel that philosophy or religion or even psychology could truly solve those things, So I, I was like, okay, let's, let's ask the big questions, but what's the science behind it?
where are the facts? and that's what I liked about science.
[00:10:01] Christi: Your most recent book of nonfiction came out before the pandemic broke,
right? I
[00:10:08] Chip: Immortality Inc. And I think kind of the last thing that people wanted to read about was how you could live forever whenever so many people were struggling to stay alive.
[00:10:17] Christi: You have moved to science fiction, Your most recent book is a novel, Doppelganger.
[00:10:24] Chip: Yeah, I was talking to a scientist who was the head of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, and he was the first scientist to say, we might someday be able to download a human mind into a robot or into a machine. He, he was thinking robot because he was a robotics expert.
When I heard that, I thought, huh, I wonder what would happen if you downloaded that person. And then the original person was murdered and then the other person woke up, the doppelganger woke up not knowing that they had been murdered, and then had to learn that they had been murdered and then have to solve their own murder. That's the premise of the book.
[00:11:06] Christi: Okay.
[00:11:07] Chip: And then it gets, bigger and wilder than that.
[00:11:09] Christi: You are clearly a planner, Someone who plans when you started this journey, you had been planning this trip for five years,
[00:11:17] Chip: Yeah. Well that, yeah, Cyndy sort of started calling it the five year plan because I was finishing up, I was just getting started on Immortality. the deal was in place. I was starting research and I was looking through Google Maps, you know, and just, I don't know, piddling around.
And, I, I turned to her and I said, you know, when I get this book done and gets, you know, we do the promotion and everything and it's behind us, said we should travel, but in a really interesting way. And she goes, well, what would that be? and I said, well, what if we didn't travel by jet?
What if we traveled the way people did 120 years ago? That would force us to really soak up the cultures that we went through. I mean, you would really know, you traveled through those countries. It wouldn't be like you just flew in an aluminum tube at 40,000 feet and touchdown and were in a resort and then blew back out.
To me that's not really traveling. But this was a way to ensure that we traveled and I absolutely, I do this all the time. I absolutely underestimated the complexity of it, the difficulty of it. But I knew it was gonna be interesting, and I knew it would make for good stories. And I knew we would learn a ton, And I thought at first Cyndy would say, I'm sorry, hon No, no am I doing that. but she didn't, you know, she said, oh, she goes, okay. I mean, she just started telling people, well, we've got our five year plan. and so then I started to kind of, plot out. I mean, when you're trying to hit all seven continents, it's different than going around the world.
I mean, if you, if you read about Mark Twain or Nelly Bly, or a whole lot of other people that have gone around the world, they generally go around the equator, you can do that relatively fast. Nellie Bly did it in 77 days, and that was back 120 years ago. But you can't do, do it that fast when you're not traveling by jet.
You, you cover an enormous amount of ground by hitting all seven continents. just to get to Antarctica, that's 17,000 miles,
[00:13:20] Christi: Well you say that Vagabond Adventure is not a vacation, it's a marathon or maybe a pilgrimage.
[00:13:27] Chip: yeah.
[00:13:27] Christi: how did you decide, or how, when you were planning or when you were thinking about it, where to go?
[00:13:33] Chip: one thing we wanted to do was avoid places we had been and sometimes can't, you know, we've been lucky enough to go to. places where a lot of people have gone, like Paris and London and Europe the Caribbean. But I knew right out of the gate we were going to have to go to Antarctica.
So that was, that was the original plan was just book it straight to Antarctica. Well, to get to Antarctica, you gotta go through the United States, you gotta get to Florida, you gotta go through Panama Canal, you gotta get all the way to South America, and then you gotta work your way all the way to the very bottom of South America and then, get yourself to Antarctica.
That was the original plan. And then we had a plan to go over to South Africa, there was one ship that would go over to South Africa at that time. Well, COVID struck, and every ship plan that I had just disappeared. they were all shut down, trains everything, were shut down.
So Cyndy, being Cyndy, she said, well, look we were going to do North America last let's just do it first, cause we can so by 2021 you know, the book came out in 2020. So there was a year of, trying to promote it as much as we could during COVID. And then it was time to go.
so we sold the house. we had four, kids. They were all gone. And so we sold the house, got an apartment downtown 'cause we needed a base. and on September 27th, we hit the road and we started, we first went to Newfoundland and then swung back across the United States through the American West and then down to, well, all the way to Baja. And then we drove the Baja 1000 and and then we came back up along the coast of California and then across the United States. And by that time, we could get out of the country. And so I just had it in my head that we wanted to, get to Morocco. So we booked it to Morocco.
We took the Queen Mary Two over to England. And then I think we took four trains in four days to get to Tangier.
[00:15:34] Christi: You write a daily journal for your followers, and I wondered how you manage it.
[00:15:41] Chip: Oh, well, good question. It, it, you know, I, it's like when, I wrote my first screenplay, I was like, oh, yeah, I could write a screenplay. Then I realized, oh my God, it's so hard. being stupid sometimes pays off because you end up doing things you would never do.
And this was one of those, I remember we were on the train and I opened up my phone and I thought, oh, I'll write a little something about where we are and what we're doing. And so I did, and then the next day I'm like, oh, okay, I'll write another one. Then the next day and the next day and the next day.
I mean, it's, it's work. and sometimes I can't keep up, so I have to go back and, fill in. But I have, I think back here, 37 notebooks full of, of handwritten notes, which I then dictate and then I, get out, onto the media, into our website and Facebook and that sort of thing.
[00:16:33] Christi: Oh, that's
[00:16:34] Chip: we just wanted to share what we're doing. in a weird way, it took me a while to figure out what I really wanted the website to do. And what I realized is I'm just a storyteller. everything I do is storytelling, whether it's documentaries or screenplays or books, and so that's all I want to do. I just want to tell good stories that people can read and go, oh, wow. Yeah. Well, that's, that's funny or that's interesting or I never knew that. Or, or look at that. and just enjoy it, you know, because we're certainly enjoying it.
and even when it's rough, I just try to, honestly say it was a rough day, and here's why it was rough, or it was a funny day, or a scary day. We rarely run into scary days, though.
[00:17:15] Christi: how many followers do you have?
[00:17:16] Chip: A couple thousand now. probably a lot of them are people. We've, we've actually met, you know, because we have met a ton of people, over four years, whenever you're traveling from place to place. people from all countries and we still have, you know, a long way to go actually.
I'm sure we'll meet people in India. I'm sure we'll meet people in Nepal. Just keeping track of people and, and keeping track of the friends that we've made. people that have become quite close friends yeah. That we stay in touch with
[00:17:45] Christi: And how many languages do you have, Chip?
[00:17:48] Chip: Oh, I wish, I wish I had command of, like seven languages or something. But I don't, you know, I can get into enough trouble with Spanish and I can get by in a real jam with some French but it's hard to. we were in Latin countries for a long time, so that's probably why picked up the most Spanish. And then we were in Spain for a fairly long time. But to learn Portuguese when you're there for a week or two,
[00:18:15] Christi: That's hard. That's a hard language.
[00:18:17] Chip: yeah, we went up through Estonia, Lavia and Lithuania and Poland, and all four of those countries have lang. They're just smallish countries, you know, and their, their languages are all completely different.
I mean, just saying hello, was different or thank you, so I just accept that, we have to rely on people that speak English. Lots of people speak some English, when we get into Nepal and Bhutan, my guess is not
[00:18:45] Christi: Different. That's gonna be a different kettle of fish.
[00:18:48] Chip: we're actually packing now and, you know, Cyndy's saying, I don't know, which way do we go here?
What, how much? 'cause we're, we're gonna be at 14,000 feet sometimes, and then we're gonna be in Dubai. We're, right now it's a hundred degrees. So,
[00:19:02] Christi: What? What's the key word? Layers.
[00:19:05] Chip: Layers. You hit the nail on the head. That's what I, exactly what I said to Cyndy. I said, just layers on.
[00:19:11] Christi: Layers. That's it. That's the answer.
[00:19:14] Chip: And it works.
[00:19:15] Christi: We, well, we talk about Dubai. One of my questions is that
a lot of the places that you visited are threatened by global warming. And what do you say to the skeptics? I mean, you've witnessed
[00:19:29] Chip: Yeah. I don't know how anyone could be a skeptic now, but I guess there are people that still are. I mean, it's so clear that I, I, I remember when I was, doing documentaries for Planet Earth. One of the things that we were doing back in the late eighties was talking to scientists about.
Global climate change. It was just called global warming then. And I remember a couple, well, more than one scientist, but one in particular, at NCAR told me, he said, this is like putting a lid on a hot pot. He said, when you put the lid down and you crank up the heat, he said, whatever's inside that pot is just gonna start to boil.
He said, it's not that it's just going to get hot. He said, it's just going to be more weather. so you're going to get more snow or you're going to get more hurricanes and you're gonna get more tornadoes and you're gonna get more rain and floods, and that is exactly what's happening, so when you're in places like Northern Africa, it's just getting hotter and hotter, and when you're in places like Spain and Italy, and if it weren't for the Mediterranean Sea, you know, which water only always ameliorates. The heat, But eventually that's going to be an issue.
And if we start moving ocean currents and that sort of thing, we're going to be moving hundreds of millions of people because it will not be possible for them to live in some of these places. Or we're going to have to come up with some exotic way to, put people in massive air conditioning which then only makes the situation worse, So it's a shame that we didn't get on top of this. And it's, and one of the things, and this was another thing that I learned in my own scientific research, is human beings by their nature tend to not be planners. They tend to react to things instead of ProAct, you know? And so instead of looking down the road and saying, this is coming, let's prepare for it, we keep waiting for something horrible to happen.
And now those horrible things are happening and we're still not. making the changes we need to make. I, I don't know what has to happen to make governments realize that this is something you need to act on. Big time right now, the time for, for even planning is passed, we just have to stop creating more, more carbon.
[00:21:49] Christi: and you're seeing it firsthand. You're really gonna see it in, Dubai and in India,
[00:21:54] Chip: Oh, yeah. the irony is that there's so many rivers that come into India, but so many places in India have no water. They have no clean
water. there are some real further south, where the rivers basically either get polluted or dry up, They're, they're in real trouble. I, I don't, you know, I don't know what happens. Somehow people manage to survive, eventually there won't be clean water. And if you don't have clean water, people are gonna die.
[00:22:20] Christi: Have you been there before? Have you been to India?
[00:22:23] Chip: no, I've never been to India I can remember when I was, when I was doing documentary, I was in the Amazon and I, I would always ask people to say, well, what's the most interesting place you've ever been?
'cause they're usually, well travel. And I had a lot of people that, that said India is number one. because it's so diverse. And so, have you been
[00:22:43] Christi: No, I haven't. I was gonna turn that question right back on you too. what's the most interesting place you've been so far?
[00:22:51] Chip: Yeah. Cyndy and I go back and forth on it because Cyndy immediately says Antarctica. And because it's so different, it's unlike any other place on the planet, partly because there are no people there. But, and it is unbelievable. I mean, when you get across the Drake, you know, so you're two days in the wildest, weather in the world, you got three oceans that come together, so you're bouncing and rolling there for two days.
And then I remember waking up the first morning and going to sleep while we were rolling around and then waking up and everything was just quiet and dead still. I jumped up and I looked out the porthole and I said to Cyndy, we're here. and you look out there and there are these immense icebergs just floating by.
I mean, they're the size of mountains, and, and they're just going by and. Glaciers and mountaintops that go up thousands of feet and everything is perfectly white, and then as we were there longer, you see bowhead whales or, humpback whales and penguins and all sorts of, wildlife.
it's so otherworldly that it's difficult to even put Antarctica on the same category with the rest of the planet. But for me, I think Patagonia was at least in terms of just raw beauty. And, and it's still pretty untouched. So that's one of my favorites.
and Tierra del Fuego, which is sort of, below Patagonia and, the end of South America and going to the very tip of South America and standing at Cape Horn, and knowing that the only other thing that's there is Antarctica, that was kind of a, a moment where, I mean, there are these moments where you're standing somewhere and you just go, pinch me.
am I really here? is this possible? And, and sometimes it's so beautiful. You, I, you know, as a writer, it's frustrating because I can't capture, I can't put it into words, you know? I can't, so I just try to soak it up,
[00:24:53] Christi: Well, you also, you post those great photos and videos you've got that filmmaker's eye. So really
you feel like you're right
[00:25:03] Chip: don't know, I, I, yeah, I feel like these places are so spectacular. Even I can't screw it up, you know? You know, I mean, you know, they're just so a amazing that it's. Get lucky 'cause you're there.
[00:25:16] Christi: Do you feel lucky?
[00:25:18] Chip: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. I feel like I won the lottery. I don't think very many people, first of all, have the opportunity to do this, which is one reason why I wanna share it. and have been lucky enough to, I don't know, have whatever it is that makes me want to do it, you know, and be able to do it. I, I, every day we wake up and. And look at one another and say, oh my God, we're so lucky.
[00:25:42] Christi: have, you felt in danger at any portions, any parts of the legs of your trip
[00:25:48] Chip: I think we, we were in some physical danger in Choquequirao. Cyndy I think was kind of appalled. I mean, Cyndy is game for anything. and so you have to remember is when we went to Choquequirao, which is, that's in Peru, and, everybody goes to Machu Picchu when they go to Peru, and near Cusco.
but there is another palace that was found that is about a hundred miles away from Machu Picchu. Maybe not even a hundred miles. And it was the last Incan holdout, it was the last place the Incans stayed, and even the Spanish didn't go there. It was that remote, but it was quite a large palace probably as big as Machu Picchu.
Not quite as dramatic as Machu
[00:26:37] Christi: I saw your pictures. Yeah.
[00:26:39] Chip: When I heard about it, I thought, okay, well everybody goes to Machu Picchu, so we're gonna go to Choquequirao. the thing about Choquequirao was you have to hike in for two days, and then you have to hike back out for two days and you're really in the middle of nowhere.
You're in the Andes. And there's nothing, I mean, nothing there. I remember the, the night that we got to Choquequirao there were, if you go to Machu Picchu, there are hundreds and hundreds of people, thousands of people. Machu Picchu, we got there at about four o'clock in the afternoon, and there were counting us four people in the palace, and one of them, no five one was the guy that worked there.
One was the guide who was with us Renado, me and Cyndy, and some guy that came out of the Netherlands. I don't know where he came from or where he went after that,
[00:27:32] Christi: A fellow
adventurer.
[00:27:34] Chip: yeah, yeah, he showed, he showed up. I never saw him again. it was like he evaporated. But, but we went back down to our camp, there's nothing there.
It's just, you have a tent and, and there, there there's no, there are no bathrooms or anything like that. And I remember looking and, and the sunset, and I remember looking out from the tent and there were two lights that I could see. Little specks of light in the mountains. And one was the place that we were the night before, and the other one was the place we were going the next day.
That was it. That's all there was. There, there was, there's no village. There's, I mean, you might call it a village. 10 people, And so at one point we had to cross a river, it is called the Rio Blanco. And and it was a big river, big enough that the only way you could get across was they had taken trees and, knocked them down.
And so you walked across a tree trunk and the water was relatively low because I think we were, it was in the fall and but there were these huge rocks that were as big as cars, that were below maybe 20 feet below where the trunk was that you're walking across. And I thought, oh boy, you know, Cyndy does not like heights. I mean, Cyndy, so, you know, had never camped before she did this,
[00:28:49] Christi: Okay, girl.
[00:28:51] Chip: so this is, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She, and, and she, she was, she was game the whole time. And so we get there and I thought, oh boy, what are we gonna do? You know, and and she went across, I, I, I said to her, I said, you want me to take you across?
And she looked at me and then she looked at our guide and she goes, no, I'm gonna go with the guide. And he actually helped her across, and he went backwards, you know, across there. But if they fell and I'm standing there, I'm going, if, if either one of them falls, then the other one's gonna fall and you're just gonna crack your head on these big rocks, and that'll be that, So I was a nervous wreck until she got across, So we had a couple, you know, there were, there were a couple of times we were, you're looking at a thousand foot drop as you're, going along the mountain. that kind of thing. There was one place where they, they had closed it completely and said, it was, there was a sign that said, do not continue.
the people that were behind us these guys from Germany, they did not continue, but our guide said, nah, we're going, you know, and so we went across and, and later we ran into them in Machu Picchu and they said, what happened? Where, how did you, how did you get across? And they said, well, we just went across.
And they said, oh, they made us go back. We never got across. So they never saw it.
[00:30:05] Christi: wow. The sense that I get from your blog is that you have and Cyndy have felt welcomed pretty much wherever you've gone,
[00:30:12] Chip: Yes. Yes. We, you know, people all the time, people will say to us, oh my God, are you okay? Or were you scared? Or, be sure you're safe out there. And of course you wanna be safe. But not only have we not encountered people that wanted to hurt us, we haven't encountered people that have even been really surly or unkind.
I mean, we've been bailed out so many times when we're lost or, just clueless, that, you know, I can't count them. Just people being nice out of the kindness of their heart. so, my take on the human race is, yeah, of course there are jerks out there. But they're a a small, small group, I also think, you know, sometimes when I talk to people from the United States and they're traveling and they've had bad experiences, you know, what I wanna do is I wanna ask 'em, I wanna say, well, what were you dressed like then?
What were you acting like? if you're gonna walk around again with Gucci bag and, lots of jewelry on your wrists and, and neck, and you know, you're asking for trouble. If you're gonna stand out and say, I'm a rich American, you people are going to take him. First of all, it's just kind of in your face and it, I, I would think you, you, it just would kind of make you angry if you're. In another country, and people are acting like that. It's kind of the ugly American, approach. You know, we, we obviously stand out sometimes. I mean, when, when I'm walking down the street in Alexandria, I'm six foot two. you know, I got white hair and I mean, I did look nothing like anybody, from Alexandria.
And people would just stop and look at us. But no one was ever unkind, and usually they were just maybe take a picture or laugh, they'd laugh and make a joke or something like that, but, so you'd, you know, you can look for
[00:31:56] Christi: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:57] Chip: and you can definitely find it. But, you know, I was in Alexandria in at night, and at ATM and I had no problems.
The ATM was broken, so I couldn't
[00:32:08] Christi: No, no cash.
[00:32:10] Chip: Yeah.
[00:32:11] Christi: Have you ever been pickpocketed? Just out of curiosity?
[00:32:15] Chip: No, no, never been pickpocketed. I, you know, maybe, maybe part of it is, with all the travel I did at CNN and in documentaries, I learned from other people like cameramen that had been all over the place for National Geographic.
They knew all of the tricks and rope, but basically you just have to pay attention to where you are and pay attention to who you are. you don't, you don't have to be fearful that someone's going to rob you, but you just have to be aware, and don't put, don't be flashing money around and, don't be carrying a, a wad of cash in your pocket keep your passport in a place where nobody can get it. You know, basic stuff,
[00:32:53] Christi: Right. Urban caution. That's what we call it. New York. Yeah,
[00:32:58] Chip: yeah, just good sense,
[00:32:59] Christi: good sense.
So after 720 days, what have you learned about travel?
[00:33:08] Chip: That it annihilates racism, it compresses time and, and it humbles you in a good way. Because you learn so much. You realize how little you know. And that to me is one of the best feelings in the world because it's like, oh wow, I can learn more. And, and it's humbling, you know, for that reason. It compresses time because everything's new when you're traveling, especially if you're traveling, not going to a resort, But when you're really in a place that's different. and you're listening to the music and it's different and you're eating the food and it's different and you're listening to the language and it's different. Even if it's a struggle, it's different, And as a result, you're filling your head with so much new information and so many experiences that it's way more than you would be having if you were home.
And so that's what I mean by it. It it com it compress it Actually, I'm sorry, it doesn't compress time expands time. You know, you feel like a week is like a month because you've learned so much that's new. And I think it annihilates racism, for a similar reason. You, you begin to see people are people, you can't say.
All people are like this, or all people are like that, because of a religion or because of the color of their skin Every person is an individual. There are some people that are really nice. There are some people that aren't so nice. But mostly people are just trying to, I mean, every time I, I'm standing in Cairo or Trieste or someplace, and you look around and you see all those people and you go, everybody has a story.
Each of those people, has something that's important that's going on in their head right now, And there are so many stories and then you look at civilization and you look at this big rambling edifice that we wander around and, and you go, how the hell did that happen? And then you begin to think about it. I mean, it's like one person at a time, one idea at a time. one conversation at a time that we built all of this, and that's what we're in the process of doing right now. And, and so to be a part of that and to be, able to walk through that and feel it is, it's, it's so, so great. So that's, I guess what I've learned.
[00:35:39] Christi: That's wonderful. It's almost like it rewires the brain in a certain way.
[00:35:43] Chip: Absolutely, absolutely. You see the world in a completely different way after you've traveled. even if you've just, gone to Ireland and back, it changes you, and it makes you again smarter. You know, there's the old Dunning-Kruger effect, you know, which is the less you know, the more you think, you know, the opposite effect is the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know.
And that's what I mean by travel. humbles you, because we, we, we would meet people, you know, I, I thought when we started this, I thought, well, I've been pretty well traveled. at that time, I'd gotten to six continents and, we met people that had been to 112 countries, people that spoke seven languages.
people that are just really, really have traveled And that was wonderful, to meet those people and to hear those stories and to see the way they saw the world. And what I found was with all those people, they were always humble because they knew so much and had learned so much and been through so much that you didn't come across people that were jerks, that it had traveled that much.
they had a side, a kind of calm understanding of the complexity of the world and an acceptance of that complexity a, and an a love of it, you know, otherwise you wouldn't do it.
[00:36:55] Christi: And it sounds like that's part of your continued motivation as you start out again
[00:37:03] Chip: Ab absolutely. Yeah. I think this leg is going to be one of the most interesting because it's going to be really different. we're going to be going into cultures that are, that I have no connection to. Whatsoever. the Sanskrit language is about probably all we have in common, and that's great. I'm looking forward to it. Give me, you know, and maybe some Indian food that I've had, at home. But you know, other than that, everything is going to be wildly different, and so that just makes it all the better.
[00:37:31] Christi: That's great. Is there anything else you wanna say
[00:37:35] Chip: Well, I don't know, I think I've rambled on enough about travel and, I can only say to anybody that hasn't traveled very much or anyone that has a fear of travel, don't, don't fear it. Embrace it and, and do it. And you will be so happy that you did. It will make you. A richer, more interesting, and I think more lovable person yourself.
[00:38:01] Christi: That's lovely. Thank you.