Episode 34 - Solo Horseback Adventures and Serbian Hospitality with Julie Tallman

Julie Tallman has spent over 15 years navigating the globe on horseback, forging unforgettable connections and experiences. This week, Julie brings us a heartwarming tale from her recent adventure in Serbia, weaving through the countryside on a progressive ride and staying with locals who embody the true spirit of hospitality. Learn how she uncovers these hidden gems through specialized agencies like Hidden Trails and listen to her recount the endearing encounter with a Serbian farmer that truly captures the essence of travel.

Jim and Rita also share their own exhilarating escapades, from the challenging terrains of Peru to the serene bus and train journeys that provide a stark contrast to the hustle of air travel. With stories from wine tours in California to relaxing spa days in Poland, we celebrate the diverse ways in which we can explore the world. Solo horseback travel takes center stage, showcasing the unique joys and unexpected moments that make each journey special.

Finally, we celebrate the richness of Serbian hospitality and dive into equine adventures across Tuscany and Western Ireland. Listen to humorous tales of navigating tricky trails and ponder future dreams of riding across Icelandic fjords and the Mongolian steppes. Whether you're a seasoned equestrian or a beginner eager to start your own journey, this episode is packed with practical advice and inspiring stories to fuel your wanderlust. Join us as we explore the world, one hoofbeat at a time.

Chapters

• 0:18 Exploring Eastern Europe by Horseback
• 10:31 Solo Horseback Travel
• 23:31 Serbian Hospitality and Equine Adventures
• 32:38 Global Reach and Audience Engagement

Transcript

Jim Santos: 0:18

Welcome to Travels with Jim and Rita. Jim and Rita, I'm your host, jim Santos, and in this podcast series you can follow along as my wife Rita and I work out our crazy plan to outfox the real estate market in the US and actually increase our retirement nest egg by spending the next three years or so living abroad and exploring the world. Are we bold, forward-thinking pioneers or just plain nuts? Let's find out together, shall we? Hello everybody, and welcome once again to Travels with Jim and Rita. I'm Jim Santos, along with my lovely wife Rita, and we're still working our way through Eastern Europe. We're using trains, buses and eventually, ferries. In fact, we're recording this episode in the port city of Riga in Latvia. And we'll continue doing episodes from the road, and you can always check our blog at jimsantosbooks. com for more timely updates on our travels and pictures of where we've been. Although I've been very delinquent in keeping the blog up to date, I think I'm about five cities behind right now. More recent photos are on our Instagram and Facebook pages and you can find those links in the show notes.

Jim Santos: 1:35

Now joining me and Rita today is Julie Tallman, someone we met just a year ago at the International Living Go Overseas Boot Camp in Denver, colorado. She and her husband, Roy McGinnis, were guests on the podcast, way back in episode four, talking about Costa Rica and it's still the most downloaded episode, by the way and we hope to talk to them both about their upcoming trip to Panama on their return. They'll be checking that out soon. Today, though, we're going to be talking to Julie about a solo trip she just completed. Now we've talked to people traveling by bike, on foot, in RVs and even by canal boats, but here's a new one Julie just visited Serbia on horseback. So, Julie, welcome to Travels with Jim and Rita.

Julie Tallman: 2:14

Well, hello to both of you. It's so good to be back.

Jim Santos: 2:19

I bet it is. I understand you had an exciting trip home.

Julie Tallman: 2:23

Well, it was. You know travel. It definitely was an extended trip home, but we made it home and there's nothing as much as I love being on the road, there's nothing like your own sheets and your own shower, so I was glad to make it home.

Jim Santos: 2:39

So tell us a little bit about this trip. You've apparently done this several times now right Gone off to some country and toured it by horseback.

Julie Tallman: 2:48

Yeah, you know, I was trying to recap how many of these tours I've done, and a few of them have actually been in the US, but I think I counted 16 times that I've done this.

Julie Tallman: 3:00

So it's ever since I was a little girl. I used to get this catalog through that I ordered in the back of one of the horse magazines I would. I would look at and it was called Fitz Equestrian and it had just horseback travel around the world and it was my Sears wish book. I would sit on the floor and read over these. I could actually recite them without looking at the paper, the various trips that were out there, and it's always what I dreamed of. And I finally got started. Well, it was probably about somewhere between 15 and 20 years ago, and my goal is always to do at least one a year. Covid obviously set that back a little bit, but I've been doing my best to catch up. So, but yeah, I went to. I'd never been to Eastern Europe, so I decided to check out Serbia and spent a week there. It was, I went exclusively for that. I got actually picked up from the airport and then delivered back to the airport by the tour provider, so it was very turnkey and a lot of fun.

Jim Santos: 4:10

How do you find out about these trips?

Julie Tallman: 4:12

So there are several, I guess, travel agencies that specialize in this. The one that I have probably used most frequently is a website called Hidden Trails. It's based out of British Columbia, Canada, and there are several more. There's Equator's, there's Globetrotting and more out there. But you can just go on and sort of use your search criteria whether you want to search by the area of the world that you'd like to travel or what type of travel Maybe you want to do like a working ranch, or maybe you want to do a progressive ride where you stay somewhere different every night. You can put in your criteria and it will spit out these various tours that you can go on.

Jim Santos: 5:03

And what type of tour was the one in Serbia?

Julie Tallman: 5:06

The one in Serbia was my favorite kind, which is a progressive. It means you better be committed to staying in the saddle for however long you're out there. Attach yourself with duct tape if you need to. But I find really exciting to tour a country and to go, and I know that you know this from when you toured purchase in a hotel, but you find in this beautiful, organic way, along the way, in the countryside, out in the countryside?

Rita Santos: 6:04

Was it out in the countryside? Is there a language barrier?

Julie Tallman: 6:09

Well, you know, we're very lucky in the US we don't have to know much in the way of language to travel.

Rita Santos: 6:17

That's true, yeah.

Julie Tallman: 6:19

I mean, we certainly ran into Serbian people who did not speak English because we were out in the countryside, but our guide was Croatian and spoke Serbian and German and English, and so there was always a translator available if you needed it. And, honestly, when you were having conversations with people who didn't speak your language, there's a certain beauty to that as well, because effort that goes into the communication and the body language and there's just a real, I don't know sweetness to that.

Jim Santos: 6:55

You're paying more attention to each other. You're more focused on it.

Julie Tallman: 6:58

Yes, one day we were lunching on this farm and the owner of the little farm invited us down to his house. He knew we were going to be coming by and out of his own pocket, for absolutely no return. He had gone to the store and he had bought Cokes and he had bought beers and he had bought the local schnapps and had us sit down and was just having our guide translate and tell them where we were from. And he discovered I was from the US and he wanted to know if I maybe knew his cousin who lived in Chicago. I ended up calling his cousin in Chicago, putting me on the phone with him, but it was just amazing.

Jim Santos: 7:51

I think we're finding that language isn't as much a barrier. It's an opportunity to learn a little bit of people. So far in this trip we've learned, I think, six or seven different ways of saying thank you.

Julie Tallman: 8:03

Yeah, right, yeah, I did. I wrote down hello and thank you, right. A couple of basic words and a little bit of effort goes a tremendously long way when you're in a situation like that.

Rita Santos: 8:18

Yeah, please, thank you. Goodbye, hello yeah.

Jim Santos: 8:23

I guess I'm very sore from the saddle. That's probably another. Yeah, yeah, I guess I'm very sore from the saddle is probably another phrase.

Rita Santos: 8:27

Yeah, it kept me off it.

Jim Santos: 8:31

This does really sound like. This is not for the beginner. This is for the serious, equestrian.

Julie Tallman: 8:36

Well, you know. So that's an interesting thing. If there's somebody out there who who thinks they might like to do a horseback vacation, there's definitely a horseback vacation for you, and there's even some really wonderful options for people who maybe the wife or the husband rides but the other partner does not ride, that have non-riding options. And actually on this particular trip, my girlfriend who decided to tag along she ended up only riding three out of six days, even though it was progressive. They just turned their horses loose and let them run along with you and she got transported from place to place with the suitcases ahead of us and, um and so, uh, I really uh, that is one of the criteria you can put beginner in there, and there's so many trips out there, um, to accommodate for beginners as well, that's great.

Jim Santos: 9:36

I noticed on your Facebook post that one of your friends was curious how you picked Serbia, or why you picked Serbia. Was that just a name you drew out of the hat, or you were just looking at Eastern Europe in general?

Julie Tallman: 9:48

So I have a little bit of Rain man in me and I actually every about every other time I do a travel, I in essence pull some random place out of a hat because it takes me places I would never just choose. I have a list of places I want to go. I have a list in my head of the countries I definitely want to ride horses in. But that's how I came to Ecuador and I fell in love with that. That was one of the most amazing trips I've ever done and um and so every once in a while, I like to just leave it up to the gods to choose a country, because I think otherwise, um, I would go through life. And who goes to Serbia?

Julie Tallman: 10:33

My mom was so nervous, oh yeah but, um, you know I can, I can put these little the pin in arm in my travel map for serbia now and otherwise. Uh, not that it wouldn't be great also to get to iceland and also to go to mongolia and also to all these other patagonia places I want to ride, um, but uh, I like when I go pick up a dum-dum lollipop, I get the one with a question mark on it. I like that.

Rita Santos: 11:04

You know what I think is hilarious and all families go through this but our kids used to be so nervous when we were traveling, like in South America, going to Peru, going to Buenos Aires, wherever we were going they used to be so nervous about it. Now they just say tell me the countries you're going to and give us the dates, and they don't voice any opinion about it anymore because they know we're going.

Julie Tallman: 11:31

Well and honestly, I was 10 times safer in Serbia than I am in my own hometown here. So I just you know it's uh. You're in the countryside, you don't even hear cars, don't ride for hours on dirt roads and maybe pass a car or two and you're riding underneath all of these trees, reaching up, grabbing plums, grabbing apples, snacking along the way. Everybody's waving, running out with their camera, taking pictures giving you drinks it reminded me of.

Julie Tallman: 12:10

I was born in West Virginia and it felt like West Virginia probably felt 50, 56 years ago when I was born, you know just this, really grounded, very safe.

Rita Santos: 12:24

So yeah, I was born in west virginia too and we used to ride our horses on other people's farms. You were allowed to jump the fence or the gate or whatever, and but that's no longer allowed, which I think is interesting.

Julie Tallman: 12:43

Yeah, yeah, I hear. Yeah yeah, we. We rode everywhere here and I guess that the country sort of owns any of the open spaces and are fencing with us and would create fencing every time we stop for lunch and pin the horses in. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't't. We've chased horses more than once, um, but uh yeah, it was a question I had too. Like, can do people not mind? And he's like people see horses and they're so excited they invite you to please leave them in their yard.

Rita Santos: 13:13

So wow, that's isn't that wonderful. Yeah mean, that's the way you used to get around in a lot of it. Our area was so rural that my dad was born on a farm that you had to ride a horse back to see it. You know, it just wasn't accessible by car.

Jim Santos: 13:33

You know what you said about feeling safe. There is really important. That's something that we've noticed too going through the countries that we've been in. There aren't big security checks getting on trains or buses. We're walking into government buildings and nobody's checking our backpacks or anything like that. Just the stress level is just so much lower in other countries.

Rita Santos: 13:55

It's really easy to get used to yeah, it really is yeah actually we've kind of given up on plane travel when we don't have to. You know, when there's a train available or these buses are fabulous, yeah, you have. You have wi-fi on. You just take your luggage to the bus driver. He throws it in the bin. You know, it's just nothing. It's just so much simpler, and lots of times it's about the same amount of time travel that you have to do.

Julie Tallman: 14:32

I think it's better for the environment if all things being equal as well all things being equal as well.

Jim Santos: 14:37

Yeah, we see a lot of the countryside on the trains and buses, but I imagine that's really exponentially greater when you're on the horses riding through the country.

Julie Tallman: 14:46

It's really something. Yeah, I mean some of the things that you do. When I was in Peru, going over the Andes Mountains, there was a day that we came to a land bridge of sorts, but it was a cliff on one side and a cliff off the other side. They were like you have to separate the horses because if your horses, like, get into a traffic jam, it could be bad. And I just like looked ahead and wished I had a go GoPro so I could go back and look at it later, but I didn't like trade all the way across. But yeah, there's certain things that you and then we went across, like a swinging bridge on the horses over this rushing river.

Rita Santos: 15:33

And there's.

Julie Tallman: 15:35

There's things that you do on a horse and places that you go on a horse that, unless maybe you're hiking, you are not going to see these same sorts of things.

Julie Tallman: 15:46

And where we went in Peru, there was no way to. That was an example of a trip that you better be ready because your luggage went ahead of you by donkey every day, right, there was no getting in or out other than like medevac that would be the only thing like somebody flying a helicopter in. There was no car taking anything. There was like, and it was incredible and I went and changed the one trip I want to do again for sure. But yes, you definitely get to see so much, you know, if that's your style. But there's also, you know like, if you're like, hey, I'd really like to do wine country in California, there's trips where you go to different wineries.

Julie Tallman: 16:35

I was speaking to some girls on this trip that had done a spa tour in. Let's see, I don't. It might've been Poland. Um, it was like a spa day. You know, you went to a different spa every day. You only rode half a day and then you spent half a day at the spas. So it's whatever your sort of flavor is. Or you know, like, I did a guest ranch in Tombstone, arizona, cheesy but cute, and you know so, whatever somebody's sort of style is, whether they're a single woman traveling or whether it's a family where they're trying to do something with their kiddos. There really is a variety of things out there, and there's a match for you.

Jim Santos: 17:20

Speaking of single women traveling, you took this trip not exactly by yourself. You had a girlfriend go with.

Julie Tallman: 17:26

you say yeah, in this case she decided to come along. But I've done several by myself and I've done several where I've ended up being the only guest.

Jim Santos: 17:34

That's interesting because we have so many people like at the international conferences.

Julie Tallman: 17:47

There are so many women who would like to travel but feel like they can't go by themselves. Has that ever been a problem for you? What I would say to that particular person is this is a great. I love traveling alone. I've learned, I'm great company. But I a couple of things.

Julie Tallman: 18:09

When you do travel alone, as a woman, I do find that people go out of their way to be accommodating, for starters. But on these trips generally you end up with a group of people and that group of people has at least one major common interest if you love riding horses, so immediately you have something to bond over and you have stories to tell each other. And even if you were either unlucky or lucky enough, I thought it was amazing to end up being the only guest, for whatever reason. I've had a couple of trips, one in West Ireland and one in Costa Rica, where the people had emergencies and had to back out at the last moment. So I was the only guest.

Julie Tallman: 18:51

But you have your guides and everything's. You know there's structure put in place for you and everything's, you know there's structure put in place for you. So very often you're you know you make arrangements with the tour operator to pick you up from the airport if you want and they can drop you off, or if you want to fly in and spend a few days in you know a city and then get picked up in the city. It is, I think, a really great way to start traveling solo, because you've got a support system and a structure to it.

Rita Santos: 19:24

Exactly, yeah, and you know what. Everybody's travel style is different, so sometimes you are less inhibited. If you don't have anyone with you, you know that you can see and do what you want to do If it's six o'clock in the morning or, you know, 11 o'clock at night, where other people have time constraints or diet constraints, and you don't you're just you, right and honestly, it's just recently I've started traveling with other people.

Julie Tallman: 19:57

I've made friends along the way, but I never expect anybody else to use, you know their entire vacation to go riding horses around the country. I don't think other people are as interested in that as me Turns out they are, but I've never counted on that so I just did it.

Jim Santos: 20:15

The people I've talked to who do solo travel is kind of something that you get used to after a while, and so for most of them, I think it's that first step, making those first couple of trips, even with our travel. A little while ago I went out to pick up a couple of groceries, and I know people who would not set foot outside in another country without somebody else with them. We don't think twice about it.

Jim Santos: 20:40

I know people who would not set foot outside in another country without somebody else with them. You know, just in case you don't really think twice about going out after a while. It's just because you've been there and you've seen that it's really not that big a deal. Yeah, I guess you got to remember that there are single women everywhere, so plenty of single women in Serbia.

Rita Santos: 20:54

Yeah, so you're just one more, yeah.

Julie Tallman: 20:59

But I mean, there are people who struggle to go and have dinner alone, or also struggle and go to go to a movie alone. We all have different travel styles, but if somebody secretly would love to go travel and they're just feeling a little nervous about it, I think this is a great introduction to solo travel.

Jim Santos: 21:25

Now do you get like an assigned horse when?

Julie Tallman: 21:27

you start this and you have the same horse through the entire trip. It depends on the ride. If it's a progressive ride, usually that's the case because you're going from place to place and so you have the horse. When we were in Ecuador, we traded off or we stopped at a ranch halfway, swapped horses, so some horses had a rest and a new set could freshly continue taking you over the very steep Andes Mountains. And on this particular trip, my horse just he seemed a little tired, so I asked if we could give him a rest and I could ride a horse that was running loose. I did that for a couple of days, but very often you get the same one on the more stationary rides. Very often you can switch off day to day if that's what you want to do.

Jim Santos: 22:11

Do you ever find that difficult? Do you get attached to the horses? Is it hard to leave them?

Julie Tallman: 22:15

Oh my gosh every time I need to remember to pack waterproof mascara on the last day because, I am going to have a hard time. I'm always looking for the valve under the horse where you can release the air and fold them up nicely into your carry-on with you. I fell in love with chucha on this one um and I guess his it means yellow in Serbian and he was just the kindest horse. He was also the slowest horse, so we spent a lot of time alone together.

Jim Santos: 22:54

Yeah, it's good to say it's interesting to your choice of Serbia. You mentioned just, Maybe going to someplace that people hadn't heard of or wasn't really a big tourist destination or anything. There's a lot of value in that. I mean, we've been in some big tourist centers on this trip I mean Prague and Budapest but there's those places that don't have big crowds and that are really more authentic, like Vilnius or like here in Riga. It's really very interesting. You get to see a part of Europe and a part of the world that you normally don't see.

Rita Santos: 23:27

And they're beautiful cities, absolutely gorgeous.

Jim Santos: 23:31

Was there anything in particular about Serbia that stood out to you or the people there?

Julie Tallman: 23:35

Yeah, there was just an open heartedness to the people, just a like, almost like an innocent wonder in them that I observed and this, just like immediate hospitality that expected nothing in return. That touched my heart. I also was a couple of times brought to tears by the darling little girls who would come up to the horses and stand there for an hour just petting a horse and I was like, okay, apparently this is true everywhere and you know they live very simple lives. There's some things that I, you know, I'll admit, missing A lot of. Their windows did not have screens and they didn't have air conditioners, so you had to choose either to be hot or have bugs. But so I missed that, but I didn't like. It reminded me of how little we actually need this Amazon guided society where we can have whatever we want on our doorstep in 24 hours.

Julie Tallman: 24:45

And they, while they lived, simply their homes actually looked almost Austro-Hungarian, which I wasn't expecting. They were beautifully tended, with flower boxes and you could see their pride and the care, and it was a virtual bread basket. Everywhere we went it was corn and plums, like all over the place, and berries and apples, and every day we ate these meals that were, you know sliced tomatoes and just like we ate beautiful, healthy meals. So while their life was simple and the average Serbian only apparently makes $500 a month, 500 euros a month. So you know there's certainly the average Serbian is not doing anything luxurious. You said a lot of older cars and but they lived to me again a little like I remember my grandparents living which is not that long ago, right here in the U S and um, and they certainly all had cell phones, because I think everybody that we passed in the country was either taking our photos or videotaping us.

Rita Santos: 26:04

Well, that's their computer.

Julie Tallman: 26:06

Yeah.

Jim Santos: 26:08

And their bank and everything else, right. That's something we've noticed on this trip, especially that you do everything by phone, you pay by phone and you get your bus tickets by phone and you get scanned on your phone when you get on the bus. Yeah, really seems to be much more prevalent here than in the U? S. Have you ever had one of these trips? That was just a real stinker. You felt like I never should have taken this one.

Julie Tallman: 26:32

All right, I'm looking at my list here of everywhere. I really haven't. You know there's there's certain certain trips that I like that had different appeals than others. There I will say the trip I took to Tuscany obviously it was amazing and our um, we, we stayed in an old Tuscan farmhouse and and our cook was was, uh, sicilian best food I've ever had. Our trainer was a very self-confident Sardinian man and that was fun. And the woman who ran it, she was British. I think she didn't love her job. Maybe it was the end of the season, I don't know, but there were a couple of times that, well, I was very glad that I went to that and would do it again. I thought, well, if there is a downside to this trip, it's the person who's in our midst who just does not understand hospitality yeah.

Jim Santos: 27:39

Doesn't want to be there.

Rita Santos: 27:40

What about your Western Ireland trip? What was that like?

Julie Tallman: 27:43

Well, it was good enough that I did it twice. I did it by myself about eight years ago, and then I took Roy last year to that.

Rita Santos: 27:51

And it was progressive.

Julie Tallman: 27:52

We stayed at this amazing old farm that was surrounded by these forests that you were certain fairies were going to spring out of at any time, and we went back and forth to that a few times while our horses moved a little bit further away each time and then eventually got to where we were, staying in another little town and going to a pub and listening to local Celtic music in the evening or, uh um, and staying somewhere different. But it was so much fun, fun, uh. This last trip that we went. Roy is less of a writer than I am and he had a giant uh draft mix named seamus and I was on. It was like a foot.

Julie Tallman: 28:33

I was riding a footstool, he was half gypsy banner and his name was Cawper and was short. So I'd be flying at a canter under these trees and poor Roy's horse would just have to trot because he was so big and he's a tall guy. So he kept getting whacked by branches the whole time and I was like, yeah, we wear helmets not because we're going to fall off. We wear helmets because we need to bat trees with our heads, not because we're going to fall off. We wear helmets because we need to bat trees with our heads. But you know, really you can't. Speaking of hospitality, it's tough to beat Irish hospitality.

Jim Santos: 29:15

So what's next? Do you have a plan for the next equine adventure?

Julie Tallman: 29:22

You know I don't yet, but I plan on getting one soon. I um some of the places that are in my mind. I really want to go, as I do want to hold across the fjords in Iceland.

Rita Santos: 29:30

Um.

Julie Tallman: 29:30

I want to, uh, go to Mongolia and ride the steps. Um, I want to go to Patagonia. There is a ride that's from Chile to Argentina, and I also would really like to do just an Argentinian ride with the gauchos, and I would. I've pushed cattle, which is a lot of fun, but there's a ride out in Idaho where you actually move an entire band of horses and it's a much faster ride. So that's a handful of the many things I would still love to do on horseback of the many things I would still love to do on horseback.

Jim Santos: 30:05

For someone who's interested in getting started maybe only ridden horse, you know very, very seldom Is there a particular trail or trip that you think is a good starting point.

Julie Tallman: 30:14

Out of the ones that I have done, there's, I think, a really good maybe starter. If you happen to live in the southeast of the US. There is actually a place called the Southern Cross Guest Ranch in Georgia and you can book directly with them or you can go through one of the travel agencies. But they do two short rides a day and take great care of you and I think it's a great place to kind of cut your teeth and gain some confidence. Same with if you're in the southwest Arizona has some really nice guest ranches.

Julie Tallman: 30:48

I there's the one in Tombstone was also to ride a day or place shorter rides, only an hour to an hour and a half, so that that would be maybe another great one. That would be maybe another great one. But you know, I think that you can just do a search and kind of what I will say is that the travel agencies are not always spot on with the ride they're describing. Serbia was a great example. They said you needed to be a three out of five stars with riding and I was just like, if that is a three. I definitely said you needed to be a three out of five stars with riding and I was just like if that is a three.

Julie Tallman: 31:30

I definitely don't want to see what a five is like Because we rode I think the first day. We went 24 miles and it was not 20 flat miles. It was serious up and down, getting on and off your horse, leading them down like very steep slopes where the rocks were coming out underneath you. We had some injuries, you know, and when we ran at times when not on my horse, that I mostly rode, but I mean they were flying it was not a three out of five. So if somebody is really concerned about that, my encouragement would be to actually get the name and number of the tour operator and call them and really quiz them on what to expect.

Jim Santos: 32:11

We've been speaking with Julie Tolman, horse lover, travel lover and someone we just love talking to. Julie, thanks for joining us on Travels with Jim and Rita and I hope we can talk to you and Roy soon about your upcoming trip to Panama.

Julie Tallman: 32:23

We're so excited and it's been a pleasure. Thank you both.

Jim Santos: 32:35

You've been listening to Travels with Jim and Rita. Thanks to your support, we're now being heard in over 700 cities in 61 countries, so please keep up the good work and continue to like, follow and promote on social media. If you'd like to read more about where we've been, see some photos and videos, check out our blog at jimsantosbooks. com, and you can access my books, audiobooks and short stories at jimsantos. net, and there are links to those sites Instagram, youtube, etc. In the show notes. But we'd love to hear from our listeners as well, so if you have a question or a topic you'd like us to cover or want to tell your own travel story, email us at jim@ jimsantosbooks. com. So until next time, remember we travel not to escape life, but so that life does not escape us. Thank you.