No Ordinary Adventure

Best Travel Stories & Tips According to An Expert Travel Advisor

No Ordinary Adventure by UnCruise Adventures

After two years of closed borders, you can imagine there are a lot of excited Aussies ready to explore the world again. And it's fair to say that the rest of the world has missed their Aussies too! So, it's a perfect time to speak to one of our friends on the other side of the world. Today we are excited to speak with, Craig Bowen, a veteran travel advisor and owner of Cruise Traveller. He boasts over 35 years of experience in the industry and is a small ship expert. Dan and Craig dive into what it's been like for small businesses during a travel lockdown, how business is rebounding, some behind-the-scenes stories, and where they want to travel next. It's time to get excited about travel again and talk about how it can make a positive impact. Listen in to more tips and travel stories on today's episode!

Speak with Craig or his expert advisors: 1 800 507 777
Find more at: https://www.cruisetraveller.com.au/
Meet the team: https://www.cruisetraveller.com.au/meet-our-team/

Follow No Ordinary Adventure and UnCruise Adventures:
YouTube: UnCruise Adventures
Twitter: https://twitter.com/UnCruise
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnCruise
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uncruise/
Find more at UnCruise.com  uncruise.com

Contact the team at pr@uncruise.com

Want to know more or want to leave us a voice mail for the podcast? Leave us a message here: https://www.speakpipe.com/noordinaryadventure



Hey adventures. Welcome to the no ordinary adventurer podcast, a place we call home for adventure and the conversations you want to have. We bring you inspiration stories from the field and talk with adventure travelers and industry experts from around the world. This is the place to fill your heart and head with tribal knowledge. Now, your host Dan Blanchard, a lifelong Mariner traveler, and CEO of UnCruise Adventures, a small boat adventure company defining the icon in UnCruise. Let's get started. Hello, everyone, I'd like to welcome you to no ordinary adventure. And I'm Captain Dan Blanchard, the owner and CEO of UnCruise Adventures. And, you know, a big part of my life is seeking out like minded folks. And today I'm on with Craig Bowen. Craig is the founder of a great company in Australia that I'm happy to say is traveling again. And Craig has been basically working out of Australia with his business since 2004. And I really think that when it comes to you as a guest, or you as an industry person tuning into our podcast, learning what the value of a travel professional is to the traveling public is so important, particularly these days, with, you know, coming out of COVID. And travel starting up again, and, you know, a lot of things unsure about air hookups and all this kind of thing. Greg, I think it's just a great time for us to be together. Absolutely, man, it's, it's, it's just been an amazingly challenging couple of years. And I've actually thought about it a couple of ways. You know, it's sort of like Rebecca being a startup company, again, which we've both been through. But this time, we've got a little bit more knowledge, we've got a respected sort of client base, we've got relationships in place, and we've got good reputation. So to start off with a head start. Well, I just have to say, Craig, thank you for the wonderful background, not everybody's gonna see that. But behind Craig, as he speaks of the beautiful shot of Alaska, wilderness, discover, and hiking and all the things that UnCruise so thank you for bringing that up. It's absolute pleasure. I mean, you know, it's UnCruise, he's got so many adventures that recently was the only challenge was, you know, how to limit it to, you know, that number of images. True? Well, you know, let's start out by talking a little bit about your time in the industry, you and I have have been really started about the same time as, as young men in the travel industry. I'm just really curious to know how that all started for you are that passion for travel started? Sure. So it sort of came out a little bit from left field down. I mean, it's I didn't start my life and travel and I started it in selling cars. But I'll maybe come back to that a little bit later, because there is something quite relevant in there. But look, how did I get into the actual travel business some My life before cruising with the hotel industry, I wasn't a particularly good student in school. My training in hotels ended up really coming from traveling and staying in hotels and learning what people did better than than I knew how to do. And so I actually nicknamed at the University of the world, and that's definitely where the buck started. always amazed. Coming from Australia, we were pretty laid back. We still are pretty laid back. But you know, when I first visited America and realized I could keep better service in a diner or a coffee shop that we call it, that we could get in a fine dining restaurant here in Australia. It was just a huge revelation to me. And so that time I spent traveling the world and I guess learning from hotels, that's where the bank started. Then whilst I was still in hotel business, I started a travel marketing company and my first ever client was a luxury travel company that still exists called captains tourists tourists are very well respected operator. And part of our involvement there, my wife and I used to do some tour escorting for them in the, you know, some of their voyages, and I was privileged enough to be working on it. ship called Silver when one of silver seas first ships in the Mediterranean in 1999. And it just blew me away. I I'd never seen luxury like that. It started to give me the message that small ship cruising was the future. Now I hadn't been exposed to expeditions at that stage. But that's definitely where the cruise bug started. And it just went from here. And then I guess 2004 came along, and we decided to turn a passion into a business and see how we went. And I guess you know, 18 years later, thank God, a few people agreed with us. Well, that's a that's amazing. I think that was about 38 years ago when you got into the business as a whole which I must have been what 12 or 13. Very kind but now it's I guess the thing in common is that we both used to have here when we started well, I can already tell that you and I have some some commonalities in our background that led us into have private business similar, very, very similar start. So in your current position, and really now since 2004, as a business owner, and like you say it's, it was 2004. But then it's really like 2022. starting over again, almost. Tell me about how that evolved. I mean, how did you go from being a small business guy to having a, I think, quite sizable company these days. I mean, you're well known throughout the world, but particularly in Australia, of course, how did that all evolve for you? Was it we started off incredibly small. We had, we had a one desk office and one one team member back in 2000. And right late 2003, I guess the the story started with our desire for small sheets. And that was, that was the beginning of it. And look, it was very slow, I was still involved in the hotel business at the time. So I had that commercial luxery have the little bit of a buffer financially, to get the thing rolling, you've been exactly the same with small ships. I mean, that's what you do, you know, and we wanted to really stick with it. The industry was only strong on big ships at the time. So we had a real battle, our first five years were were a real battle. But fortunately, you know, commercially, we can hang in there. And then the market started to wake up some of our bigger companies here in Australia, were knocking on my door saying, Look, you know, we've been told we have to sell everything that floats, not just big ships. So I guess we need you guys. And, and that was a refreshing turnaround. And then look, it's just gone. From there, we're good. It's been a relentless sticking to our rules. Probably the best example was the GFC, which, you know, we were small luxury ships and the GFC market, we just got almost wiped out, I guess, nearly six months without taking the booking. But even then, we resisted the temptation to go to big ships for bread and butter, cash flow. And we looked for other styles of specialized chips. And we went away from nature a little bit into history, and but they all had a common ground of they were specialist interest products, anyway, but it ended up going okay, more and more people have been joined this small ship world, and quite honestly, like COVID has been a building to all of us, however, it's it's added some value. And one of the values is it's put small ships at the forefront. And you know, one of the many things I'm looking forward to in the future is the battle not being quite as hard to get people to recognize the benefits the many benefits of small chips. Yeah, that's really true, isn't it? I mean, I can see as you're talking about is kind of one of the things exiting COVID is the the ability to sell expeditions, smaller ships, adventure ships like ours, it seems only natural, that there's going to be a greater acceptance of that going forward when you say, yeah, absolutely. And then the other thing that, you know, I guess, you know, how did it help us during COVID? I think the first thing is one thing for sure is none of us realized it was going to go on this long. I mean, I'm sure you did the same. I did my, you know, cashflow plans on three months, six months, nine months. And here we are two years later. And I took on the view that I think there's going to be opportunities in this. And the opportunities have ended up being quite significant sure that pain was there. But some of the, I guess less professional professionals in our industry are no longer there. I don't like to say the demise of anyone's business. But you know, there were a few around that were just riding the wave. And the other thing is that we've managed to increase our portfolio of specialized products because some of those were represented by people who are no longer around. And the other thing was that, you know, we made a real commitment. So we have guests, travel agents and our cruise partners like yourself, to be here to look after everything because you know, it's been a mess we've been refunding. We've been rebooking, we've been transferring bookings. You can't do that without staff. So we made this significant commitment to hang in there. And so now we're coming out of it. I think, you know, already pretty good reputation has been really enhanced by the fact that we just stayed in business. Well, that's That's very true. Just in itself, isn't it? The fact that you and I and others survived this crisis? I even in my hometown here in Juneau, I'm just appalled at the, the number of businesses that have been shuttered. Some are restarting, but, I mean, it's a tough, tough hope. And I, you know, I received really good news. What was it about two months ago when most of Australia opened up and what are you experiencing now that we're into this opening stage? Are people just are they hesitant or are you really starting to see bookings coming in the door? Yeah, don't the inquiry level is certainly back. Strongly. Our conversion is not quite as good as it was pre COVID. From an inquiry to a convert a booking, there is definitely hesitancy, the further away the travel is, the less that hesitancy is so we're now starting to see domestic demand for 2022 and longer haul markets such as yours for 2023 and and look at and interestingly, into 2024. And we would never have traditionally been out that far. But you know, long haul markets like Australia do have a long lead time and we'll move on. In fact, we had to sort of try and help educate UnCruise in the early days about the different long haul booking patents of places like Australia, where, you know, we traditionally book 12 and 18 months, sometimes two years away from travel. But look, we are seeing the resurgence there is it's not skepticism, it's just hesitancy because at the moment, there's no question that some places that you're traveling to a complex, there's a lot of additional things that you need to worry about. And then so that I think there's a little bit of, let's give it a bit more time. And then in a year's time or nine months time and beyond, then hopefully, things will be okay, below. It's definitely back our team's busy week kept all except to have our team through the pandemic, and we didn't put them off, they had to leave to find more full time work. But we've recruited again, we're back, we're back being busy. And it's exciting. It's great. Well, that's really good to hear. So, you know, I think that's good framework for my next question for you, which is, you know, that I think the value of a traveler, advisor, travel professional travel agent, whatever we choose to call that person, I think is actually greater today, even then, pre COVID. Because the world is a little bit more complex, and but maybe you could share with those that maybe your general public just listening in on, you know, why a Travel Advisor is such a great way to go? Absolutely. Dan, I look more than more than ever, as you just said, we've always been strong believers in travel professionals, you know, adding value. And quite honestly, in today's travel world, some products don't need that value added because they're simple that you can book them online, you know, but we don't work in that world, every single product that we're involved with, you know, just so much like UnCruise, you know, they go to remote and exotic places that are not necessarily that easy to put together the flights and the connections and, and the transfers and the timeframes around it. So even pre COVID, a travel professional Travel Advisor, I think has added a lot of value to the style of travel that we specialize in. But since you know, coming out of COVID, there's a whole nother layer. And that is a Travel Advisor being able to help a guest, a client navigate through these complexities, which sure we hope will minimize in time to come. But right now, we can all go places, but the advisors got great advice on, on how to make sure it might mean changing a particular transit, stop to minimize the challenges that go with it. It might mean having to get there a little bit early, or whatever it might be. You know, I think there's never been a more important time for the public to work with the travel professionals. And look back to my earlier point about some people not making it the people that are still in our industry are the strong people, they the survivors, and they're the people who deserve to be there and they're waiting to help the traveling well. Amen, brother, you can preach it from a pulpit on that one. That's a that's a strong message. I always like to say even pre COVID I always like to say the the magic about what UnCruise does is that really most people don't know the names of where we go. And the magic. That is the magic of it and having a Travel Advisor that instead of saying, oh, Honolulu might be where it's all at, you and your company are going to share the intricacies of Molokai, which very few people know about. And I think that's the real power of where a travel professional comes in is finding unfolding that particularly with the small ships, like you say, with very distant destinations that tend to be more remote. Yeah, in fact, just to that point, I think, you know, if it's, if it's too easy to get to, you know, you shouldn't be operating there. Good boy, thank you for that. I'll take that advice to heart. So you know, when you look back at how this is all switched since COVID, and we're now into this different area of your Are you seeing yourself taking on different passions as far as your business and where you want to go based on the shutdown experience you had in Australia and COVID in the past, is there kind of a new direction emerging? Not so much a new direction. Dan is just an embellished original direction. Back to my earlier comment that you know small ships are right at the forefront now. And we've got people being you know, less hesitant about thinking that small ships didn't have what they wanted. It's just revitalizing our original direction that we look at has helped our market here in Australia a little bit because we did never have a domestic focus and we we've had to have a domestic focus issue. Fortunately, we've got a few parts of Australia which are incredibly remote and exotic the Kimberley region in northwestern Australia, is just absolutely God's another God's country, there's a lot of them in our world. And, and so, you know, we've managed to really get stuck into the Kimberley more than ever. And that's given us a little bit of a, you know, a bit of a gap between now and when we start our long haul travel. But look more and more, I just, I'm just so excited that the traveling world is looking at small chips, and that we can, you know, really start to to take our business that has already become quite significant to a whole nother level. And that's not putting anything against the big chips, the mainstream world, there's a market for everything. It's just that now I think the world travel, people are really starting to consider small ships at a whole nother level. So it's more just it's not rinse and repeat. It's taking everything to another level. Yeah, I agree. I think that was a very good description. You know, I when thinking when you're sharing about the Kimberleys, I couldn't help but just get excited. Because before I started UnCruise Adventures in 1996, I took a couple years off and sail to Australia, and actually spent about eight months towards the end of our trip and spent it on the Gold Coast of the Cape York Peninsula and Australia has so much to offer for for the visitor. I mean, it's just an amazing, made amazing place. And you've got to feel very fortunate, unbelievably fortunate, I feel really privileged to have traveled so much of the world. But we're also very lucky to come home to Australia. And you know, I'm quite fortunate, we've ended up on very into private boating myself, and, and I haven't ventured as far as the Kimberley in our own boat. But, you know, we do a lot of amazing remote things here in Queensland, but I did actually do some charter work up in the Kimberley in the early days. And you know, it's it's another amazing part of the world but their worlds for that, you know that? Yeah. And out of Australia, fortunately, we're incredibly seasoned travelers per capita. You know, we've only got whatever it is 25 million people or something. But can we can travel, and we're not scared of travel remote and exotic, bring it on Expedition, bring it on. I think we're in good space at the moment, then I think we had a great few years ahead of us. I think so too. And I have to say our largest contingency of international travelers comes from Australia, and then UK and Kiwis after that. But our guests from the United States love it when the Australians are on board. Because I think the greatest thing about Australians was just like you say they're well traveled. But they also they bring the spark to the fire. Good for you and your countrymen for, for lighting up the excitement on my boats on every sailing. They're on board because they're well remembered by the Americans that are with them. Thanks for that I in fact, I had a friend, my wife, Louise and I had a fantastic trip on safari explorer, from Juneau to Seattle some years ago. And we were the only two voices on board. And look, I get the family, we had a lot of fun. All Americans love it. Well, you know, back to your travel professional hat for a second. At this time in history, we're seeing the same thing. inquiries are off the hook. And I think people are just now starting to get more comfortable with turning those inquiries into true bookings and traveling. But do you what advice since we it's really international travel that's opened up recently for everyone? What advice would you give an American or Australian on what to look for in international travel these days? What things to be cautious about this type of thing? Is it complexities that we talked about earlier, you know, easy to research these days to make sure that you know the countries you're traveling, because it's not just a matter of where you end up. It's the airline, you're going on the transit points through the entry requirements into the country of going there the embarkation requirements of the cruise line cruise ship that you're going on, you know, there is a lot there. But look, one of the things that I think, again, it's more of an embellishment and one of my earlier golden rules and that is add some time if you can't, most of our travelers are not time pressured. And, and so when you're traveling to these places, it's always good to add some time for a number of reasons. One is the back to the complexities. You know, we've all nearly missed the embarkation of a ship because our aircraft in some unusual part of the world was delayed or canceled. So we've got golden rule number one to move with travel like that is like booking early, an extra night and two nights or something so that you just don't put yourself under that much pressure when things go wrong and travel goes wrong and it goes wrong particularly in really remote places. So you know, I think that's number one. And also the benefit of that extra time is you get to immerse yourself in the destination not just the voyage in the middle and you know one of my great examples is the trip I did with you do know now I know a lot of people come jump in jump to genotype on the ship and go but we're what a great little place you know, and you know we got to see the I call restaurants and got to meet some of the local people. And you know, those extra few nights were just a blessing. But I've always felt that's just one of those things that really makes a difference with that, and can take the pain out of long haul travel, the majority of our target market is not so restricted on time. And you know, the cost. By the time you put together a long haul trip through forward long haul trip to the other side of the world, to stay a few extra Nights is a very small percentage of the total cost. And so you know, we think it adds a lot a lot to it. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think it it takes a anxiety way of like you say, making the ship having a flight delay. But I always like to use the term McKenna like pulling the curtains back on the stage and really seeing what's behind stage. And, for instance, in Juneau, here, if you come during the prime season, during the day, there's a lot of folks around, but in the evening, it turns back to hometown judo, I'm happy to say that most of our folks do just exactly what your you're suggesting, which is, you know, come a little early, stay a little late. Enjoy to enjoy your trip. Don't do the red eye all the way. Absolutely. Is your thinking about the opportunity to travel. I mean, from a personal point. Do you have any destinations on your hit list coming up here this year? This year, it's it's very average, by my standards, the only long haul trip, which is my first two years and I'm probably like yourself, I've traditionally spent probably two or three months of every year traveling overseas. And so my next trip is actually a business trip to Europe in June. So it's very boring by my standards, and look good. So that's probably it for this year and look in the future on just incredibly lucky. Some of the places that I've been able to, to visit, you know, from the Antarctica to the Arctic and Alaska with yourselves and a couple of real bucket list things I got left one day, I'm determined to go to the geographic North Pole. I just, you know, I think it would be amazing and there's a couple of new products that are starting to make life a bit more comfortable to do that now, which is pretty exciting. Also, the Sea of Cortez one of your destinations is one of the very few really amazing wildlife sanctuaries that I've never been to. And my wife and I are both passionate animal lovers and the Sea of Cortez is right up there. I've had some really good friends too with UnCruise. And, and I hate it when they know more than me. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. It's kind of the same thing around the world. The Sea of Cortez isn't really known. You can say the Galapagos and of course Jacques Cousteau called it the Galapagos so the North for a reason. But we see more dolphins manta rays, whales there than just about any location. We probably see more whales in Alaska. But definitely the Sea of Cortez is it's again, it's one of those unknown how many people know where La Paz and Toto Santos and Puerto Escondido are at very few people in our world that is such a great place. It's actually outside of Alaska. It's my favorite although your Kimberly's pulled on my heartstrings pretty hard. Well, I certainly look forward to you coming on board, you let me know when you come to the Sea of Cortez, and I'll try my best to make it down there and fail with you on my secret spots pre and post trip. That'd be wonderful man. So you know, as I mean, the This podcast is named no ordinary adventure, which I think fits you and I so well, if you could look back in your history and just think of a travel journey experience in life or you travel that they just kind of like I would use when I once went to the Solomon Islands, and I lived through a tsunami and and heard an earthquake popping off as I was 80 feet under the water and volcano at the same time. And it was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. But do you have that inventory of spots that you can say, oh, my gosh, this was what happened with this story that I had way back when or maybe yesterday just resonated so much about the health and wonderful experiences of travel. And then this inspect to the problem is yeah, I've had a lot of, you know, how lucky How lucky is that? I've tricked with the gorillas in Rwanda. That's, that will never leave me. You know, that was something that the silverback gorilla said, I'll never ever forget that. climbing Mount Kilimanjaro was one of those things I didn't think I could do. And I did it. But a couple of them are actually in my UnCruise time up in Alaska. I'm not exactly sure what the rest of the guests were doing. But my wife Louise and I went out with one of the guides in a kayak. And we were maybe 50 feet I don't know from the shore and a bear came down and started skinning the salmon. Right in front of us and we sat we sat there for a while. must've been an hour or an hour and a half. And I could hear the bones breaking as. And I've never, I've never, ever, ever forgotten it. And I've told the story 1000 times, particularly if ever someone starts bragging about going to Alaska on a big ship, I say you guys haven't got a clue what Alaska is. And that is one of my standouts. And on the same trip for a completely different experience was when we experienced bubble net feeding further south munis, I think it was near the San Juan Islands, somewhere down there. And, and I went out, not really knowing what to expect. And that took a little while for the first bubble feeding session to start. And then, you know, all of a sudden, the sun was going down, and they were trying to tell us to go back to the ship. And we said, No way, we want this to keep going, you know, and watching these incredible whales, you know, rising up and the birds picking up the pitch they didn't get and look, you know, they've both make standouts. But looking at this, this business that you and I are in is just full of them were so like, folks, I had no idea Craig was going to share about UnCruise bears and bare bones being broken in Wales. I mean, Craig, that's awesome, I'm honored that you would consider that one of your top experiences and travel, then it was really easy to have a few anchors, highlights right up there on the list. I mean, and that was only too important. In fact, just on that really quickly, I know, we sell a lot of seven day and short avoiders in Alaska, but I was only promoting to somebody the other day, personally, that having had that complete Alaska and San Juan Islands experience. And I noticed I'm pretty sure that you're actually operating more of those now moving forward. I just I've only recommended because it was a range of experiences. You know, one was very, very Alaska centric, and the real deal and what you expect and what you think Alaska is like, and then as you climb further south, you know, it really opened up a whole lot of new experiences, you know, Friday Harbor, Friday Harbor? Yep. You know, my wife's a bit of a she's a Sea Shepherd fan. And there was a little Sea Shepherd store in the middle of the thing. And she still walks around with with a shirt on today, you know, so and then, of course, that leads into the story of where to get that from, you know, and now look at UnCruise Adventures, just you know, it's, there's so many of them, I could I could take up, I could bore you for a long time, except it probably wouldn't bore you because we both thought the same things. But we'd be just, it'd be shop talk for you. And I for sure, just last Friday launched our first boat into Alaska. It's early season. It's kind of interesting that April, and in May are the driest times a year here. And our trip that's underway now has seen five days of pure sunshine. There hasn't been a cloud in the sky. And they've seen Orca, and bear and all this kind of thing. So it's carrying on Craig, it's happening right now. Right? It's a what we hope is a full recovery season coming along for us. Absolutely. We don't need to worry about the last two years. That's history. That's true. I think we're going to be living with it a long time, but in the sense that it's going to change our viewpoint on life, probably like the Great Depression and change my grandparents. But I look forward to it, adjusting my life in the right way. And I really hope that we hang on to some of these lessons. A couple of words resonate with me, you talked about group and family travel, and our smaller boats, like our 22 passengers for a quest and is almost completely booked out with families. And the other thing we're seeing if families are traveling together more, but also we're seeing that people are taking little longer trips than maybe they used to. And I think that's everyone coming out of COVID and such. So I think that's, that's really wonderful and, and I just appreciate all the words you have. I think if if any non Australians are listening, this is the guy to obviously go to for ideas for Australia, but also for Australians listening. Well, I want to what a genuine person you are Craig and your knowledge of Expedition and adventure cruising is amazing. I went through your website again, before we started and I was boy, the offerings you have that are so solid into this experiential travel are amazing whether they're on land or whether they're on a ship it I was very impressed and have a great website, by the way. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. In fact, you just touched on something new, which is really important to me. And that is the combining of these experiences. Because, you know, Australians aren't gonna go overseas for seven or 10 days on just come home. And so what you know, one of the one of our fantastic professional Sam, who's our product manager, she puts together some incredible combinations of things. So we might take a great voyage of yours and then we'll put it together with a train trip or put it together with, you know, land tour or something that just may maximize as the experience and as you said before opening the curtain a bit further in the area that you that you're visiting. And so I think you know, and that's another way that the travel professionals can help them ensure a consumer can sit there and spend weeks and weeks and weeks trying to put together their own thing, but it's with no knowledge. And whereas, you know, these are people that have been there and experienced it and put together the like minded experiences that are going to make up the best possible title package. And, you know, so I think that's something that we're that's another thing we're doing more and more and more moving forward. But yeah, I agree. I'm so with you the value that that presents by having somebody that knows I, I think you know, they used to say that when the internet came along that it put everybody on a level playing field, but it's so there's so much there, that it's it's hard to know which it's just hard to find the type of travel that you're talking about often. How can people I mean, I gotta believe that people are listening to us and going, I gotta talk to this credit guy, I gotta get in touch with his wife with the business. I've got to get in touch with his staff. How can they best reach you? Okay, how initial contact, I guess is our website, which is Curtis travel a.com.au. And for anyone outside of Australia, we still travel with two L's. So it's cruise travel a.com.au. And my email address, I'm quite happy for anyone to contact me personally, I've got a whole team of experts that know a whole lot more than I do. But my email address is Craig at cruise travel.com.au. That's what we do. And we'd love to help anyone who's interested to two L's and.au. If you can remember those two things, you're going to find Craig forward to talking to anybody who's interested. Well, and I look forward to you let me know when you're gonna plan that trip to the Sea of Cortez off of Baja, sir Mexico. And I would just love for Megan and I to treat you guys and show you that part of the world to such a different deal. And I think something that you'd find entirely intriguing. Tom White Dan, oh, my desires turned into a mission now. I'm gonna make it happen sometime in the future. Let's do it. Let's do it. Well, I will bid you a wonderful morning. I vote but you know, if you haven't had your coffee, I'll get out and get some. My wife and I are gonna go meet Megan. We're gonna go meet with some friends. And we'll have a little opposite end of that. We're gonna have a cocktail tonight to celebrate our great podcast and getting to touch base again, it's we miss our Aziz like, Well, I'm gonna get a tear in my eye. We miss our Aziz big time. I am doggone serious about that. And Craig, we just look forward to the time when we see your people coming through. And and Megan and I are going to have one heck of a party with you and your wife when we thank you so much. Hola, Koleos. He's a can't wait to get can't wait to get back over there too. So we're doing our everything to try and make that happen, then it will just be patient. And I can't wait to say Cortez, thanks for your time. Thank you very much, Craig. And thanks for everyone for listening to no ordinary adventure with Captain Dan Blanchard, me the owner of UnCruise Adventures and we'll look forward to chatting another day. Until then, folks, it's time to get out. It's time to spread our wings. Get over the COVID math and move forward. Thanks, everybody, blessing. Thanks for listening to no ordinary adventure sharing locally harvested stories about adventure Be sure to subscribe leave a review tell a friend and help spread the word. We are a community of nature lovers, intrepid travelers and outdoor adventurers mostly from the comfort of a small boat and we want to spread our love of this fascinating planet. That's it for this episode. Now get inside