I’ve tweeted and said I’m about to die
I tweeted from hot-air balloons I’ve
tweeted from camelbacks I tweeted while
flying a plane in French I just wanted
to write the story as it was happening a
real-time narrative I think it’s the
allure of readers on Twitter they know
that whatever I’m writing is happening
right now good evening everyone these
are two heroes of mine Robert Falcon
Scott who is a British Antarctic
Explorer and we have Roald Amundsen
who’s Norwegian they’ve been done to
death by historians but these were both
heroes they were both explorers he went
to Antarctica and tried to achieve the
South Pole we can’t travel the same way
that they did they were going to a land
that people knew nothing about no one
had even been to the South Pole before
and really people had never traveled to
Antarctica and so this was this was for
them a different kind of adventure that
I knew it could be for us today but
still I feel like the spirit of
exploration is alive and that this is
something that we can keep on doing
today now I tried personally a million
different ways to get to Antarctica and
failed again and again and again and
getting a meet a meeting with Keith
bellows is kind of like seeing The
Wizard of Oz it’s very tricky but I
managed to arrange that and get in there
but immediately I pulled out an old map
it’s like from the 50s it was National
Geographic map of South America and I
said you know I want to travel like
these people used to travel I understand
that we have new technologies today but
I want to kind of use these new
technologies but have the same kind of
adventure I could get on buses and go
most of the way that they went but it
would still be an adventure and not only
that I had this phone right here that
had everything on it had a GPS had a
compass
I could send pictures I could send
videos everything was here and I wanted
to kind of show that we could still have
these same adventures using these new
technologies miraculously Keith said yes
I began to share this experience with my
readers on Twitter on social media
because I wanted this to be a narrative
in real time now I’m a believer that
there’s no such thing as new media
there’s only new technology new media
all that is is like using new technology
if you if you kind of strip all that
away all that we have left our words and
pictures and words and pictures have
been around forever
so I was sharing these words and
pictures as I was getting ready for my
trip I wanted to share this with all of
my readers now if you read the old
explorers books the first thing that
they do is they share what they’re
bringing they kind of go through their
whole packing list so I did the same
thing I laid out everything that I was
going to take with me and I took a
picture of it and showed people this is
what’s inside my pack now I knew that
this was going to be a tricky journey
because I was traveling overland through
so many different climates and I also
knew that my ultimate goal was
Antarctica I’d never been to Antarctica
I figured it was going to be cold but I
couldn’t carry all this with me on the
bus so I said I said you know how am I
going to how am I going to do this well
I ended up mailing my suitcase I filled
it with boots and mittens and hats and
coats and I brought it to the post
office and they actually put stamps on
my suitcase it cost one hundred eleven
dollars and I mailed it to Argentina and
it was a spoiler it was there when I got
there so I was very happy so on New
Year’s Day I head out from this very
building National Geographic
headquarters it was symbolic I wanted to
show that I was just like these
explorers who left who were sent out by
the geographic to go explore the world
and I was going to start from this very
point on earth and I was going to go to
the bottom of the world and I just got
to the bus station on the s2 bus which
runs just outside 16th Street
and I paid my fare which was a dollar 35
and I got on the bus and took off and
Here I am sending my first tweet a
real-time narrative now this was an
experiment for me because all of the
original explorers would go and they
would keep a journal and they would
write about their trip and then they
would come home and actually write a
book and publish and this was a past
tense
kind of memoir about their journey well
I wanted to do the same thing but I
wanted to do in real time I just wanted
to write the story as it was happening
without knowing what was going to happen
just each few minutes I was going to
send out a message as to what was
happening so right here I’m tweeting
them and going by the white house and
then I got to Union Station and I had
not pre purchased any tickets I’d only
bought my first bus ticket which was
from Washington DC to Atlanta and I said
everything after that I’m just going to
make my way south if I keep going south
but I didn’t want it to be too planned
because the original explorers they had
a destination in mind but they didn’t
always know how they were going to get
there so here I am a Union Station
presenting my first ticket to the bus
driver the bus driver looked at me and
said what’s your final destination sir I
turned him I was like Antarctica and he
looked at the tikkis like no you’re
going to Atlanta and he’s like get it so
I get on the bus so I got on the bus and
my biggest challenge on the road was
keeping my batteries full on all of on
my phone because I was tweeting non-stop
and I am you know it just it just bled
the battery I found that I could tweet
for about four or five hours before my
phone went out and here I was taking
huge you know huge long busted bus trips
and and you you learned to kind of form
bonds and trust other people as you
would leave your phone and we would all
take turns watching it my other people
when a door went went to the bathroom
but I found out like that if I just
jumped off the bus even for five minutes
and plug in my phone I could keep just
enough juice to keep going so I
continued across the South I went to
Texas then I entered Mexico I was
terrified when I entered Mexico because
I was so afraid that my 3G coverage
would stop AT&T had promised me that
would work there but
18t so I wasn’t entirely sure and I i
crossed and miraculously it worked
so i crossed all of mexico and before i
knew it i was already in guatemala now
in guatemala my trip slowed down a bit
because no longer was on these big buses
guatemala they use a lot of recycled
school buses from the united states so
the school buses that we all ride on our
kids right on when they’re done when
they go to die they actually go to
guatemala and they drive them down there
and they paint them they decorate them
they’re really fancy and these school
buses keep the entire country connected
the roads in Guatemala are pretty bad
it’s a small country but it feels huge
when you’re there because it’s a so hard
to get from one place to the next so I
just traveled on these school buses
across the entire country
and what was miraculous I thought was to
cross the whole country of Guatemala
cost me six dollars and fifty cents and
there’s a whole there’s no fixed bus
stops you just jump on the front of the
bus and you go and find a seat and then
when you want to get off you just jump
off the back whenever they slow down out
the X you know the rescue emergency door
so I rode this bus all across the will
several of these buses and they call
them chicken buses as you know and this
was a legitimate chicken bus because
there were chickens at my feet you can
kind of hear him cackling in the
background but I met some really fun
people on this bus and this the bus is
their whole life it’s not just about
traveling this is the main form of trade
you know people are bringing all their
vegetables and fruit that they’re
growing and they’re selling on the
marketplace they’re bringing money home
and this is just it really is the way of
life riding the bus in Guatemala is a
way of life for these people so I travel
through Guatemala then through El
Salvador
then Honduras and then I got to
Nicaragua and I was very excited because
I said look I was very kind of proud of
myself let’s look how far I’m getting
I’m actually going to do this
I’m going to at least get through
Central America it only been a few days
but the problem is I got to Nicaragua
and found out that the they closed the
border and there were no more buses that
day to the border with Costa Rica and
then I realized that I actually had a
deadline because I was supposed to get
on a ship to go through the Panama Canal
National Geographic expeditions was was
helping me with this trip and I I was
supposed to be there the next morning
and I had a whole country to cross and I
didn’t know what I was going to do so I
thought well what would the old
Explorers do would they go silk in their
hotel or would they find a way to make
it work so I found a way to make it work
I hitchhiked and I ended up just
hitchhiking the whole way and I made it
to San Jose at the airport I fell asleep
and then I met the National Geographic
expeditions people the next day and I
was I was a wreck I looked awful but
they you know I met them and I got on my
boat and went through the Panama Canal
made it to South America I finally made
it to Ecuador and this to me was the
real achievement because I am a big map
nerd
I love maps and here I’m on the equator
they have a big memorial that says this
is the middle of the world and they
actually have a orange line painted
across the middle saying this is it
allow me Tod del mundo this is this is
it this is the equator so I went and I
stood on it and I tweeted live pictures
of me in real time Here I am standing on
the equator but like I said I’m a
geography nerd so I took out my phone
got the GPS and checked it and we were a
couple seconds off the equator I said
they have mismeasured and there were
thousands of people taking their
pictures and standing on the north and
southern hemisphere and I said no
they’re all frauds this isn’t it I’m
going to find the real one so using my
phone I followed my GPS followed an I
had an app for that because there’s an
app for everything and the real equator
is about half a mile north of here and I
got it there and I was getting closer
and closer and closer and then snap it
all went zero zero zero all the way
across my phone and I drew a line in the
sand and I tweeted it and I was like now
I’m standing on the real
equator so I got back on the bus and one
thing I loved about traveling Overland
the advantage to traveling Overland to
traveling in airplanes is you can
actually see how the earth changes so
slowly how it just transitions from one
landscape into another and Ecuador south
of Ecuador is jungle there’s banana
plantations everywhere it’s so green
people live in houses that are just
shacks with no walls because it’s so hot
all the time and suddenly you cross into
Peru and Peru the north of Peru is just
desert there’s just no water at all and
you drive for a thousand kilometres
through pure coastal desert I got to
Lima and now I felt like you know what
this is great I’m getting there and then
I looked at a map and saw wow I still
have so far to go
I don’t want to waste time I want to
keep going so I went in to buy my next
bus ticket to Bolivia you only need two
things to travel you need a passport and
you need a credit card that’s all I have
so I show that to her got my ticket and
moved on to Bolivia and then in Bolivia
like in Guatemala things slowed down a
great deal because in Bolivia most of
the roads are unpaved and not only did
all the buses break down but the roads
break down and I was there during the
rainy season and almost every bus I
wrote on in Bolivia we got stuck in the
mud and I thought this was a huge
catastrophe but the driver didn’t
because the driver just made us all push
the bus so every time we got stuck in
the mud the drive would you know yell at
all of us and he would stay behind the
wheel and we would all have to go under
so I got very good at pushing and
finally I made it to the border with
Argentina and I was so excited because
in my mind this is my final country I’ve
reached my last country on the journey
the problem with Argentina is it’s huge
it’s like 3,000 miles it’s like driving
from LA to New York that’s the that’s
the length of Argentina and again I I
didn’t have any fixed times except I did
have a boat I had to get on in in
ushuaia so I went full on
crossed Argentina in about seven days
which is a beautiful country and driving
across la pompe in the bus for two days
just Green farm fields and then driving
through Patagonia on a bus was for me
just such a romantic endeavor
really got that sense of travel when
when you go overland through Argentina
it’s another journey
I recommend but like all trips it’s only
worth it if there’s a time where you
think you’re going to die and for me
that was the end of Argentina when I
finally got to Tierra del Fuego I was
getting ready to cross I was ecstatic to
have finally reached the Strait of
Magellan this marked the final boundary
between me and my destination and
getting on my ship to Antarctica
however the sea was too rough to cross
and so we waited and yet by late
afternoon the season picked up and had
become completely impassable we waited
for hours and line of traffic behind a
stretch for almost five miles
eventually the bus driver invited me to
the front of the bus along with several
of his pretty Argentine companions and
we drank mottai which is the Argentine
pastime of passing time as any one drink
might say before it’s great stuff and
it’s how it’s how I we sat for twelve
hours waiting for the waves to calm down
and we drank a lot of Mota in those
twelve hours when it got dark and the
waves picked up that’s when the ferry
decided to go and so we went out on the
ferry and it’s only three miles across
the Strait of Magellan and about half
way across the Strait they thought this
is too dangerous and they turned around
to go back but our boat got blown down
the Strait and so that point it was just
we had to get across it was really scary
I live-tweeted it and said I’m about to
die and everybody on the bus was crying
it took us an hour to cross this
three-mile straight because the seas
were so bad and when we got to the other
side it started snowing now this is
their summer this is the the you know
the southern hemisphere summer and it
started snowing and you’re in Chile
actually when you cross this part a
little sliver of Chile and then you get
back into Argentina so I made it to ash
wyah I got off the last bus and it’s in
a parking lot and it was just so weird
for me to think I had left this corner
in Washington DC and 40 days later I got
off in a parking lot and it was it’s the
end of the road it’s the end of the
pan-american highway it’s the
southernmost piece of pavement in the
world
and there was the National Geographic
Explorer the ship that I was going to
take two days later we reached
Antarctica and I was still in disbelief
that I had actually made it overland
this far
the weather was horrible it was snowing
and I was smiling because it’s exactly
how I wanted Antarctica to be and got in
a rubber boat and sped to shore and I
finally set foot on the Antarctic
continent that was below the Antarctic
Circle I stood on this rock I unfurled
the National Geographic flag that I had
carried and for a split second I felt
that joy and that great honor of being a
National Geographic Explorer of really
doing something different and travelling
in a way that was different and
achieving a far end of the world but not
that many people get to go to the
overland portion of the journey was
exactly ten thousand miles long
I rode 40 buses and it took me 40 days
actually to get there and I added up all
my bus tickets and it’s one thousand one
hundred and two dollars and 63 cents and
my phone bill for tweeting was more than
that but but to me it was it was such an
amazing way to travel and the thing that
was most remarkable about it is it made
the earth feel very small because before
I would always look at a map of the
world and it seems so immense
but once you’ve driven across the earth
it actually it’s it’s we live on a very
small planet and and I can say that now
because I’ve seen I’ve seen half of it
so we kind of decided a National
Geographic to move this to the next
level now I want to take you back to the
very first National Geographic magazine
first issue first page first paragraph
of National Geographic 1888 this is when
the founding fathers of National
Geographic sat down and said what are we
about and they said the National
Geographic Society has been organized to
increase and defuse Geographic knowledge
and a magazine has been determined upon
as one means as one means of
accomplishing these purposes this is the
important line we need to all pay
attention in hopes that it may become a
channel of intercommunication now these
guys were visionary
they didn’t just say let’s have a
magazine and we want to take pretty
pictures for people to look at and we
want to help people with school projects
and we want to teach school boys about
female anatomy it was it wasn’t that at
all it was a channel of inter
communication now I don’t know any
better explanation of social media than
what they’ve described here 124 years
ago a channel of inter communication and
that is what Twitter is now the problem
with Twitter is its name it’s called
Twitter if we called it the system or if
we called it the matrix then I think
we’d take it a lot more seriously and
what’s even worse is the word tweeting
because when we say tweet it almost
sounds impolite like I tweeted and but
really it’s in my opinion this is
literature and I learned something
because I sent over 5,000 tweets when I
traveled from Washington DC to
Antarctica and I learned that there was
a more effective way to write on Twitter
and a less effective and for those who
don’t know Twitter you know it’s a it’s
a way to share by text message you’re
limited to 140 characters so you have to
keep it really short but you can say so
much if you do a right now I didn’t
start out as a pro I’m still not a pro
but I’m learning and I learned a lot
from poets this is one of my favorite
poems by Jack Kerouac it’s from his
American haiku written in 1959 nightfall
boy smashing dandelions with a stick now
this follows an ancient Japanese form of
poetry but it’s very short and it has
all the great angry ingredients of a
tweet of storytelling he has set the
stage he’s given you time he’s given you
place he’s given you color he’s given
you a character and he’s given you
action and you need all of these things
when you’re writing Twitter and so I
read a lot of the Beat poets I always
have and I really like their stuff but I
tried to incorporate this when I was
writing the difference with Twitter and
I think what’s exciting about it is
we’re not sitting there with pen and
paper or paper thinking and trying to
come up with the best thing we’re doing
it immediately we’re writing and
publishing it this
same time and this is the challenge but
it’s also the excitement and I think
it’s the allure of readers on Twitter
and especially my readers because they
know that whatever I’m writing is
happening right now so I tried out
different experiments and one of the
first experiments I did with Twitter
I just wrote tweets I just wrote haiku I
followed traditional haiku patterns and
sometimes I would try to make them more
poetic but sometimes I would just talk
about what was actually happening you
don’t have to stick to the form the five
seven five syllables of haiku I expanded
so this is a tweet I wrote on my trip to
Antarctica passing through a three light
bulb town young girls rest hands on one
another’s shoulders boys on to small
bike swerve in the dirt now again you
can’t have any artificial ingredients if
you haven’t seen these things when
you’re traveling you can’t write them
but in an instant I saw all of these
things from the bus and I wanted to
share them so I did now people still
really criticize Twitter a lot of people
say this isn’t literary it’s just people
chatting if you don’t really understand
a lot of it looks like looks like some
secret code when you’re looking at all
of these different signals and
everything but I believe that Twitter
can be literary and I believe that it
can actually serve a higher purpose so
now we had evolved what we had started
out with which was this one journey of
exploration to Antarctica into something
bigger you know Keith christened me the
digital nomad he said you’re going to go
out and you’re going to keep doing this
and we’re going to experience different
places so I I kind of honed my pack I
got rid of a couple of things I didn’t
need I added a couple more I think that
what I do is different than a lot of the
traditional National Geographic
photographers because they have more
time I often will have five minutes to
do something so I’ve got to know exactly
what tool I’m going to use I have to
find it in my bag and grab it and pull
it out and do it and if I don’t if it’s
you know I need to charge it immediately
or anything I need to be able to access
everything and very short time my office
is the whole world it changes every day
no matter where I go but when you’re
traveling in the middle of nowhere and
you have a picture and you know you’ve
got to get it in before 9 a.m.
Washington DC time that’s a real
challenge
I took this picture in the Great Barrier
Reef of these clownfish I wanted to show
people that clownfish actually have
scientific names it’s not just Nemo and
I set up my portable satellite but the
sailboat you know it’s where at sea so
the sailboats going all over the place
so this picture took me about four hours
to upload but we got it in time we
published it taking good pictures is
extremely difficult this is all about
being in the right place and that’s why
travel and photography go so well
together and this is an old mantra from
National Geographic all the
photographers – saying that’s going
around forever and that that’s f/8 which
is the younger aperture wide open so f/8
and be there and that motto is become
very important for me be there because
if you want to take good pictures you
need to be in the place where the
pictures are happening I’ve tweeted from
hot-air balloons
I’ve tweeted from birchbark canoes I’ve
tweeted above Niagara Falls in a
helicopter I’ve tweeted from camelbacks
and I’ve tweeted not underwater that
doesn’t work yet but almost I tweeted in
real-time while flying a plane in French
so I’m tweeting in French here I’m in
Quebec and I’m flying a Piper Cub I’m
about a thousand feet off the ground
this is my first flying lesson and I
wanted to tweet while I was flying I
never tweet when I’m driving only when
I’m flying I just want to leave with a
couple of little tips for all of you
digital nomads out there things that
things that I’ve learned that that have
helped me one besides being there which
is very important always be there never
let the experience of you know never let
sharing the experience Eclipse having
the experience and that’s very possible
that you can walk into any coffee shop
here and you’re going to see million
people with their phones looking down
like this and it’s very hard to
experience the world around you when
you’re doing this this is in Botswana in
the Okavango Delta beautiful place
surrounded by wildlife and I was with
two journalists from New York and we’re
out there surrounded by lions and
everything else and all they cared about
was that there was no reception on their
phone and there was one spot by the
river
near the Namibian border where there was
a wildebeest carcass and they always
wanted to drive by the carcass because
the carcass for whatever reason had
coverage so they could always download
their email and their tweets whenever we
got by the carcass there was like let’s
go to the carcass let’s go to the
carcass and they were so obsessed with
that they missed out everything else
that we were around and if you’re so
obsessed with kind of sharing the
experience you miss the things that
around you and the third thing is always
use the right tool just like a Munson
used dogs always use the right tool when
you’re out someplace sometimes video is
going to be the best tool sometimes
Twitter’s going to be the best tool
sometimes it’s good to do Facebook or
YouTube or whatever but think about it
before you record and share there’s one
fourth tip that I have and I’ll close
with this and that is you have to unplug
periodically to be a good digital nomad
you also have to be a really good analog
homebody and I’m a really good analog
homebody I love coming home switching
off my phone switching everything off
and being home and if you don’t you just
become crazed because the human mind
works very different than our digital
technology our minds are fascinating we
have subconsciousness that are always
working we take much better pictures
than cameras do we feel a place we have
these emotions but if we don’t shut off
we’re not able to process that and share
it so I’ll just leave with that you
should unplug you will sleep much better
if you do and I want to thank all of you
for coming tonight and listening to my
stories really grateful
you
I tweeted from hot-air balloons I’ve
tweeted from camelbacks I tweeted while
flying a plane in French I just wanted
to write the story as it was happening a
real-time narrative I think it’s the
allure of readers on Twitter they know
that whatever I’m writing is happening
right now good evening everyone these
are two heroes of mine Robert Falcon
Scott who is a British Antarctic
Explorer and we have Roald Amundsen
who’s Norwegian they’ve been done to
death by historians but these were both
heroes they were both explorers he went
to Antarctica and tried to achieve the
South Pole we can’t travel the same way
that they did they were going to a land
that people knew nothing about no one
had even been to the South Pole before
and really people had never traveled to
Antarctica and so this was this was for
them a different kind of adventure that
I knew it could be for us today but
still I feel like the spirit of
exploration is alive and that this is
something that we can keep on doing
today now I tried personally a million
different ways to get to Antarctica and
failed again and again and again and
getting a meet a meeting with Keith
bellows is kind of like seeing The
Wizard of Oz it’s very tricky but I
managed to arrange that and get in there
but immediately I pulled out an old map
it’s like from the 50s it was National
Geographic map of South America and I
said you know I want to travel like
these people used to travel I understand
that we have new technologies today but
I want to kind of use these new
technologies but have the same kind of
adventure I could get on buses and go
most of the way that they went but it
would still be an adventure and not only
that I had this phone right here that
had everything on it had a GPS had a
compass
I could send pictures I could send
videos everything was here and I wanted
to kind of show that we could still have
these same adventures using these new
technologies miraculously Keith said yes
I began to share this experience with my
readers on Twitter on social media
because I wanted this to be a narrative
in real time now I’m a believer that
there’s no such thing as new media
there’s only new technology new media
all that is is like using new technology
if you if you kind of strip all that
away all that we have left our words and
pictures and words and pictures have
been around forever
so I was sharing these words and
pictures as I was getting ready for my
trip I wanted to share this with all of
my readers now if you read the old
explorers books the first thing that
they do is they share what they’re
bringing they kind of go through their
whole packing list so I did the same
thing I laid out everything that I was
going to take with me and I took a
picture of it and showed people this is
what’s inside my pack now I knew that
this was going to be a tricky journey
because I was traveling overland through
so many different climates and I also
knew that my ultimate goal was
Antarctica I’d never been to Antarctica
I figured it was going to be cold but I
couldn’t carry all this with me on the
bus so I said I said you know how am I
going to how am I going to do this well
I ended up mailing my suitcase I filled
it with boots and mittens and hats and
coats and I brought it to the post
office and they actually put stamps on
my suitcase it cost one hundred eleven
dollars and I mailed it to Argentina and
it was a spoiler it was there when I got
there so I was very happy so on New
Year’s Day I head out from this very
building National Geographic
headquarters it was symbolic I wanted to
show that I was just like these
explorers who left who were sent out by
the geographic to go explore the world
and I was going to start from this very
point on earth and I was going to go to
the bottom of the world and I just got
to the bus station on the s2 bus which
runs just outside 16th Street
and I paid my fare which was a dollar 35
and I got on the bus and took off and
Here I am sending my first tweet a
real-time narrative now this was an
experiment for me because all of the
original explorers would go and they
would keep a journal and they would
write about their trip and then they
would come home and actually write a
book and publish and this was a past
tense
kind of memoir about their journey well
I wanted to do the same thing but I
wanted to do in real time I just wanted
to write the story as it was happening
without knowing what was going to happen
just each few minutes I was going to
send out a message as to what was
happening so right here I’m tweeting
them and going by the white house and
then I got to Union Station and I had
not pre purchased any tickets I’d only
bought my first bus ticket which was
from Washington DC to Atlanta and I said
everything after that I’m just going to
make my way south if I keep going south
but I didn’t want it to be too planned
because the original explorers they had
a destination in mind but they didn’t
always know how they were going to get
there so here I am a Union Station
presenting my first ticket to the bus
driver the bus driver looked at me and
said what’s your final destination sir I
turned him I was like Antarctica and he
looked at the tikkis like no you’re
going to Atlanta and he’s like get it so
I get on the bus so I got on the bus and
my biggest challenge on the road was
keeping my batteries full on all of on
my phone because I was tweeting non-stop
and I am you know it just it just bled
the battery I found that I could tweet
for about four or five hours before my
phone went out and here I was taking
huge you know huge long busted bus trips
and and you you learned to kind of form
bonds and trust other people as you
would leave your phone and we would all
take turns watching it my other people
when a door went went to the bathroom
but I found out like that if I just
jumped off the bus even for five minutes
and plug in my phone I could keep just
enough juice to keep going so I
continued across the South I went to
Texas then I entered Mexico I was
terrified when I entered Mexico because
I was so afraid that my 3G coverage
would stop AT&T had promised me that
would work there but
18t so I wasn’t entirely sure and I i
crossed and miraculously it worked
so i crossed all of mexico and before i
knew it i was already in guatemala now
in guatemala my trip slowed down a bit
because no longer was on these big buses
guatemala they use a lot of recycled
school buses from the united states so
the school buses that we all ride on our
kids right on when they’re done when
they go to die they actually go to
guatemala and they drive them down there
and they paint them they decorate them
they’re really fancy and these school
buses keep the entire country connected
the roads in Guatemala are pretty bad
it’s a small country but it feels huge
when you’re there because it’s a so hard
to get from one place to the next so I
just traveled on these school buses
across the entire country
and what was miraculous I thought was to
cross the whole country of Guatemala
cost me six dollars and fifty cents and
there’s a whole there’s no fixed bus
stops you just jump on the front of the
bus and you go and find a seat and then
when you want to get off you just jump
off the back whenever they slow down out
the X you know the rescue emergency door
so I rode this bus all across the will
several of these buses and they call
them chicken buses as you know and this
was a legitimate chicken bus because
there were chickens at my feet you can
kind of hear him cackling in the
background but I met some really fun
people on this bus and this the bus is
their whole life it’s not just about
traveling this is the main form of trade
you know people are bringing all their
vegetables and fruit that they’re
growing and they’re selling on the
marketplace they’re bringing money home
and this is just it really is the way of
life riding the bus in Guatemala is a
way of life for these people so I travel
through Guatemala then through El
Salvador
then Honduras and then I got to
Nicaragua and I was very excited because
I said look I was very kind of proud of
myself let’s look how far I’m getting
I’m actually going to do this
I’m going to at least get through
Central America it only been a few days
but the problem is I got to Nicaragua
and found out that the they closed the
border and there were no more buses that
day to the border with Costa Rica and
then I realized that I actually had a
deadline because I was supposed to get
on a ship to go through the Panama Canal
National Geographic expeditions was was
helping me with this trip and I I was
supposed to be there the next morning
and I had a whole country to cross and I
didn’t know what I was going to do so I
thought well what would the old
Explorers do would they go silk in their
hotel or would they find a way to make
it work so I found a way to make it work
I hitchhiked and I ended up just
hitchhiking the whole way and I made it
to San Jose at the airport I fell asleep
and then I met the National Geographic
expeditions people the next day and I
was I was a wreck I looked awful but
they you know I met them and I got on my
boat and went through the Panama Canal
made it to South America I finally made
it to Ecuador and this to me was the
real achievement because I am a big map
nerd
I love maps and here I’m on the equator
they have a big memorial that says this
is the middle of the world and they
actually have a orange line painted
across the middle saying this is it
allow me Tod del mundo this is this is
it this is the equator so I went and I
stood on it and I tweeted live pictures
of me in real time Here I am standing on
the equator but like I said I’m a
geography nerd so I took out my phone
got the GPS and checked it and we were a
couple seconds off the equator I said
they have mismeasured and there were
thousands of people taking their
pictures and standing on the north and
southern hemisphere and I said no
they’re all frauds this isn’t it I’m
going to find the real one so using my
phone I followed my GPS followed an I
had an app for that because there’s an
app for everything and the real equator
is about half a mile north of here and I
got it there and I was getting closer
and closer and closer and then snap it
all went zero zero zero all the way
across my phone and I drew a line in the
sand and I tweeted it and I was like now
I’m standing on the real
equator so I got back on the bus and one
thing I loved about traveling Overland
the advantage to traveling Overland to
traveling in airplanes is you can
actually see how the earth changes so
slowly how it just transitions from one
landscape into another and Ecuador south
of Ecuador is jungle there’s banana
plantations everywhere it’s so green
people live in houses that are just
shacks with no walls because it’s so hot
all the time and suddenly you cross into
Peru and Peru the north of Peru is just
desert there’s just no water at all and
you drive for a thousand kilometres
through pure coastal desert I got to
Lima and now I felt like you know what
this is great I’m getting there and then
I looked at a map and saw wow I still
have so far to go
I don’t want to waste time I want to
keep going so I went in to buy my next
bus ticket to Bolivia you only need two
things to travel you need a passport and
you need a credit card that’s all I have
so I show that to her got my ticket and
moved on to Bolivia and then in Bolivia
like in Guatemala things slowed down a
great deal because in Bolivia most of
the roads are unpaved and not only did
all the buses break down but the roads
break down and I was there during the
rainy season and almost every bus I
wrote on in Bolivia we got stuck in the
mud and I thought this was a huge
catastrophe but the driver didn’t
because the driver just made us all push
the bus so every time we got stuck in
the mud the drive would you know yell at
all of us and he would stay behind the
wheel and we would all have to go under
so I got very good at pushing and
finally I made it to the border with
Argentina and I was so excited because
in my mind this is my final country I’ve
reached my last country on the journey
the problem with Argentina is it’s huge
it’s like 3,000 miles it’s like driving
from LA to New York that’s the that’s
the length of Argentina and again I I
didn’t have any fixed times except I did
have a boat I had to get on in in
ushuaia so I went full on
crossed Argentina in about seven days
which is a beautiful country and driving
across la pompe in the bus for two days
just Green farm fields and then driving
through Patagonia on a bus was for me
just such a romantic endeavor
really got that sense of travel when
when you go overland through Argentina
it’s another journey
I recommend but like all trips it’s only
worth it if there’s a time where you
think you’re going to die and for me
that was the end of Argentina when I
finally got to Tierra del Fuego I was
getting ready to cross I was ecstatic to
have finally reached the Strait of
Magellan this marked the final boundary
between me and my destination and
getting on my ship to Antarctica
however the sea was too rough to cross
and so we waited and yet by late
afternoon the season picked up and had
become completely impassable we waited
for hours and line of traffic behind a
stretch for almost five miles
eventually the bus driver invited me to
the front of the bus along with several
of his pretty Argentine companions and
we drank mottai which is the Argentine
pastime of passing time as any one drink
might say before it’s great stuff and
it’s how it’s how I we sat for twelve
hours waiting for the waves to calm down
and we drank a lot of Mota in those
twelve hours when it got dark and the
waves picked up that’s when the ferry
decided to go and so we went out on the
ferry and it’s only three miles across
the Strait of Magellan and about half
way across the Strait they thought this
is too dangerous and they turned around
to go back but our boat got blown down
the Strait and so that point it was just
we had to get across it was really scary
I live-tweeted it and said I’m about to
die and everybody on the bus was crying
it took us an hour to cross this
three-mile straight because the seas
were so bad and when we got to the other
side it started snowing now this is
their summer this is the the you know
the southern hemisphere summer and it
started snowing and you’re in Chile
actually when you cross this part a
little sliver of Chile and then you get
back into Argentina so I made it to ash
wyah I got off the last bus and it’s in
a parking lot and it was just so weird
for me to think I had left this corner
in Washington DC and 40 days later I got
off in a parking lot and it was it’s the
end of the road it’s the end of the
pan-american highway it’s the
southernmost piece of pavement in the
world
and there was the National Geographic
Explorer the ship that I was going to
take two days later we reached
Antarctica and I was still in disbelief
that I had actually made it overland
this far
the weather was horrible it was snowing
and I was smiling because it’s exactly
how I wanted Antarctica to be and got in
a rubber boat and sped to shore and I
finally set foot on the Antarctic
continent that was below the Antarctic
Circle I stood on this rock I unfurled
the National Geographic flag that I had
carried and for a split second I felt
that joy and that great honor of being a
National Geographic Explorer of really
doing something different and travelling
in a way that was different and
achieving a far end of the world but not
that many people get to go to the
overland portion of the journey was
exactly ten thousand miles long
I rode 40 buses and it took me 40 days
actually to get there and I added up all
my bus tickets and it’s one thousand one
hundred and two dollars and 63 cents and
my phone bill for tweeting was more than
that but but to me it was it was such an
amazing way to travel and the thing that
was most remarkable about it is it made
the earth feel very small because before
I would always look at a map of the
world and it seems so immense
but once you’ve driven across the earth
it actually it’s it’s we live on a very
small planet and and I can say that now
because I’ve seen I’ve seen half of it
so we kind of decided a National
Geographic to move this to the next
level now I want to take you back to the
very first National Geographic magazine
first issue first page first paragraph
of National Geographic 1888 this is when
the founding fathers of National
Geographic sat down and said what are we
about and they said the National
Geographic Society has been organized to
increase and defuse Geographic knowledge
and a magazine has been determined upon
as one means as one means of
accomplishing these purposes this is the
important line we need to all pay
attention in hopes that it may become a
channel of intercommunication now these
guys were visionary
they didn’t just say let’s have a
magazine and we want to take pretty
pictures for people to look at and we
want to help people with school projects
and we want to teach school boys about
female anatomy it was it wasn’t that at
all it was a channel of inter
communication now I don’t know any
better explanation of social media than
what they’ve described here 124 years
ago a channel of inter communication and
that is what Twitter is now the problem
with Twitter is its name it’s called
Twitter if we called it the system or if
we called it the matrix then I think
we’d take it a lot more seriously and
what’s even worse is the word tweeting
because when we say tweet it almost
sounds impolite like I tweeted and but
really it’s in my opinion this is
literature and I learned something
because I sent over 5,000 tweets when I
traveled from Washington DC to
Antarctica and I learned that there was
a more effective way to write on Twitter
and a less effective and for those who
don’t know Twitter you know it’s a it’s
a way to share by text message you’re
limited to 140 characters so you have to
keep it really short but you can say so
much if you do a right now I didn’t
start out as a pro I’m still not a pro
but I’m learning and I learned a lot
from poets this is one of my favorite
poems by Jack Kerouac it’s from his
American haiku written in 1959 nightfall
boy smashing dandelions with a stick now
this follows an ancient Japanese form of
poetry but it’s very short and it has
all the great angry ingredients of a
tweet of storytelling he has set the
stage he’s given you time he’s given you
place he’s given you color he’s given
you a character and he’s given you
action and you need all of these things
when you’re writing Twitter and so I
read a lot of the Beat poets I always
have and I really like their stuff but I
tried to incorporate this when I was
writing the difference with Twitter and
I think what’s exciting about it is
we’re not sitting there with pen and
paper or paper thinking and trying to
come up with the best thing we’re doing
it immediately we’re writing and
publishing it this
same time and this is the challenge but
it’s also the excitement and I think
it’s the allure of readers on Twitter
and especially my readers because they
know that whatever I’m writing is
happening right now so I tried out
different experiments and one of the
first experiments I did with Twitter
I just wrote tweets I just wrote haiku I
followed traditional haiku patterns and
sometimes I would try to make them more
poetic but sometimes I would just talk
about what was actually happening you
don’t have to stick to the form the five
seven five syllables of haiku I expanded
so this is a tweet I wrote on my trip to
Antarctica passing through a three light
bulb town young girls rest hands on one
another’s shoulders boys on to small
bike swerve in the dirt now again you
can’t have any artificial ingredients if
you haven’t seen these things when
you’re traveling you can’t write them
but in an instant I saw all of these
things from the bus and I wanted to
share them so I did now people still
really criticize Twitter a lot of people
say this isn’t literary it’s just people
chatting if you don’t really understand
a lot of it looks like looks like some
secret code when you’re looking at all
of these different signals and
everything but I believe that Twitter
can be literary and I believe that it
can actually serve a higher purpose so
now we had evolved what we had started
out with which was this one journey of
exploration to Antarctica into something
bigger you know Keith christened me the
digital nomad he said you’re going to go
out and you’re going to keep doing this
and we’re going to experience different
places so I I kind of honed my pack I
got rid of a couple of things I didn’t
need I added a couple more I think that
what I do is different than a lot of the
traditional National Geographic
photographers because they have more
time I often will have five minutes to
do something so I’ve got to know exactly
what tool I’m going to use I have to
find it in my bag and grab it and pull
it out and do it and if I don’t if it’s
you know I need to charge it immediately
or anything I need to be able to access
everything and very short time my office
is the whole world it changes every day
no matter where I go but when you’re
traveling in the middle of nowhere and
you have a picture and you know you’ve
got to get it in before 9 a.m.
Washington DC time that’s a real
challenge
I took this picture in the Great Barrier
Reef of these clownfish I wanted to show
people that clownfish actually have
scientific names it’s not just Nemo and
I set up my portable satellite but the
sailboat you know it’s where at sea so
the sailboats going all over the place
so this picture took me about four hours
to upload but we got it in time we
published it taking good pictures is
extremely difficult this is all about
being in the right place and that’s why
travel and photography go so well
together and this is an old mantra from
National Geographic all the
photographers – saying that’s going
around forever and that that’s f/8 which
is the younger aperture wide open so f/8
and be there and that motto is become
very important for me be there because
if you want to take good pictures you
need to be in the place where the
pictures are happening I’ve tweeted from
hot-air balloons
I’ve tweeted from birchbark canoes I’ve
tweeted above Niagara Falls in a
helicopter I’ve tweeted from camelbacks
and I’ve tweeted not underwater that
doesn’t work yet but almost I tweeted in
real-time while flying a plane in French
so I’m tweeting in French here I’m in
Quebec and I’m flying a Piper Cub I’m
about a thousand feet off the ground
this is my first flying lesson and I
wanted to tweet while I was flying I
never tweet when I’m driving only when
I’m flying I just want to leave with a
couple of little tips for all of you
digital nomads out there things that
things that I’ve learned that that have
helped me one besides being there which
is very important always be there never
let the experience of you know never let
sharing the experience Eclipse having
the experience and that’s very possible
that you can walk into any coffee shop
here and you’re going to see million
people with their phones looking down
like this and it’s very hard to
experience the world around you when
you’re doing this this is in Botswana in
the Okavango Delta beautiful place
surrounded by wildlife and I was with
two journalists from New York and we’re
out there surrounded by lions and
everything else and all they cared about
was that there was no reception on their
phone and there was one spot by the
river
near the Namibian border where there was
a wildebeest carcass and they always
wanted to drive by the carcass because
the carcass for whatever reason had
coverage so they could always download
their email and their tweets whenever we
got by the carcass there was like let’s
go to the carcass let’s go to the
carcass and they were so obsessed with
that they missed out everything else
that we were around and if you’re so
obsessed with kind of sharing the
experience you miss the things that
around you and the third thing is always
use the right tool just like a Munson
used dogs always use the right tool when
you’re out someplace sometimes video is
going to be the best tool sometimes
Twitter’s going to be the best tool
sometimes it’s good to do Facebook or
YouTube or whatever but think about it
before you record and share there’s one
fourth tip that I have and I’ll close
with this and that is you have to unplug
periodically to be a good digital nomad
you also have to be a really good analog
homebody and I’m a really good analog
homebody I love coming home switching
off my phone switching everything off
and being home and if you don’t you just
become crazed because the human mind
works very different than our digital
technology our minds are fascinating we
have subconsciousness that are always
working we take much better pictures
than cameras do we feel a place we have
these emotions but if we don’t shut off
we’re not able to process that and share
it so I’ll just leave with that you
should unplug you will sleep much better
if you do and I want to thank all of you
for coming tonight and listening to my
stories really grateful
you
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