Geography Is Summer Vacation: So Where Ya Going?

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Summer is here! And with summer comes all the travel plans and vacationing that you've been dreaming of all year long. This is a time of year when most of the world's population will factor some form of travel into their plans. Because of this, we decided to make a whole podcast episode all about the summer vacation! How did it become a thing in the first place? Where are people coming and going from mostly? And why is Iceland such a relatively huge destination every year for trans-Atlantic travelers? All answered on today's podcast episode!

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Hunter, Do you have any travelplans this summer and if so, where
are you going. I do havetravel plans this summer, and in about
a week heading up to Seattle area, where I have relatives, my wife's
family and our nephews are graduating fromhigh school, so there's going to be

(00:25):
a celebration of that fantastic achievement.I'm really glad you brought up high school
and that you have some relatives whoare graduating or entering summer vacation summer break
for themselves, because that's going toplay a little bit of a role.
And later in the episode later today, Oh good, well, I'm we
did not plan this as a listener. This is just organically. It came

(00:46):
about here. So we've got thattrip and then we're going to the East
coast, Connecticut and New York tovisit family there. So yeah, that's
that's the main part of our That'swhat summer vacation looks like this year.
What about you, Well, well, I'll get I'll get to myself in
a second. But this is alsohitting on another thing that we're going to
talk about in that one aspect ofyour summer summer travel plans are going to

(01:08):
be a road trip. I'm assuming. I'm assuming you're not going to fly
up to Seattle. Some people do, but know that will for sure.
Yeah, you got a little bitof a road trip in there. And
then I'm assuming that when you goto Connecticut, you're going to fly.
You're not going to drive. Weare flying, yes, Yeah, so
you're you're also going to rent avehicle for part of that trip. Yeah,

(01:29):
you're also tackling two of the primarymethods that people experience summer vacation travel.
So we're going to talk about thata little bit as well a lot
of a lot of So as faras myself, I actually I don't really
have any travel plans. I justgot back from Boston for a thing,
but I guess that was still spring, so I don't know if we can

(01:49):
factor that into summer travel plans.But that was for that was just for
some family stuff. I don't usuallytravel during summer because one, I don't
have kids, so I can basicallytravel year round without and interrupt a school
schedule, which is a privilege thatI currently have. And two, it's

(02:10):
so dang nice here in Portland.Why would I want to And it's not
very nice the rest of the year. Why would I want to leave Portland
when it's nice time to be here. Yeah, I agree. Yeah,
And if you can travel, sayyear, then you don't have to use
summer necessarily as your main vacation time. I will say that I have plans
in October to go to Costa Ricafor a few weeks, so that'll be

(02:34):
my That'll be my I guess,not summer travel, but my vacation the
closest I have to a summer vacation, fall vacation. So listener, we
are talking all about your summer vacation, our summer vacation, everybody's summer vacation
today on the podcast, and we'regoing to talk about that mostly because well

(02:54):
it's as of we're recording this todayon June twenty. First, it is
a fitly summer, which means thatat least across the United States and probably
Canada, most kids are out ofschool. I'm not sure if that's the
case for the rest of the world. I know different places do things a
little bit differently. In fact,they did look this up a little bit
and I saw that some most placeshave some form of a break, but

(03:15):
they could be as small short asfour weeks all the way up to here
in the US, which is whylike two and a half months, three
months, something like that, somethinglike that. Yeah, yeah, sound
like that. And because it's kidsare out of school and the weather is
generally warm, it means that peopletend to travel more often during these months,
and we have some statistics to backthat up. That's not me just

(03:35):
saying, oh, I think that'sprobably what happens, but we'll get to
that in a little bit. Butalso we're going to talk about it because
the whole idea of summer vacation,a summer vacation has really led to a
lot of impacts around the world.Right, So we've talked about this in
some other episodes, such as ourair travel episode. But given the current
economics and transportation technologies available today,people are able to travel much farther,

(04:00):
much wider than they ever have inthe history of human beings. So sure,
yeah, absolutely right, How howcan it not be nobody? You
know, one hundred years ago,people weren't flying across the Atlantic Ocean.
They were still well yeah, no, not one hundred years ago. Now,
maybe like sixty years ago is whenthey started doing that. Something like
that yeah, yeah, that's right, which became a little bit more common.

(04:21):
So anyways, check out the checkout the air travel episode they're not
Yeah yeah, we'll probably do anothercall out for that one here in a
little bit. So this is goingto seem like a silly question. We've
kind of already answered it, butlet's just get to the heart of it.
Okay, what is a summer vacation? Oh, a summer vacation is

(04:41):
a trip that you take during thesummer. Is that am I missing something
there? Basically? Yeah, wealways like to just sort of like ask
each other the question of like whatis what is it we're talking about in
these episodes. This one seemed alittle silly to ask because it's it's kind
of it's all boiled right there inthe name, right, it's summer.
It's a vacation you take during summer. But I kind of just wanted to

(05:01):
ask it just to like really likeget to the point that that's sort of
what we're going to be talking about. I spell people, it's a ritual,
right, because sometimes people vacation thesame place every year, and so
maybe for some people it's going tosomeplace new, for some people it's revisiting
a place, a favorite place,right. And it's important to note here
and we're going to talk about thiswhen we get to some statistics later in

(05:24):
the episode, but it's important tonote here that summer vacation does truly mean
summer vacation, in that if you'rein Australia or New Zealand or South Africa
or any of the countries that arein the southern half of the Hemisphere,
you're typically taking your vacations in thesame time period of you know, summer
for you, right, So thisis this is a trend that we do
see elsewhere. So summer vacation forus here, you know, June,

(05:46):
July, August, maybe a littlebit into September is not going to be
this felt the same way as somebodyin Australia who's probably going to be looking
more at January, r December,January, February, maybe a little summer
vacation. Yeah, still summer vacation. Yeah, you still see the trend.
Yeah, Summer vacation also refers toa period of time, as you
already alluded to, when students don'tgo most most students don't go to class.

(06:12):
There's there's very summer schools and thingslike that, but that the traditional
school year is out for the summer. Yeah, exactly. In fact,
Hunter, you have kids, wealready talked about it. When did they
start school again at the end ofAugust? I believe it is. Oh
wow, that seems early. Isthat always been the case? Yeah,
it's usually like that. There's abunch of days off in November. No

(06:33):
school November it's sometimes called. Butyeah, that's the way that it works
out, is the very end ofAugust. So I've always I've always been
very cognizant when I do travel thatI always travel after Labor Day, right,
because I think the the idea isthat once kids go back to school,
there's far less travel, right,Families are no longer traveling, and

(06:56):
so therefore everything gets a lot cheaper, right. I never, I never,
I would have always assumed that that'swhen schools start again. It's like
the day after Labor Day or somethinglike that. I don't, I don't
know, I don't have Some schoolsprobably start in September. At Portland State
we start at the near the endof September, right, Yes, And
I do remember that from my daysas a college student that it was.

(07:18):
It started late. It's like abig bath gap, and I think a
lot of students, particularly in theEast Coast and other places, they start
classes at the end of August.Right. It's fascinating, and everybody has
a different schedule. I guess itdepends on your local school district generally,
though, as you said, generallykids are off in between, you know,

(07:40):
sometime between June and into August,maybe into September generally. So let's
go ahead and jump to sort oflike a history ish kind of section.
Now we're going to talk about thehistory. How do we get to the
idea of summification. It's not somethingthat's been around forever. This is sort
of a recent concept. Yep.That said attacking the history. This is

(08:01):
this summer vacation is a concept.It's not really there's not like a tomb
of somebody who's written, you knowthat, you know, a history volume
of summer vacation. There's not reallyany necessarily names that pop up. There's
really just a series of events thathave happened that have enabled sort of this
idea of what we're able to do. Maybe there's a book out there that's
sort of obscure. I don't know. I I dig a little bit of

(08:24):
digging, and I sort of cobbledtogether sort of how we got from point
A to point B. So we'rejust going to do that in sort of
the section. We're just going totalk a little about the history of how
do we get to the summer vacation. So yeah, so well, I
would say the as you you know, already shared your summer travel plans,
I would say that's a fairly normalexperience from most people these days. Obviously,

(08:46):
there are different privileges based on incomethat people have or you know,
based around the world, depending whereyou are, that could also influence things.
We have a US perspective. Obviouslya lot of people do think about
summer vacation to some degree. Butif we go back even a little bit
in time, it wasn't really allthe case that people would do this.
This was sort of new concept.Right. In fact, the summer break

(09:09):
you know that we know today forkids was really more of a practical time
off for agricultural duties, right.So, yeah, there's a lot of
harvesting. You know, I havea cherry tree outside my house right now,
and it's you know, fully eruptingwith cherries, right, and yeah,
absolutely, I just picked a bunchof those cherries yesterday and it's a

(09:31):
lot of work. It is.I made a cherry picker recently and it's
you know, sort of cobbled together. It works, but yeah, it's
labor intensive. Yeah, very laborintensive. So you can see why.
So like that was that was thewhole purpose, right, That's why we
have this break. It's kind ofweird that kids still get the time off
because most the vast majority of kidsin the United States at least are not

(09:56):
factored into any sort of agricultural business. In fact, I even read something
that's a lot of children who areborn on farms still don't really participate in
the same agricultural activities, right,because a lot of things have been mechanized.
There's just a lot of the industryis very different today, I guess
is what I'll say. I'm notgoing to dive too deep into that.
But we still have it, right, that is still a break. It's

(10:18):
time honored set inside our That's whywe start late in September at PSU.
I think because you know, peoplewere needed, young people were needed on
the farm up until like you said, you know, that's probably changed a
lot since the post war era orsomething like that. But you know,
throughout most of history, families havebeen farming together. Yeah, exactly.

(10:39):
But Hunter, in the late eighteenhundreds and then into the early nineteen hundreds,
something started happening. Do you havean idea of what that might have
been. Is this an industrialization thingor exactly? Industrialization? Well, industrialization
combined with urbanization, right, Sothis is sort of the area where people

(11:00):
started moving into cities. And oncepeople started moving into cities, one,
there was no longer any agricultural workfor people who moved into cities. For
one, it was very hard.Transportation technologies didn't really allow you to just
like zip out, you know,out of town for an hour, right,
It was still very rudimentary. Soyou're basically stuck in this city.
And because of that, there wassimply no reason for kids to you know,

(11:26):
be working through summer, and sothey just sort of had this summer
break. At this point in time, there was a lot of child workers
and factories, so I'm want tocall that out. So there was that
aspect. But with all of this, there was a growing middle class,
and with that growing middle class camemore wealth, and with more wealth became
more sort of what we call leisuretravel. Now, of course, if

(11:48):
you were a nobility, you knowin Europe, for example, or very
wealthy prior to sort of this periodof time, let's say, you know,
going back to the fifteen hundreds,sixteen hundreds, like, you know,
they likely had experiences that were similarto a summer vacation. Right,
this isn't this is this is anidea. This is sort of when it's

(12:09):
starting to spread beyond this sort ofvery small class of people. It was
the vast majority of out of thecity, right, Like, yeah,
exactly, we have that the vastmajority, the vast majority of people prior
to this time, this sort ofearly late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds
did not have anything that came evenclose to this kind of experience. In

(12:30):
fact, at this time, thevast majority of people still didn't, but
it was growing. Right, Thisis sort of when this idea was kind
of came to be. And thisalso started to happen at the same time
as the expansion of the railway systemsacross Europe and North America. Predominantly Again,
there's other places that are experiencing thisas well. But with these technologies
travel became even more accessible and affordable, and we have a whole episode all

(12:52):
about trains and high speed rail.You can go check that out to learn
more about that. Yes, yeah, absolutely so. In England, seaside
towns such as Brighton and Blackpool becamepopular destinations for urban dwellers seeking respite from
their busy city life, and similarly, the American elite began flocking to places

(13:13):
such as Newport, Rhode Island andthe Catskill Mountains in New York. In
New York, recall that during thistime, listener cities were not a great
place to be. This is notif you're interested in learning about how difficult
it was to live in a cityduring the period of sort of classic industrialization.

(13:37):
Pick up any book by Charles Dickensand read the first three pages and
you'll get a good appreciation for itwas pretty rough going for most people.
They were polluted, they were verydirty, they were it was just very
and like the living unless you wereagain very privileged. If you were living
in a city, you're probably livingin pretty cramped quarters. There wasn't a

(13:58):
lot of safety regulations. It wasjust it was a very rough time to
be a city, intense sounds,intense smells. Yeah, there was a
when we look at a picture,we can't appreciate those things. But all
the senses were subjected to kinds ofthings that maybe a lot of people aren't
having to deal with now. Maybesome of those things, but maybe some,

(14:22):
but not to the same degree,I would argue, right, not
to the massive amount of people.Coincidentally, a lot of those same cities
are now the tourist destinations today,which I think is a sit of a
cosmic cosmic the hilarity right there.So at this point in time, most
travel was either based on where therail was going, right, so very
limited, or still via wagons andhorse carriages, so it was slow or

(14:43):
very specific where you were then goingto a very specific place, that's all.
Or you were going to go ina very slow manner. But one
invention would would really change things,and that would be the automobile. So
again we have an episode all aboutthe US automobile industry. You go check
it out, listen all about it, learn about those I promise there's gonna
be a lot of call outs inthis episode. This is just made for

(15:07):
that. Yeah, So the inventionand diffusion of the automobile in the early
nineteen hundreds revolutionized travel and development ofthe highway system, such as the Interstate
Highway system here in the US.In the nineteen fifties, there was other
highway systems around the world. Canadahad a highway system being built, Europe
had a Germany's very famous Audubon wasalready built at this point or sort of

(15:31):
in the early nineteen hundred period,right. These things facilitated this kind of
like freedom of travel that the automobilepromised at the time, and it also
facilitated something called the road trip,certainly something that we call here in the
US, which is a very commonconcept. And Hunter, what's the longest
road trip You've ever taken? Thelongest road trip I've ever taken is driving

(15:54):
across the United States from where towear let's see, Washington, d C.
To San Francisco, although there weresome long stops along the way,
but that was that was part ofit. I mean, got it.
Yeah, that's a cross country trip. That's a road trip. My longest

(16:17):
was from Los Angeles to Dayton,Ohio, which is kind of an obscure
place to visit. But I hadsome friends living there, and so me
and four of my buddies we allpacked into a car and decided to go
visit visit our friends out there.And we did it straight shot. We
didn't we didn't we didn't stay overany place. We just sort of took
turns. So I don't remember whattime it was, but it was.

(16:38):
It was a long, long ride, and we were four smelly boys doing
that. I think we were alllike eighteen or nineteen or something. Wow.
Anyways, So with the automobile,families could now travel long distances at
their own pace. As you hadmentioned, you made some stops, you
could you know, sort of seethe sites, you could do different things.
This led led to the popularity ofdestinations such as national parks and theme

(17:03):
parks. Right. So national parksagain, we have a whole episode about
that. Go check it out.Maybe we'll have a theme parks episode someday,
and I think we should. Yeah, But you know, national parks
sort of came to be sort ofthe mid eighteen hundreds here in the United
States anyways, And while they didhave some popularity in the beginning, and
you know, Yellowstone very famously hada train sup that went directly to it,

(17:26):
it would really be the automobile thatwould allow people to fully explore them
sort of at their own pace andon their own schedule. So the road
trip really became synonymous at this point, sort of the fifties and sixties with
the with the idea of a summervacation. Right. So you have like
movies such as Vacation with who isit Chevy Chase? Yeah yeah, Chevy

(17:48):
Chase, right, and you knowwhen they're going on a vacation to a
theme park, right and going onthis big long road trip. These are
very iconic sort of moments. AndI think that movie takes place in the
seventies or something, may have beenthe eighties, but what ever, Yeah,
yeah, close enough. I'm gonnacall it. I'm gonna call it
Mulligan on that one. All right, let's keep it moving. So as

(18:10):
we're hitting this sort of same periodof time, the fifties, sixty seventies,
another thing is starting to happen.So the economic prosperity of World War
Two led to a pretty significant increaseinto disposal, disposable income and leisure time
in the United States as usual,not for everybody broadly, there's a large,
large amount of people who don't feelthat same wealth generation. But this

(18:32):
also started to see the birth ofthe modern tourism industry. And mostly this
is start when we start to seethe modern birth of the international tourism industry,
which today is huge. So commercialairlines began offering affordable flights, affordable
ish flights, and these made internationaltravel more accessible to people everywhere. And

(18:52):
this is also when Europe would beginto start to see a surge and American
tourists who are easy eager to visithistoric sites and cultural landmarks, particularly around
things that had occurred during World WarTwo, which at this point in time,
say the nineteen seventies, that's stillrelatively recent in memory, right,

(19:12):
that's twenty five years behind. Right. You could have a father or a
grandfather at this time who is stillable to travel, and you go and
see these things, right, andyou can experience that with them. And
so this is one of the originalimpetuses for that migration, that tourist migration
movement for Americans specifically potentially Canadians aswell, al though I don't have information

(19:37):
on that. Countries like Italy,France, and Spain would eventually become hotspots
for summer vacations attracting millions of visitorseach year, not just from Americas,
I guanian, Yeah, absolutely,yeah, not just from Americans, but
also from Northern Europeans and people inthe UK. I know Spain. I
think Spain and Portugal today are verybig, very popular destinations for British people.

(20:00):
That's true. Yeah, So eachof those places attract millions of visitors
each year. We're going to getsome specific numbers here in a little bit.
By the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, the concept of the tour,
the package tour had taken hold,so travel companies like Thomas Cook in the
UK and Club Med and France offeredall inclusive vacation packages covering flights, accommodations

(20:21):
and activities. Hunter. This issort of a foreign concept to me.
I don't know if the same ideastill exists, because I don't know these
companies at all. Do you recognizeeither of these? Yeah, I remember
advertisements for Club Med and I meanwe still have the equivalent today. It's
really a resort type situation, okay. And I mean also booking tickets for
you know, finding deals for flightswas a little bit more complicated back then.

(20:48):
That's why they were. They hadtravel agents even that was that was
an industry and people who would helpyou book trips and hotels and all these
kinds of things. Of course,now it's much easier to do that as
an individual, well because of theInternet. Yeah, I remember that era.
Yeah, I so I had readthese companies. I was like,
I don't know who these people are, not I think it's the right And

(21:15):
so this basically brings us up totoday. I said, this is going
to be a pretty abridged history.It's more of a how do we how
did this thing come to be?And this is generally right, we cant
you know, it's it's a combinationof wealth and transportation technologies that have allowed
us to and to a degree ofthe Internet, as you just pointed out,
that sort of combined to get usto the point where now we have

(21:36):
a summer vacation where going to Europefor example. You know, from here
in Portland, I'm saying, hey, I'm gonna bop over to Italy for
two weeks. That's not a foreignconcept to a lot of people, right,
right, that's certainly to hear about. Maybe maybe not everybody can afford
that, but certainly, like mostpeople have heard or have family members who
have done something similar. That's apretty common occurrence relatively. Nature of the

(22:00):
travel was different though, before theinternet. I mean, you could book
ahead and you know, use atravel guide and call up and make a
reservation. But oftentimes you would justroll into a town or a city or
someplace and start looking for accommodation.And it wasn't always as pre planned as

(22:21):
it might be today. Of course, there's more people traveling than there ever
have been today, so there's alot more competition for places to say and
this kind of stuff. But itwas a little bit, i don't know,
spontaneous. I'm a little bit moreorganic before before we had the technologies
we have today. You know,the idea of that sounds very fun,

(22:44):
kind of nice, to be honest, It also gives me a lot of
anxiety thinking about it. Yeah,no, it was. It added a
definitely an anxious twist to travel,but there was some excitement of the unknown
instead of sort of kind of knowingexactly what you're going to be doing,
which I it's not true for everybody. A lot of people just go someplace
and show up and check it out. But I think a lot of people

(23:06):
really plan pretty heavily now, right, totally. Yeah, Well, there's
a lot more we could say aboutthe history. We could sort of go
through a lot more in depth,but we're gonna have to move on.
If you are interested in, youknow, learning more about sort of various
travel aspects, you can go checkout our episodes on National Parks Hawaii,
Alaska, and there's so many more. I mean, there's so many episodes
that we sort of touch on thisand little bits here and there. So

(23:30):
right, go check those out.But for now, we're going to hit
our very first ad break, sowe will be right back, and we're
back. This is the Geography IsEverything Podcast. We just ran through a
bunch of sort of history of summervacation. How do we get to this

(23:52):
concept? Now we're actually going torun through various global statistics kind of looking
at where people are coming in goingtoday. Right, So this is kind
of be this is where we're gonnastart bringing you know, a lot of
our geography into the mix here,right, Like, let's let's let's break
out a little bit. So nowthis episode is all about your summer vacation
and the numbers. We're going torun through aren't really exclusive to summer.

(24:18):
I guess that's the caveat all.Right, that said, we can say,
because we have we have statistics ofback this up, that travel in
summer is predominantly when people do theirtravel, because we have a bunch of
un data that says that. SoI just want to make that call out.
We're gonna be throwing numbers at youthat's gonna be inclusive the of the
entire year. Just know that summeris going to have the bulk of of

(24:42):
that popular or that's that travel andso it's the high time those right.
And I already mentioned this earlier inthe episode. Even in Southern Hemisphere countries,
the summer men months tend to stillsee the peak, though they're not
quite as pronounced. So although theirwinter months don't really see this, they
I also don't really see the samerole in travel as we do up here.

(25:03):
This can likely be explained by thefact that people from the Northern Hemisphere,
which is the most populous hemisphere,are still traveling to these countries when
they have their summer break. Right, So if we're here in summer in
the United States and say we wantto go to Australia, we'd be traveling
down there into their winter. Thereforethey would I think that sort of props
up there winter a little bit moretheir winter travel. They still get most

(25:29):
of their travel in summer though.So Hunter, question for you, Yes,
what country would you think is themost traveled country in the world as
far as international tourism goes. Myfirst guess is France because I know a
lot of people go to Paris fromaround the world. But I also know
that recently Japan has had a bigupsurge in tourism. But I would I

(25:55):
would, I guess I would sayFrance, just so I'm gonna throw that
out there. It is France.Oh absolutely, Okay, Well, there's
gonna be a little bit of caveatwith our data here. So all of
our day is coming from the UnitedNations, which tracks global travel. This
also means that our country data iscoming from twenty twenty two, So twenty
twenty two means that it's probably stillimpacted by the COVID nineteen pandemic a little

(26:19):
bit. We have some we haveglobal numbers for twenty twenty three. We
don't have country numbers individual country numbers. I guess I don't know. I
don't know how UND's breaking out theirdata. So as of twenty twenty two,
France was the top top traveled countrywith almost eighty million international visitors that
year, which is a lot.I mean, that's more than their population

(26:41):
right right. This would be followedby Spain okay at number two with about
seventy two million, and then theUnited States at about fifty one million.
Wow. And then just to gothrough the top ten list would be Turkey,
Italy, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, and then

(27:02):
Austria. So this would be ourtop ten for twenty twenty two. Again.
Now Japan very well could likely todaybe up there, but I think
in twenty twenty two it still wasn'ta highly traveled country due to the COVID
nineteen. Well you couldn't go intwenty twenty two, so that's maybe probably.
I mean it's only recently that you'vebeen able to travel to Japan,
and I think because of that,there's this huge swell and people who've gone

(27:26):
to visit. We were there lastyear and the line to get you know,
through immigration took over an hour atleast, wow, our hour and
a half just tons and tons ofpeople waiting just to check in legally to
the country. Wow. Incredible.Well, so, Hunter, as you
look at this this list that Ijust read, or as I just said,

(27:48):
did you notice any trend there,did you pick up on anything Europe?
Yes, exactly. It is notthe trend you're looking for here,
the geographical I mean, it isgrouping dominated by Europe. Like, Europe
is far and away the most traveledcontinent, region, whatever you want to
call it in the world. Andso this is this is interesting because it

(28:12):
shows that, I think the allureof an area of the world that held
so much of the world's wealth andbuilt so much of its you know,
cities and infrastructure off of that wealthfor a long time, and it's still
kind of reaping the rewards of thatwealth, which is I mean, it's
just an interesting thing thing to thinkabout it. I don't necessarily have like

(28:33):
a criticism over it's just something like, wow, that's kind of still like
sort of paying dividends for them.I think. Well, I think that
Europeans travel a lot, and probablyEuropeans somewhat commonly traveled to other places in
Europe. That's international travel. SoI mean that's not all of it,
of course, no, it wouldn'tbe counted. So somebody going from Germany

(28:53):
to Italy would not be counted asinternational travel because you need to Oh okay,
yes, the UN's only counting internationaltravel because they're getting their numbers from
from passport checks. Right. It'svery very specific. And if you go
from Germany to Italy, you're notlike, if you're a German person you're
going into Italy, you're not goingthrough a passport check. But if you

(29:14):
go to Switzerland you do. Ifyou go to Switzerland you do. Yes,
yeah, so I guess within theEuropean Union, and you're not doing
this in the UK now as wellsince the brexitent Yeah so yeah, I
said, within the European Union,it's the free movement of people and so
maybe they're not counting that. Butyeah, I get the distinction, right,
But yes, to your point,yes, if you're going from I

(29:37):
mean there's a number of countries downthere, but yeah, Switzerland to any
of the other countries. Are anybodygoing to Switzerland, you're going through customs
that's getting counted. Same with theUK now, potentially I can't remember a
couple maybe Norway up in Scandinavia.I can't. I can't remember what their
status is in terms of because there'salso there's the European Union. There's also
the Shengen Zone, which is similarbut not the same as the European Union.

(30:02):
I think not all the countries ofthe European Union belong to the Shenggan
Agreement, and there may be afew who aren't in the Europeanion who do
participate in that. But that's theShengan Agreement is the idea that you can
travel from different European countries without havingto be passport controlled. Right now,
there's a caveat with our data hunter. There are countries that aren't included,

(30:26):
so UN just doesn't have the numbersfor them. So, for example,
China, we don't have numbers forinternational tourism into China. And that's a
that's a big one, because it'sa big one. Yeah, it's a
big one. I still don't I'mnot sure if they would still hit I'm
not sure if they would still hitthe international travel to make it into the

(30:47):
top ten. Maybe they would,I don't. I don't know do the
statistics. Do the statistics include peoplewho are from China who visit other places
or is that not part of itas well? We are going to get
into domestic tourism a little bit.No, but I mean so like somebody
from trying to go into France orsomething like that, Oh yeah, that
would be included. Yeah, sobecause it's it's being counted at right,

(31:07):
So France is basically reporting this ishow many people we had go through our
customs, right, they're saying wehad seventy nine million people come through in
twenty twenty two from other places,So they would be counted absolutely unless what
wouldn't be counted would be some sortof travel that's you know, undocumented that
somebody sneaks in, you know thesekinds of things, right, Well,
that I would think that maybe makesthis little This is the point of entry

(31:32):
as well, because once you goto France, you can go to Spain
and Italy and various places, andthen those statistics aren't captured really because the
point of entry was the place youflew into. Yeah, exactly, so
they do get a little muddied,especially for a place like Europe, you
can't really track it. And thisis also where we get to so we're

(31:53):
gonna talk about domestic travel in justsecond, but let me let me finish
up my thought here on international travel. So in total, as of twenty
twenty three, so we have twentytwenty three numbers, around one point three
billion people traveled from their home countryto another country. Again, we don't
even have numbers for China and anumber of countries as well. That's a

(32:15):
lot of international travel. That's alot of Yeah, it's incredible. So
this is still down, if youcan believe it, from the twenty nineteen
high of almost one point five billionpeople. But twenty twenty four is shaping
up to be a monster year fortravel. So especially with things like the
summer Olympics in Paris, I imaginethe France's numbers are going to be boosted

(32:37):
a little bit more. We'll see. But it's really quite incredible how many
people do travel internationally. And ofcourse not everybody's going for pleasure. You
know, there's there's reasons you know, go back, you know, help
family with something, you know,you're living as a migrant somewhere. Business
is still business. Travel is stillthing, although it's been diminished since the
COVID nineteen pandemic, so there arestill other reasons for travel, but broadly

(32:59):
this many people are traveling, alot of those are probably doing uh for
pleasure, and a lot of thosepeople are probably doing it in the summer
months. That's what we can say. So now let's talk about domestic travel,
because you were talking a little bitabout that. Yes, so,
so a question for you, doyou want to take a guess at who
who might have the most domestic travel, so most vacationing within a country from

(33:22):
people from the country. The UnitedStates? Possibly the United States is number
two. They're not number one.I don't know if you would get number
one because it's a country that wedon't have data for international travel for but
for some reason we do have it. Ue does have it for domestic internet
or for domestic travel. It's China. Yeah, I mean it makes sense

(33:45):
China. A lot of people there, right, So China has, according
to the United Nations, the mostamount of domestic travel. Obviously, there's
one point four billion people who travelwithin the country. This will be followed
by the United States. We'll getto the full list here in a second.
But there's a few things that Iwant to talk about with regards to

(34:06):
domestic travel statistics because it is somethingthat's hard to quantify, and I'm not
really sure how the UN is doingit. I think what they're doing is
they're just taking they're asking each individualcountry and that those countries are reporting back,
right. And so for one,I would argue, or I would
ask, what counts as a domestictravel tourism trip? Right? So hunter,

(34:28):
you drive up to Seattle, Let'ssay it's from Portland for a day
one day, right, and thenyou return to Portland by the end of
the day. Is that counted asa domestic tourism trip? And then how
is that counted? I like,for who's who's the person collecting this data?
Or is there Oh yeah right,this is the question question I see,

(34:52):
ye a rhetorical question. Yeah yeahright. So I mean I think
it's still a trip. It's ashort trip if you're just staying for the
day, but that's probably counts.And I would argue what does count?
But again, it's like nobody's trackingnobody's tracking that, right, So like
you're actually probably not counted right inthat trip, Like there's nobody at Seattle

(35:13):
being like click, right, personfrom there's an organ license plate here?
Click. That's so like this issort of where it gets it gets a
little more squishy, right because youknow, say you're in China. China
does have different rules, but they'reprobably still not actively counting everybody who's traveling
from Beijing to Shanghai, you know, on a train and asking every individual
person, oh, are you hereas a tourist to do some sight saying.

(35:37):
Right, this is where things geta little squishy. Yeah, some
of the statistics they must come fromoccupancy of hotels now air B and B
type situations as well, but there'sno way to record when people are going
to stay with friends or family that'sexactly reported exactly. Yeah, So there
are some statistics you know, youcan dive into, Like you know,

(35:58):
Oregon, for example, has awhole travel statistics page. You can sort
of see that, and that's basicallywhat they do. They track hotel stays,
they do track plane trips, thatkind of stuff. I think Triple
A, the American Automobile Association herein the United States tracks road trips.
I'm not sure how they do thatand dive into their data. But all
that's to say is this domestic travelstatistics get very muddy, very fast,

(36:21):
in a way that international travel statisticsdon't really I mean they get a little
muddy, but there's a point ofentry into most places and that allows you
to make a very solid account toyour point. Hunter. International travel can
get a little moundy because you flyinto Europe, for example, you fly
into France, then you take atrain to Spain, you're not being counted
for Spain. But still it's alittle bit more precise in that you can

(36:44):
only say Europe is getting this amountxyz. So I wanted to talk about
that before we get to the restof the domestic travel statistics, because I
think it just gets a little Thereare things here that I like, I
don't know if this is actually trueor not. I don't know it.

(37:04):
I just think there's there's a lotthat goes into this that I'm like,
well, maybe, so China's numberone. There's limits to our ability to
know certain things, and this isthe best data that we have available.
So this is sort of what webase our understanding on. But the reality
the situation is almost impossible to know. Right So China number one, we
already talked about that, followed bythe United States. China had something like

(37:27):
three billion domestic travel trips right,So this is multiple trips taken by because
there aren't yeah, right again,and the United States was very high.
I don't have I didn't break itout by numbers for this one because it
seemed like, yeah, it justdidn't seem you know, super super relevant.
But we'll go through the country.So number three would be Indonesia,
which I thought was interesting, thenSpain, and then Japan okay, and

(37:52):
then Malawi, which I thought wasvery interesting that they were in the top
ten. Yeah. So again theseare this is I think this is just
showing that there's people tracking differently.Then France, then South Korea, and
then finally Australia. Okay. Anoticeable absent from this list. Have you
have you picked up on that thatyou would assume would have a lot of

(38:12):
domestic travel trips other places in Europe? Or is that what we're going for?
I would say it's the other reallybig, most populous country, which
will be India, right. Yeah. To me, it's shocking that India
is not on this list, andagain I think it just shows to the
limitations of our data. Yeah,it might have to be a collection because
there's about as many people in Indiaas there is in China, and there's

(38:34):
transportation networks and people I'm sure aregoing to different places. But yeah,
if we're looking at raw numbers,you would expect India to show up on
the list. Absolutely. So let'smove on because we've talked a lot about
sort of where people are going domestictourism, international tourism, but of course
around all of this tourism industry thathas you know, grown over the last

(39:00):
decades, it's also propped up areally large industry to support all these people
moving around. Right, So anotherquestion, hunter, do you want to
hazard a guess at which country ismost dependent on tourism as a percentage of
its annual GDP? Okay, soit's it's corrected sort of for it.
It's not the largest amount, butlargest percentage the country. Let's see.

(39:25):
I'll give you a hint. Ohgood, it is an island country.
It is. I'm not sure ifyou're going to get it even with that
hint though, because there's a lotof island country I know I'm trying to
I'm coming through my mental list ofisland countries right now. So my guess

(39:45):
for the country that has the highestpercentage of their GDP related to tourism is
Tahiti, but that's part of Franceactually, so maybe that's not a good
guess. Well, so French Polynesiais up there. It is, okay,
so it's broken out a little bitdifferently. I mean it's probably top
fifteen. I'll go ahead, andI'll go ahead and give you the answer,
because you could probably guess all dayand the answer is a Ruba.

(40:07):
Ruba. Ruba, I'm not surewould have come up with that. Yeah,
I don't think you would have.A Ruba gets about twenty two percent
of their entire GDP from tourism,from the tourism industry. This would be
followed by well, Macau, whichis again broken out from China, and
then the Bahamas, and then Fijiand then Croatia. Croatia is far up

(40:30):
there as well, which was interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that it's a
place that I would really love togo and visit personally, but I did
not expect it to have a hightourism destiny. I mean, these are
all beautiful destinations, but I thinkvery beautiful Croatia holds a lot of appeal
for I think people in Europe aswell. Yeah, yeah, it makes
sense. The other big one thatsort of makes the sort of top twenty

(40:51):
list would be Mexico at almost sevenseven percent of its GDP, which I
thought was pretty significant for a coutureof that size. Yeah, so very
impressive. In Spain, United States, all of these countries, I had
the most amount of tourism. It'snot on the top twenty, right,
So we've got so many other illustriesgoing on, Yeah, exactly, I
mean, there's just a lot moregoing on. Hunter. This has been

(41:12):
a really fun exploration of all ofthe global statistics and everything. We could
probably dive deeper and deeper and deeper. We could obviously go into each individual
country's data, Airbnb's data, Imean, I don't know, Zillo probably
has data on this. There's justa lot out there, It's what I'm
saying. But we can't spend allday on this. So we're going to
hit our very final ad break andthen we're going to come back and we're
going to talk about one specific countrythat has had an enormous impact relatively to

(41:37):
its size on the summer vacation.So we will be right back and we're
back This is the Geography Is Everythingpodcast. We've been talking about all about
your summer vacation or various summer vacations, tourism and travel around the world as

(42:01):
we hit that integral part of theyear. Today on this sort of final
part of our our episode, youknow, we're going to tackle really just
one country, and that country isgoing to be Iceland. Ice. Have
you ever been to Iceland? Ihave never been to Iceland. That's it's
kind of interesting because a lot ofpeople have these days, and that's why

(42:22):
we're going to talk all about it. What do you know about Iceland?
I know that the Iceland national soccerteam did pretty well in the Euros or
competed in the Euros twenty years ago, and that brought a lot of attention
to Iceland. I you know,I know it's not super heavily populated.
We're going to get to that.Yeah, yeah, I mean, well

(42:44):
I do know. Tons. Yeah, let's let's talk a little bit of
Iceland. So caveat here. Wayback when when I first started doing stuff
on YouTube, this was, youknow, when I was basically didn't really
have a YouTube presence. I didactually make an entire video all about Iceland
and why people try so I guessyou can go before you established your your

(43:04):
channel. Well, I mean itwas it was the same channel. You
can find it all my channel,but you can. It's just like one
of my very first episodes I thinkhas like a thousand views or something like
that, so like not very many. It's a pretty rough video, but
people can go check it out.They're like, I think it's I think
it's fun. We're basically me coveringthe same same you know, topic,
you know, same same kind ofstuff today. So let's first talk a

(43:27):
little bit about Iceland's geographic location hunterbecause it really is kind of key to
the story. How would you describewhere Iceland is the North Atlantic? Yeah,
it's in the North Atlantic. Itis in a way, it's kind
of that is closest in between NorthAmerica and the United States, or North

(43:50):
America and Europe as you can getwithout also being on the Greenland Island.
And that's going to factor in heavilyinto sort of the today's sort of story
about Iceland. So so this exactlocation has really enabled what what Iceland's been
able to do, along with somesort of shrewd marketing that's sort of gone
along with it. So let's getsome statistics, because that's you know,

(44:14):
that's what we like to do here. As of twenty twenty two, Iceland
had about one point seven million visitors. That's not top ten status, right,
that's pretty far down the list,but that's probably larger than their population.
Oh, it's way larger than theircommulations. So let's put this into
context, right, because it's quiteimpressive. So in modern history, so

(44:35):
there really are only about three countriesthat dominate tourism. You're in, you're
out. It's always been about youknow, it's always been about Spain,
it's always been about France, it'salways been about the United States. Okay,
these are and there's good reasons forthis, right, there's you know,
these these three countries have a uniquecombination of sort of cultural relevance in
terms of sort of you know whatthey're doing, natural beauty, right,

(44:57):
national parks, you know that kindof stuff, the Alps, the Pyrenees,
and sort of exciting cities you know, New York City, Paris,
Barcelona that drives people to them.This is none of this is surprising.
Everybody's probably like, yes, weunderstand, right, Iceland does not really
seem to fall into this same sortof hierarchy, and that said, they
still have been able to carve outa slice of this really large pie for

(45:22):
themselves disproportionate. So when we comparethe total tourism of these countries with Iceland,
they they don't match up. Whenwe compare it based on their population,
Iceland kind of blows them all outof the water. So to put
this in perspective, Iceland is hometo three hundred and eighty two thousand people.
Yeah, wow, which means forevery one resident Icelander, they get

(45:45):
over four tourists. Wow. That'sa heavy ratio. Yeah, it is
the United States. For every sixresidents, every six Americans, I guess,
we get one tourist. And soyou can see how the scales tip,
and that the same can be saidfor France. France gets I think

(46:05):
one point three tourists for everyone resident, spaying a similar number. So you
can see how these how Iceland isdefinitely punching above its wait a little bit
capita sort of heads heads and tailsabove everybody else exactly. And because Iceland
is situated in this unique area inbetween the United States or North America and
Europe, it does allow for avery convenient stopover location and this is something

(46:32):
that Iceland has been very shrewd aboutmarketing itself. But it didn't start in
a vacuum. So to sort offigure out what the story is, how
did Iceland figure this out? Howdo they start marketing this as as a
potential, we kind of have togo back to the two thousands, So
Iceland. In the late two thousands, I should say, so Iceland,
it was in pretty bad shape economicallya lot of places. Where was the

(46:53):
time of the Great Recession, whichI think we have an episode about as
well. You can go check thatout, right. Do we have an
episode about the gret or do wedo the Great Depression? I can't remember.
Yeah, there's something out there.We've gotten to the point where we
have too many epists and we can'tWe can't remember everything. Not so many,
but yeah, it's hard to keepthem all straight. So back in
late two thousands, Iceland's primary financialinstitutions went bankrupt. I don't know if

(47:15):
you remember this, but it wasactually kind of big news. Their currency
was hitting rock bottom against the USdollar, so it was Iceland was getting
relatively cheap to go to And whilethis is normally terrible news for any country,
and obviously it wasn't a fun timefor people who were living in Iceland
at the time. I'm sure thisdid stoke the fire's opportunity within Iceland because

(47:37):
historically, like most Nordic countries,like most Scandinavian countries, like most European
countries, it had been really expensiveto travel to Iceland prior to this,
and now all of a sudden,it became more of a bargain, right,
all of a sudden, like,hey, this is this is someplace
to go to because their dollars,because their currency was so cheap against the
US dollar and the Euro at thistime as well. And so savvy travelers

(47:58):
began to pick up on this sortof bory and began traveling to Iceland in
amounts that wasn't really seen prior tothis. So again there's still a relatively
niche audience, but they're still figuringit out. These are like, you
know, people who love to travel, who love to go to places.
Now they're saying there's a bargain there. But while Iceland being so cheap was
sort of an impetus for some savvytravels, there was one really large event

(48:20):
that literally put Iceland on the mapin a way that Iceland had never been
on the map for most people inthe world. Do you know what event
I'm talking about? I'm not surethat I do. So in twenty ten,
the icelandic volcano. I'm gonna mispronouncethis. I did try to pronounce
this correct. I think it's Ifail ya. Coll if Fayla Cole erupted,

(48:46):
which sent millions of pounds of ashinto the atmosphere and grounded global travel
between North America and Europe, andso people were stuck on one side or
the other. There was for along period of time there was just no
travel going back and forth. Maybesome limited stuff, but it was very
it was it was just not happening. And people are pointing back to as

(49:08):
saying, Okay, there was alot of confluence of events happening. Iceland's
was getting cheap, It's situated rightin between Europe and North America, but
people still didn't really know about whereIceland was. And so people looking back
or like, oh, this reallyhelped put it on the map. And
now all of a sudden, peoplewant to go see this thing. They
want to see what grounded travel,they want to see what Iceland's all about

(49:29):
and so it really helped people identifywith where Iceland was. And this all
leads up to sort of the finalnail in Iceland's tourism monument. I want
to say coffin because that doesn't reallymake sense, which is iceland airs incredibly
savvy stopover flight program. So haveyou heard about this? Do you know

(49:52):
what this is? Well, Imean it made it easy to stay for
a few to fly through Iceland andstay for a few days, right,
exactly. Yeah, So it's aprogram and I'm not sure so this was
something that I remember seeing a lotof previous to the pandemic. I'm just
not as in tune with sort oftravel trends these days. Even though I

(50:14):
just pulled together this whole episode,I'm not looking at sort of what each
individual airline's doing, I guess Ishould say. But it is, or
was a program where you could flyinto Europe, its primary primarily in North
American to Europe sort of package stopin Rekavik, which is the main city
there in Iceland for a night ortwo. You could see Iceland and its

(50:34):
natural beauty. Right if you haven'tbeen to Iceland, it is truly a
spectacular country to see. It's it'svery different from almost anything else you're gonna
be able to see. So gocheck it out. I guess what I
would say, and then you wouldcontinue on to your primary destination, be
it London, be it Paris,be it you know, Germany, wherever
you know. You could just keepon moving. And this created a system
where mainland's Europe, mainland, Europe'srobust tourism base was funneled through Iceland first

(51:00):
to a degree. And we obviouslyknow that Europe has a massive tourism base,
right We ran through those numbers earlier, and so even just being able
to carve out a little slice ofthat pie has been enormous for Iceland.
It's been a huge boon to theireconomy. And so we have some numbers

(51:20):
on that in recent years. Theseare from the twenty teens. I don't
have post pandemic numbers, unfortunately,But in recent years Iceland has continued to
be a major destination despite its currencyrebounding and the country as actually now quite
expensive to go to. Just nobody'sgetting sticker shock if they hear this.
He listened to this podcast and theydecide to go to Iceland. It is
now pretty impassive to go. Butin twenty ten, the amount of people

(51:46):
employed in Iceland's tourism industry was roughlytwelve thousand people, or about four percent
of the population, so it wasnot nothing. It wasn't huge though.
By twenty eighteen that amount had swelledto over thirty thousand people, or just
about nine percent of the population.So in eight years it grew by more

(52:06):
than double yep. And during thatsame period the amount of money tourist spent
increased from about five hundred million dollarsannually into Iceland's coffers to over three billion
dollars. So people were spending more, right, because you were also getting
those travelers prior to we talked aboutthis. Prior to this, we were
getting travelers who were going there seeingit as a bargain, you know,

(52:27):
seeing all these kinds of things,so they were getting deals. So there
wasn't that much money. There wasmore people going there, but the money
still wasn't sort of keeping up.As I got more expensive. As more
people can, people were spending moremore, A lot more money started flowing
it. So for a small nationof around three hundred and eighty thousand people,
smaller than most even moderately sized citiesin America. That's an incredible amount

(52:51):
of money. In fact, Imathed it out. I did the math
you did. Yeah, broken outevenly, which of course it's not because
that's not how most things were.But if it were broken out evenly,
each Icelander who lives on the lives, you know there, would get about
eight thousand dollars per person every singleyear just from tourism. That shakes it

(53:13):
out. Yeah, yeah, SoI mean that's that's that's a lot.
That's a lot of money for eachindividual person. And again that would that
would be every single person. Sobabies, you know, not just working
age people, but babies, children, everybody, right, And that's really
all there is to Iceland's incredible tourismstory. I mean, I glossed over

(53:36):
a lot, but we're also gettinga little long here, and I don't
want to keep everybody. I justthought it was a really fun way to
sort of close out our episode,especially because I'm sure there's a lot of
our listeners who might actually be doingthis. They're like, oh, yeah,
in July twenty fourth, I'm goingto Iceland for a couple days.
Well, they have this tourism board. As you mentioned earlier, I think
that have these very creative ads,and you know you've probably seen some of

(53:59):
these. And one of the hooksis people come to Iceland and then they
won't leave, and so they sentmoney to sort of follow them around to
remind them that they're just on vacation, and they turn around that those people
are gone already, so that they'recreating this idea that this is a place
that once you get there, youwon't want to leave, right, And

(54:20):
I definitely see the appeal to it. I've been to Iceland once. It
was very beautiful. Oh you havebeen, yeah, okay, yeah,
I stopped in Recivic only for anight. Although this was this was something
different because I don't well maybe Idon't this was a long time ago.
Maybe there was part of a deal. It was a family vacation at the
time. This was back when Iwas probably like seventeen, okay, but
I guess no, this would havebeen way before this stopped before this new
swell. Yeah, yeah, itwas definitely before the swell. I'm not

(54:44):
sure they might have had stopover dealsprior to this, but they really started
able to marketing and funneling it asbecause they I think it was again they
were able to be put on themap in a way that they never were
before. Iceland was kind of notthought about as even a European country until
relatively recently. And now that's notsay Icelanders didn't consider themselves European talking about
the broader global perspective, because theyare a little bit farther depart it,

(55:07):
right, and in a lot ofways they would be analogous to almost like
Alaska is to the United States.Right. It's like, if you look
at a map of the United States, there's gonna be the contiguous and you're
gonna have a little box up inthe corner. Yeah. Yeah, it's
sort of doing Alaska and Iceland.I think a little a little dirty there,
but that's the case. Well,this has been a really fun episode

(55:31):
all about your summer vacation travel plans. If I did if anybody out there
is listening, I did nail thatyou're going to Iceland on July twenty fourth,
let me know, because I thinkthat'd be really fun. Later,
well, then, you know,the last thing we could say is that
there's this new thing. It's notnew, but it's got a it's a

(55:52):
new name the staycation, right,So because traveling is fun, traveling is
exciting, but it's not always relaxingbecause there's a lot of details and you're
going to new places. So somepeople are opting to stay at home for
a staycation where all their stuff isand they just don't have to go to
work or school or something like that. So that's that's another offshoot of this

(56:14):
whole thing. Yeah, I digit. Maybe there's a I mean,
this might be a harder episode forus too, but maybe there's a geography
as your staycation. We'll have todo some work on that one might need,
that might require some work. Okay, well, Hunter, where can
people find you around? Whatever?Thanks Jeff. I'm Hunter showby. I'm

(56:34):
a professor of geography at Portland StateUniversity. I'm co author of Portland is
a Cultural atless in Upper Left Cities, a cultural atlas of San Francisco,
Portland, and Seattle. And I'mco host of this podcast Geography Is Everything.
Yeah, my name is Jeff Gibson. I'm also co host of this
podcast Geography Is Everything. You canfind me over on YouTube. That's YouTube

(56:57):
dot com, slash Little at SignedGeography by Jeff. You can also find
us over on subsect that's Geography isEverything dot subseac dot com, where you
can get more well it's not morecontent. You can just get this podcast
there. I'll be delivered straight intoyour email box, sort of a handy
way to do that, totally free. If you liked what you heard today,
you enjoyed our conversation today on thesummer vacation, Please rate and review
us, or like and subscribe tous on YouTube or on whatever app you

(57:22):
know that that exists out there,Apple, Podcast, Spotify, et cetera.
What are we doing next week?Hunter, Let's let's give people a
little teaser here. It's a littlebit of an offshoot. I guess of
what we've been talking about today.We're talking about a country that does get
a lot of tourism I think thesedays, and no country is Belieze.

(57:42):
Eh Belieze. Okay. I thinkthat's I mean, I think that'll be
a very interesting story. I think. I mean, I don't really know
all that much about Belize. It'snot my episode. I'm not I'm not
doing the research for us. I'mexcited to learn all about it. But
what I can say is that Ibelieve Belieze. If I believe it,
I'm sure that jokes that made themout time. I believe that it's a

(58:04):
predominantly English speaking country because it wasit was an English colony, right,
correct, right, which makes itunlike a lot of places in Central America,
but more similar in some ways someways to places in the Caribbean.
So it's got this sort of mixof a lot of different cultures coming together.
It's I've been there myself. It'sa fascinating, beautiful place with great

(58:25):
people. Interesting. Yeah, wellcome back and learn all about Belize.
I'm sure it'll be fascinating. Welove our place based episodes. I think
it really helps draw drawing people certainimaginations who want to learn about those places.
So this is your chance to learnall about the geography and culture and
probably history of Belieze. So Iguess until then, we will see you
next time. Thanks for listening.