"No gimmick. No “doing it on $10 a day" or anything like that, it was just going out there and seeing it and doing it."

I think what we intended came across. And I think there were a lot of viewers that got that as well. I think a lot of other travelers got it. “That's how I travel.” And that was another big influence as well, running into other people, other travellers on our travels and talking with them about what their experiences were.

You share a lot of similar experiences. Somebody is talking about you knows these ups or these downs during their travels, and you think, “oh yeah, well I can relate to that. That happened to me in Africa, that happened to me in Asia,” or whatever else. And so that very honest approach to travel I think was the key.

CM: Yeah, I definitely agree. I'm also pretty big in to travel, and I watch plenty of travel documentaries. Let’s say I'm watching a Rick Steves documentary. It seems like all of a sudden magically (nothing against Rick Steves or anything), but magically he's in the middle of a cultural dance and everything is going so swimmingly.

And it seemed like that was the thing in the Departures travel show. It was like “we're going to show, we're not just going to magically arrive there…I think probably more than half of the way people were going to connect was the journey itself, right?

SW: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And most of the time, you know, any pre-planning and pre-production that we did would, for better for worse, and much to the chagrin of our producers at the time, would often just go out the window on the first day in the country. Because, you inevitably met someone or come across something that would shape the rest of your trip.

And again, I think that's just what happens in real life with a lot of travelers on their travels is you run into somebody else or you uncover something or you land in a place and you're just like, “Wow. I was going to leave here tomorrow, but I think I'm just going to stay for three more days. This place is amazing,” or vice versa. You think you're going to spend four days in some city that you think has so much to offer, and you kind of think,” you know, it's not for me, let's roll out of here, let's keep moving.” So it was always being flexible. And then, like you said, it was always about the journey. It was always about getting to these places as much as it was about the places themselves.

"...it was a perfect storm, it was right place, right time, right team, right everything."

CM: Is there any place in particular where you remember arriving and just saying, “we really misread this. Let's add time, let's tack time on,” and it really paying off?”

SW: Well, one place in the show it comes across as well is that, we had no idea that we were going to Antarctica. We were filming a show turned into two episodes in Chile. And ended up down in southern Patagonia in Punta Arenas, and we just happened to connect with someone who had access to Antarctica. And it was an epiphany.

It was like, “Oh my God, we have to take this opportunity. Let's make this work come hell or high water.” And I think we were actually supposed to fly home for Christmas about that time. And we called everyone back home and said, “yeah we're going to be a little late. We're going to be a few weeks late.”

CM: Ha ha ha!

SW: “We saw this opportunity to go to Antarctica. We obviously have to take it.” So that was one where we had no idea what was going to happen, and we took it, you know, we took the opportunity when it presented itself.

But I think we did it on a smaller scale all the time, probably every trip something happened, or someone that we ran into offered something or "why don't you stay here?" or whatever else. And all of a sudden, you've done a day or two of filming and it just feels like you're spinning your wheels and you're not really getting heartfelt content, and then all of a sudden this one person just shines for you. It lights the whole crew on fire to do and see and experience what they're talking about. So you never know. Ha ha!