Reptile Fight Club - Grilling the Expert w/ Matt Cage

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Hello and welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. We have a different introductory host today, Rob Stone. Justin is indisposed with his business, various ventures, but he'll join us hopefully shortly. Meanwhile, as a guest, we have on Matt Cage, who I've principally been exposed to, associated with Mike Pinkleton's So Much Pingle podcast, heard tons of great things. And I'm really excited to get into field herping. field herping as a group field herping tours all those different things so this will fit into our grilling the expert subset and yeah matt thank you very much for coming on i really appreciate it

well thank you very much for having me bob i really appreciate the opportunity and this is uh i'm looking forward to this to be a great time awesome well thank you so much uh i'd really so as i say i've heard both heard you on and then heard about you through mike's podcast a lot but i'd like to just start from the beginning with how did you get into Herps, herping. What does that look like? Take us back. All right. So I'm old. I've been herping a long time. So I grew up in New Jersey, actually, northern New Jersey. And my father, who was an airline pilot for United Airlines, he was a herper as well. I know a lot of the old-timers knew him. Young Cage is his name. And so as I grew up, I was exposed to it.

all my childhood. And so when we'd take trips, even trips to Disney World, we would go herping as well. And, you know, my dad would take me to the Everglades for two nights. And, you know, so I kind of grew up herping. And that went into grade school, into high school and high school years. I ended up moving to Colorado. And, you know, we're herping as much as I could. in Colorado, and then all over, spent a lot of time in Arizona, California, Utah, Kansas, as a

teenager, herping. As soon as I got my driver's license, I was spending my weekends Southeast Colorado, all over Eastern Colorado, and just herping as much as I could. And when I graduated high school, I went to Colorado State University, got a degree in wildlife biology. Go Rams. Still a fan. So it's been tough as a football fan, but that's okay. And I worked as a biologist for a few years. Eventually, not able to get a, it was in the 90s. It was hard to get permanent work as a wildlife biologist. You could get all the temporary jobs you want. Permanent work was tough. And it came back from a temporary job. I worked in Arkansas. Louisiana, Central America even, doing some fun stuff, sometimes living in a car.

And I came back from a job and got married and decided to settle down and actually decided to go into a different career and went into law enforcement. And I was, I worked in law enforcement for 25 years in the, in the Denver metro area. I retired in 2021, moved to Florida. so in the meantime I've been herping my whole life so I've herped all corners of the globe anywhere I can get or have somewhere I want to something I want to find I'll go I've hurt all through Mexico all through Central America South America Europe Africa is sort of working on it but I've done South Africa and I've done Northern Africa trying to work on

some trips to the middle I've herped Australia I've heard Asia all through the Caribbean. And let me see. How I got into the Tours is, so I went as a, I was originally a client of Margarita Tours. And I also was a client of Green Tracks, another company that went down there to the Amazon, to the Peruvian Amazon out of Akitos.

And I did trips with both companies. I ended up doing multiple trips with Margarita Tours and got to know the owners very well. And they knew who I was and what I did. And I got along with everybody. And they eventually asked if I wanted to guide. I was working under Dick Bartlett, if you know Dick. And so he invited me to be a guide on his tour. tours. And so I got to go down there and basically for free, for, you know, spend 12 days

in the jungle and take people out and take all the pictures I wanted and have a great time. And that was in 2006 was my first trip down there. And so I've been going pretty much every year since then. I'm now part owner in the company, half owner. And we've changed the name to m t amazon expeditions as opposed to margarita tours so we're both names but uh officially we're now mt margarita mt amazon expositions and um so still do that i do two to three trips a year i've done up to four that gets to be too much um because i enjoy doing other stuff as well and um so now that i'm retired i also uh do uh some snake snake safety classes so i teach rattle snake snake safety. I certify people for venomous snake handling. And so I do that quite often for some

government agencies and NGOs and some actual businesses that manage land. That's excellent. Yeah, and I really appreciate that. That's just a ton of great context. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I do, The first thing I do want to highlight just for folks that are listening, they have to go check out that'll definitely, you know, give that much more nutrition of the stories that you're going to talk about. But your website, or at least your little corner of smug mug, cages that smug.com. Yeah, truly incredible photo gallery that's up there in terms of diversity of species, diversity of locale, particularly exceptional examples. of different things. Yeah, I haven't spent, I've spent hours and it's not nearly enough. I'm super impressed. It's a work in progress still, trying to make it perfect, but it's really hard to do on somebody else's platform, Smug Mug. And Smug Mug, it does pretty good job,

but it's still somebody else's platform that you're, I'm trying to use. So it is, it's always a work in progress. Yeah, absolutely. Have you given consideration to having it be something that's sort of solely within your purview or is it just sort of with the hosting and things that's that's the way you want plus also right people can buy the photos through there by production yeah they can buy photos and i do sell some um that's not why i do what i do but um you know i do sell some uh you know if somebody's using it for a book or whatever it's it's no problem but i i've sold some i don't know it's it's i get unlimited storage through there unlimited photo storage which is nice and so it's another backup for photos, so, you know, it's one less place, you know, having three places

to keep all your photos, so. Absolutely. No, I totally understand. And I suppose I would be remiss while we're here to not bring up. What does your photo setup look like and has that evolved over the course of time? For the last 15 years or so, maybe 16 years, I've shot Canon. so I'm shooting all canon stuff I like it I'm happy with it

I'm actually due to buy a new rig here soon so so I will I'll be doing some research on what exactly I want but I'm shooting canon I like it and I'm used to it it's you know it's your first language when you know how it is it because trying to work with Nike on now whenever I'm using

somebody else's camera it's like it's like speaking a different language. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, great. And it's all sort of the interchangeable lens, mirror lists, all that jazz, or is it okay? Yeah, no, for sure. Interchangeable lenses, DSLRs. And I usually carry a cheaper point-and-shoot that has a reasonable zoom.

And I'm not hooked to any company on that. I just want something that takes nice crisp pictures. And that's for faraway stuff that I can carry or have it with me if I'm in a kayak or hiking in the rain. I don't have to worry about, you know, getting my good stuff wet. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that has always seemed one of the impediments to me doing that beyond just being a whole new language that I need to learn. I'm sort of in the fanciest beginner into somewhere in the intermediate of,

I have the Sony RX10, you know, Mark 4, which is the fanciest point-and-shoe camera you can buy, basically, is the way I would frame it, you know, in terms of... Sony does some great stuff now. I mean, their mirrorless stuff is just great. Yeah, and this, honestly, as worked for me, as I said, there's so much for me to learn so much better that I know that I could learn and do so much better with what I already have, that I can't even imagine how much more that would be true

with even fancier setup and all of that. But the big pro is not having to haul around all those lenses. And I suppose that's always the thing that I ask, you know, and I've seen that, we'd go on. The first time we went to Australia in 2018, Chris Salemi had brought, you know, that sort of a rig and setup and whatever, and it just seems like, man, I have a hard enough time carrying my pack and all my gear and all this stuff that I can't even imagine when we're doing those tracks having that much more weight and bulk to deal with. Is that an issue? It's getting worse with airlines as well, getting all your stuff on a fortune. So I'm to the point where I carry, right, I have a backpack in Peru. So that stays down there. and it's like my hiking backpack, but I use a backpack to get on the plane that has all my

good stuff in it. And then I just carry when I go hiking what I want. And it's, I end up taking maybe in Peru at least, maybe 80% of my pictures are with 100 millimeter lens. So that ends up being what I have on most of the time. And then again, I have the point and shoot for, with a good zoom that. But, you know, so I have that stuff all for my canon, but I don't end up using it as much as I probably should. So especially changing lenses in the deserts or the jungle or whatever, it's just so hard on your camera.

I try not to do it. And honestly, the little point-and-shoots do really, really good for most of Zoom stuff. So if I need telephoto, it does the job most of the time. So that's just ends up what I end up doing. Oh, very cool. Okay. Yeah. No, that's excellent. I just wanted to hop into that because, as I said, super impressed by your photos and was curious, like, I always look at it and sort of, I feel like there's such a range, right? A lot of people, cameras, or phone cameras, right, have come so far in the last decade even that it's amazing some of the results people get from that. Everyone's sort of working with different tools, or at least there's this huge wide range of tools, and we particularly compressed, in social media posts, it almost dulls the effect of how much a true broad range there is in the output of those different things. Yeah, and I end up taking iPhone photos as well. I'm always disappointed with them when I get home to computers.

They're just like, so sometimes I'll just do it to, you know, if I want to document something or, you know, whatever. But, you know, taking great photos, it just doesn't do that for reptiles and amphibians. but it's great for documentation and it's really good for for scenic photos and panoramas and you know I'll tell you with it I've had my iPhone takes incredible pictures for panoramas and scenic photos so and people photos better than what I can do with my cameras yeah absolutely totally fair

okay so let's hop into the tour stuff a little bit, right? So you talked about when, so you were, was your first introduction to going on her sort of commercial herp tours? Was it going to Peru to go to the Amazon? You said you did green tracks and then Margarita tours that's become with, you know, under you, your partial stewardship, empty Amazon expeditions. Was that the first time you'd gone on on a commercial herb tour? So I am not a big, honestly, I'm not a big tour person. I like to do stuff on my own when you can. But going to the Amazon is really tough. You almost have to have a guide or somebody take you out because you can fly to Akitos and good luck finding stuff. I mean, you're good

luck finding some land to get on that has good herps that you can safely get on. That's totally different than going to Costa Rica or going to Mexico because you can just do some research and get on good localities. I mean, it's really hard to do in Peru. So actually, the first time I went down, the first two times I went down, I was with my dad, and we did both companies. And so it was, so the two of us went together, had a great time on both tours. And yes, it was an unorganized tour. I think one of them had like nine people. The other one had 10. And, So it was different for us, but you get to know everybody on the tour. It ends up being, you know, a lot of social stuff and a lot of fun.

It's just different than what I'm usually doing because, you know, I'd be used to going on my own or renting a car or whatever and or going with friends. And all of a sudden, now you're going with people you don't know. So that's how I got started. I've gone on a couple organized tours since then, but it's not my, it's honestly just not my preferred way to travel, even though I do tours. So when I go somewhere, I generally don't take a tour. Sure. Okay. Well, I think that's good to hear, I think, is maybe the way I'd frame it. But I'm not surprised, right, that sort of there are certain places where that's sort of

the reality of the situation, right? Would you say that kind of the context where a tour makes sense is either someone who's excited to do it, but maybe doesn't feel confident in their ability to travel and or sort of play it by your setup the infrastructure to do it and or places where it's just as an access question you really can't yeah i mean if you went and spent i mean if a good herper went to to akitos peru and went to some lodges and hiked forest on their own i mean you could get you could probably get 25 30 species over the course of a week or 10 days and we go and we go to places where I know where we can find stuff. So little micro habitats, you know, we can get atalopus.

I know right where they are. They're always there. We're always really careful with them, you know, being a, being a, you know, a species of concern. And, you know, it's a few hour height to get to them, but we can get there every time. Nobody else will find that, you know. And so that's the thing you'll miss. You might be able to get yourself in an area where you can find a bushmaster. You'll probably find a fertile lance if you do that.

But getting some of the specialty stuff, you want somebody to take out, especially, you know, if you're not going to go back there to the, you know, it's going to take you a while to get your feet on the ground, learn how to find stuff, learn how to see stuff. And it just gives you head start. And again, we have on our tours, you can go on our properties. and go wherever you want. We'll try to, you know, we'll do our best to keep you safe. And make sure you have a guide and don't get lost. And a guide if you want it. But once you learn where you're going, you know, you can go out on your own.

And we also have boats and we'll hike the forest. And so, you know, we'll sort of take care of you. We'll go out and look for birds at sunrise if you want to do that. We'll hike all night. We'll hike during the day. We'll, you know, that's sort of, you'll end up seeing a lot of speech. Most trips to Peru, we end up with over 100 species. So it's finding herps in the jungles, the North American and South American jungles and Central American jungles is really hard.

And especially down there, it can be, you know, you can hike a lot of nights and find, you know, minimal amounts of snakes. And then all of a sudden, it'll hit. And you just be patient. And I always tell people that, you know, they go out for the first couple nights and don't find anything. Just be patient, and the snakes will come. That's great. I guess the, well, we had stumbled right into it. So let me, you know, I'll stop here for a minute.

In terms of your own sort of herping life list, herping ethic, you mentioned, right, going essentially defined microhabitat that you are aware of to find Adelopis. How do you feel as a herper being sort of guided to a known spot like that? And do you think there's any, is it just sort of a contrived difference from anything where if you told me, but you didn't take me, is that any different? Is it any different because I'm paying you? Like, does any of that come into play? Do you have any thoughts out of that?

I mean, that's, it's a personal thing. And life lists are very personal. I mean, everybody has their own little rules on what they count, what they don't count. I mean, I have friends who count, you know, DORs as lifers and, you know, count invasives and, you know, come to Florida and, you know, want to go out and find all the invasives here. And I could really care less about invasives. If I come across them, I'll check them out. Maybe I'll photograph them if I'm in the mood. But I don't really have any desire to go looking for them.

So, I mean, it's such a personal thing with how your life list is organized. for me, if somebody takes me to a spot and we find something in its area, then I count it. And that's me. Other people want to find it themselves. And we have people on our tours that everybody has different rules. And so it's good for me to know what that is because, you know, I'll take people out there. And this little Adelope is spot, you know, we don't want hundreds of people walking through it. And so we're real careful.

And, you know, everybody has to, you know, clean all their gear. before we go. And we usually do it, try and do it early in the trip and go out to the spot. And we almost always get them. Somebody wants to find their own. I will stay out there for, you know, a couple hours until everybody finds them. If it's people that don't care, we'll find one or two, usually within 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and we'll find one or two, and we'll all take pictures of that.

We'll set it up, you know, get the glove up and set it up and let everybody take pictures. and then they can walk back on their own. And we always find stuff on the way there and on the way back. So there's two ways to get there. So, you know, if it's Mike and I, we'll each go a different direction. So we'll have half the group. And so it works out really good. I don't know.

Everybody does a different. So I don't want to tell people what to do. If somebody wants to find their own, I will help them do that. And I've had that before. So, you know, some people just want to find their own stuff. It's all good. Okay. Fair enough.

And so is the M.T. Amazon, is that, do you only do these sort of Peru tours? That's where the infrastructure is set up. That's the sort of long-running program, or has there been, are there other programs? Is there consideration for that? Has that been a topic? So we've had, with M.T, we've had five properties in our, in our existence. And two of them we no longer have. So we manage three now. So one is near Aquitos. One is, and that's Santa Cruz, kind of a famous spot now. We have Madre Selva, which is a very famous spot, which is on the Rio Rosa. It's a four, five, six hour boat ride downriver from Aikitos. And we have a new one, Tapiche, which is upriver from Aikitos by 10 hours via boat.

And it's very wild. So, and so I have one tour going there this year. So I'm actually really excited about it because I've been there, but I haven't spent a lot of time there. So I'm sure we'll find some new stuff there. And so I'm super excited about spending more time at Tapiche. We're just getting it to the point where we can have bigger groups, so groups of eight to ten people there. Okay.

Yeah. And is that sort of a typical tour size? Yeah. So our typical tours, we go to. Madre Selva and to Santa Cruz. So we'll fly into Akitos. We'll pick everybody up to the airport. You don't need to worry about anything.

We get you everywhere you need to go. We should do a hotel. Hotel in Akitos tonight. We go actually road cruising and a coach. It's not ideal. But there's one road that leaves Akitos and that's where we go. And it's busier than it used to be. So we find less and less stuff.

but it's we always find uh we generally find some good stuff then on on the night out there and we'll stop for some uh areas to find uh some specific species on the way and just get out of the out of the bus for a little bit uh but man we found some good stuff on the first night um in anacondas and uh calalia all sorts of fun stuff so you have lots of lots of chances to get some some fun stuff first night um then we spent a night in Akitos at a hotel next morning, we'll go down the river to Madre Selva. Very cool. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's sort of, it's firmly within that box of, I think absent as you described it, it sounded more and more fun, right? You're saying, okay, we're

road cruising in a bus. Like, how much, you know, it's one thing if you're the driver in the front row or, you know, how would I feel about this? But then you're saying, if you're pulling up on an anaconda, that would be pretty special. As jaded as I might be, that's still pretty cool. It's fun. And you can see some, I mean, big boas and rainbow boas. I mean, two years ago, we got a, you know, a seven or eight foot clalia on the road in the middle of the night is spectacular.

I'm usually sitting in the back of the bus just because that's where I sit. And I'd rather have, you know, paying customers sit in the front where they can see. but again in the back from the middle back you can't really see a lot so it's more social time but that's usually the first day of the tour so uh you know everybody's you know talking at least for the first couple hours then we have dinner and then after dinner it's watching the road and then um you know the social still goes on a little bit and of course you find something and you have 10 cameras on it it's hard to get it's hard to get good pictures that night and we're not coming back to that area so we can't you know short-term

bag anything so everything has to stay there so whatever we find it gets uh gets uh got photographed on scene and and uh and so it's kind of a mess and whenever i if i find something it's pretty rare that i want to find something that i want to photograph that you know has to be something pretty much new or spectacular uh but if that ever happens it's it's really hard because i don't like to tell people get out of the way you know they're paying to be there and and here i am with my camera but um so you know that's i have to be very very delicate with that And as does Mike. And Mike is a very, very good photographer as well, you know, if you've seen his stuff.

So we have to be very gentle with that. People that are paying to be there, you know, come first. And I mean, I can think of only one time where I told somebody to get out of the way so I could shoot something. So that's too bad. Well, and I suppose, you know, sort of a natural question was, you know, first of all, why Peru? And it's a bunch of amazing animals just hasn't been. haven't been down that way at all. We had started by going to, really, Australia was beyond sort of low, very local Colorado

stuff. It had been going to Australia. And then Australia, we couldn't do. And then it became sort of, well, what do we do next? And, well, that sort of the loaf list came into play there where it's like, well, let's pick something. And then we can go try and find all of the X of what, you know, all of the X that are in the U.S. or whatever.

And that sort of gives us ideation for the trips. And while there definitely have been places that have gone several times, West Texas, southern california those sorts of things because we couldn't get it you know couldn't do everything on the first go um how how is it to sort of it's almost like it's your home away from home where you're sort of repetitively going to these same places and seeing a lot of the same things i guess the good advantage of that is that you it's a lot easier to be calm and passive to foster the experience for your customers because you're like it's this is not new to me this is old hand which is the question is does that dull the experience or is it

it like no that's actually why it's essential so that you can promote that experience for other people and that's its own joy yeah and yeah i mean it's really hard it's going down there as an experience um i mean i mean it was maybe three years ago was the first trip i had i i've done in the 30s the amount of trips i've lost count but i mean i think i'm in the upper 30s of how many trips I've done to Peru now. So, like three years ago, I had my first trip where I didn't get a new species. And we still found 110 species, but all of them are stuff I've seen before. So which happens, and it's actually happening a couple times since then.

So all the easy stuff I've gotten, there's still a lot there that I need to find. I mean, it is the Amazon jungle. But it's fun, but it's more than just the herps. I mean, the herbs are what bring me there and what I'm passionate about. what I want to find and, you know, keeps me motivated to hike all night and during the day like you, I'm sure. And, but, you know, seeing, seeing some of the mammals and some of the birds and, and we travel with a, with a Peruvian chef who makes some incredible food. We have a whole Peruvian, our crew is mostly Peruvians. They're all Peruvians, except for Mike and I. Mike and I are, you know,

we're there to keep everybody safe. But the rest of the crew is great. And everybody loves our crew. So they're part of the family. And I'll say at the end of the trip, everybody's Facebook friends. And so it ends up being a big social thing. Our crew is on Facebook.

And our wonderful guy, Christoph Meyer, who I'm sure you've seen his name around, he lives in Akitos, and he does a great job. And he's so, you know, he comes with us and helps take people out. And it's just an experience, but different than anything I do outside of Peru. Because, you know, I travel a lot and I hurt a lot, but I'm generally looking, you know, I'm spending time on the road or I'm driving all night, you know, on the roads or hiking or, you know, wherever I am figuring that out.

And Peru, it's just different because I have that down and I know when to get out and be on the trails, and I know, you know, if the conditions aren't great, I'll tell people, hey, this might be a good night to, you know, do a shorter hike or go out on the boat because stuff is just not going to be very active tonight. And all the experience that I have there is, it leans into that. Yeah, absolutely. So it helps you make that experience for other people. We did have Justin join us.

Thank you very much. Hey, sorry. Hello, Justin. All good. Hey, how's it going? I'm very good. Thanks. Awesome.

Sorry to interrupt to keep the flow going. You guys just continue. I'll try to jump in. We were just talking through the tours. So Matt is a part owner of MT Amazon Expeditions, which does tours of the Peruvian Amazon. They have access to three different properties now. I've had past properties in the past. Otherwise, as you know, from listening to Mike's podcast is an inveterate global field herper.

Yeah. an amazing, you know, page on Smug Mug that, you know, people should go check out. We'd highlighted that earlier in the show. Hopefully they were listening to at the URL. We can add it to cages.smugmug.com. Yeah, definitely worth checking out. Oh, yeah, I was perusing that not long ago. Absolutely.

That's cool. I just had a quick question. So caught the tail into that. And I'm wondering, like, what, how long does it take you to kind of get the rhythm of a certain area? You know what I mean? Does that make sense? But I like to, I mean, I do my research. I think all good field herpers, excuse me, excuse me, are doing the research before the trips.

And so I always do that. So if I'm going somewhere, I always do the research. I have good friends I travel with as well. I'm sure a lot of them you know. So, you know, we do the research and try to hit the areas where we want to go and the species we want to hit. We try to as efficiently as we can cross all of all the species. And I mean, I'll use the earlier this year. I went to all over Europe, herped all over Europe.

And then we dropped down to Morocco for 11 days. And we all have a list of stuff we wanted to find. And we got most of it. So you just do the research by talking to people. and you know using the internet as your friend try and get location where you can find stuff and stay out of trouble right and have you found that i mean when you're going you know again and again to peru are you finding that you you kind of lock in on a certain better time of year or or is it just like different stuff all year round and you just kind of pick and choose so peru and the amazon is very

sort of different because in the dry season it's still very rainy and the rainy season frogs will sometimes breed in the dry season and then sometimes it'll be 10 days with no, I've been there in the rainy season in the rainforest and the rainiest place on

earth for 10 days and had it not rain so so it's just whatever happens happens and there I will tell you if you go three days without rain, two to three days without rain stuff really slows down. And so the leaves will dry out the on the ground, the leaf litter dries out. The creeks will dry out. And you'll see a lot less stuff moving. You can still find stuff,

but it's tougher. And you've got to concentrate on the water. But you just, you learn that. You learn when it, when it feels good, when it feels great, and when it's not so good. Yeah. Very interesting. That's cool. Yeah, and that actually, so that prompts a question, right? So on our first Australia trip, we've gone up to North Queensland around Cairns and a, what, tropical cyclone, cyclone Owen, was, had come in on the backside. We were there very short, I don't know, five, five days, something like that. And on the back half of that, so it is rainforest, but it's not sort of perpetual or so much cyclical. as you're seeing down in the Amazon,

it seemed like the rain actually, everything but scrub pythons basically shut down. So, well, I would say from a snake perspective, frogs, you know, certainly were out in abundant and things. But like carpet pythons had been out prior to the storms coming out. Once the rain came, it seemed like the carpets just tucked away and said, yeah, I don't have to deal with. Essentially, I have enough good time that I don't have to deal with this sort of,

you know, harsher season. whereas down, yeah, in the Amazon, I suppose the answer is it's so long that they have no choice but to expose themselves to it. What I would say with that is it's really different depending on the type of rain. I mean, I've had trips there where it rained every day, a lot, every day, almost too much, where it doesn't really warm up. You have less stuff moving and it's always rainy. It's just even the amphibians just seemed a little burned out on the rain.

It's just like they're doing. different stuff. And those that's not ideal for me to have that. Dry is terrible. So I mean, what I will say is if you have a dry stretch and then the rains come, those first two days of rains when it's been dry are great. And that's what I, that's my ideal situation, is if it's been dry and then you get the first rains in two or three or four days. And it just seems to get everything going. The snakes, the frogs, everything just seems to be out enjoying it. So the streams, if streams are, the forest streams, the smaller streams, if they're rolling, it's, it's good. Cool. I wondered about, like, leading tours, too. Like, if you have to, you have

a disclaimer, like, no, nothing's guaranteed. You know, if people just understand that, or if, like, if you've ever had people that are upset, like, because it didn't rain for, 10 days, you know, in the rainforest and they, you're like, there's nothing you can do about it, but like, do they get upset or? People understand. Almost always, even when I don't get the big numbers, I mean, we're still getting 80 to 90 species. So we're still seeing a lot of stuff, but definitely less if the conditions aren't good. I have had trips where the water levels were so low that we couldn't get to one of our sites.

So we ended up with 10 days at the other site, which is, it's still a little too much. I mean, so, I mean, that's, but that's nothing I can control either. If you can't get a boat into, you know, if the water level is so low, we can't get a boat there. There's nothing I can do about it. Right. Yeah. When people understood, I mean, that's cool. That people understand that it is, it's herping and you're out in the jungle and, you know, if we do what we can do, that's only happen.

one time in all the tours that I've done. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, still 80 species on a slow year. That's not a slow trip. That's not bad at all. Yeah. That's cool.

I guess you pick the right spot and you're, you're going to be okay. Yeah. And back to your question on the time of year. I've worked to figure out when my favorite time. It's generally rainy. The rainy season is considered maybe October through April. and so we go right now I schedule stuff usually between January and February and I've been doing two trips and we're just trying to hit if you go too early you might hit dry and it might not be good so we try to hit the heart of the rainy season and sometimes it's really rainy too rainy sometimes you get the every other day rain which is great or thunderstorms you know every day which is also great and sometimes you just get nuts nothing but rain for for 10 days i've had that happen as well and like said you just you just get

used to it and you go out and you still find stuff it's just it's just tougher right is it kind of that tropical comfortable rain where you're not like cold and miserable it's just you're just kind of wet and you just deal with it yeah that makes a big difference i think than yeah the opposite so in june um every year in june they get a couple fronts that come from the south and so cold fronts from the south and drop it into the, you know, the mid-60s, which is very cold there and everything shuts down for two days, three days. And I've been through that before as well. So I don't want to deal with that. Yeah. So that's why I try to avoid those times. So our summer, I try to avoid just because I, you know, if people are going there for 10 days and, and a front comes through and

it's cold and cold and too cold for the animals to be really active for three days, that's not good. percent of your trip, you know, that's, that's not what we're trying to do. Right. I know some places, like, almost shut down if there's too much, like, you know, going into the Kimberley of Australia or something, you can't go most of the year because it's too wet and the roads are, you know, have a few feet of water on them or something. Is that you find that there? We do get that occasionally.

You get the, I mean, we don't have many roads. So that's the good news for us. So we're getting everywhere via boat. So if the water's like, we can get there. But we've had the trails flood out. So, and our hiking is all in, you know, muck boots. So, but there's times where the trails are flooded out and you just, you know, you can't get through to where you want to go, even with muck boots. So it just limits where you want to go, where you can go.

But again, we have enough trail system that we can still make it work and have a good time and find a lot of stuff still. That's awesome. Is it private land? or um it is leased land and land we owned through a nonprofit okay cool so it's kind of your trails in your areas more more so than like a

national park or something okay so we we can we can deal with the land as we want so Monterey is a leased uh a lease through the local municipality the local tribe and um so we own Santa Cruz through the nonprofit and Tepeche is, it's being worked on, but we're trying to get full ownership of it as well. That's cool. And do you speak Spanish and all that good stuff?

Although, I do enough to, I do speak enough just to basic communicate. I'm certainly not fluent, but I can communicate. So arranging things with the locals and that kind of thing. And tribal languages, or are they like? Similar to Spanish and slightly different. So if people that know Mexican, Spanish from the U.S., that go down there, have a little bit of trouble. Just the dialect is different, especially with the tribal languages.

But they were, I mean, it's fine. You can still communicate. No problem. Okay. Cool. Sorry, Rob. I hope I'm not. No, you're all good.

you know this is great this is why we usually do the two men so um i guess my well as a colorado guy and mostly looking for desert critters the the notion of walking around in muckboots sounds a little bit brutal on my end how do people find it they come out on the tours you know and how do the the trails hold up right you know in terms of i know we went to find eastern mass sagas in pennsylvania you know earlier this year and the answer was like oh you can't go down there because of based on the moisture that you can't wreck the trail, basically. For those challenges you have to deal with?

Yes, for sure. So we have loop trails for the most part. So you can, I mean, that takes a little bit of pressure off of the trails. But when it's very wet and very muddy, obviously there is some deterioration of the trails. The good news is we don't have people there all the time. So the trails with all the rain, I mean, I sometimes do trips back-to-back where I'll be five days here. Five days of Madre Selva, five days at Santa Cruz, three days of a break, and then five days back at Madre Selva. So there's eight days in between, and you can't see any footprints at all.

It's just like we weren't even there because the, it's just, the rain just takes the trails back. So, but logs fall, trees fall. So it's the first time we get there, you know, going through the trails and doing a full sweep of the trails and make sure we don't have any bridges out or, you know, logs or trees, tree falls. The tree falls can be impassable. So sometimes because it, you get big, big, big trees. And the big trees take many, many trees down with them when they fall.

I've had, I've been hiking and, you know, had to turn around because I couldn't find the other side of a tree fall. I couldn't find. Wow. So. And that's how you can get. get lost too so you know i always keep somebody back at the at the trail and you know keep people then shouting distance and if it gets to where i can't find it you know the other side then we'll have to

stop and i go you know i usually hike with gps so it's not like i get lost but um you know it's more of a pain than anything yeah and and um so does that mean time for a new trail system or what do you have to do when you like get those giant tree falls that you just can't get So for me, it's really easy is I come back and I tell the caretaker what happened and the caretaker goes out and figures it out. They'll either do a workaround or a trail around or get the buzz saw and do some work on it. But actually, when you find one, you always have to look on this, you write, you know, look 10 to 15 feet on this side, on, you know, in your side and look for little trails off because it may have been found impassable and you just, you just, somebody else has worked

their way through. So you always look for a way to get around it. But sometimes you know it's brand new and there's nothing, nobody's fought through it. And like this up, usually nine times out of 10 I can get through them. But once in a while you find one that's just so immense, you can't find the other side. So when that happens, And especially at night, it's easier during the day. You know, I'll send the caretaker out and the next day get it taken. That's cool. Are these, I guess, tree fall areas, are they like new uncharted habitat?

So species kind of move in and start living in the logs and such? Or is it kind of like everything's gone from there for a bit because their house fell down? I mean, it's really, it's ever-changing habitat. So when a big tree fall, they take down lots of trees with them. It actually opens up some of the forests. So you actually have a sunnier area. And that sort of starts there, which brings in different stuff. So you'll see all sorts of different stuff. And then some of the arboreal stuff you can actually find on the tree falls. So, I mean, if you have a fresh tree fall, it's always good to check it out really close and see what you can find in it. so we have we there was one year it was really wet and the trees were falling so they were getting saturated and falling so the roots in the rainforest don't go deep so when the soil gets wet the trees will often fall so this is a really wet year and we had lots of trees falling and we were going out and finding stuff in the in the trees that were falling so but also be a little dangerous walking around and there's you know big big big trees falling around you and yeah for miles. So when they, it's crazy. Yeah, that's interesting. What's one of the coolest finds you've found in a tree fall like that?

Probably tree boas and some of the arboreal lizards. So the canopy lizards, you can find, you can find in the, when there's a fall, which you don't see them. They don't come down very often. There's a sneak of a nolus that stays up pretty high. And so you can often find it when you have a fall. a tree fall. Right. Is that like, isn't one the species called the crown giant?

Is that why they're the crown giant? Because they're up at the top of the crown or? The no, Onolis punctatus. It's, uh, the green, the canopy green anole. They call it the green annul there. But it just is usually really high. Yeah.

And some of the thorny tail iguanas are also up high in the trees. So, okay. Two species. Yeah. Cool. That's kind of the best of both worlds if you get a caretaker out there to clear it. Yeah, it's my problem, but I can have somebody else do the dirty work. Right.

And with the trail system, is that kind of like you're based at a kind of a base camp and then people can hit the trails at night on their own? Or is it like guided walks every night or you can head out on your own if you want to kind of thing? How does it work? We are pretty good at letting people do. what they want to do. So once you learn the trail system, and some people don't ever want to go out on their own. Some people don't want to hike with a guide at all.

So you have everything, but I just want to make sure that you know the trail system and your way around because it can be confusing. So I usually try to talk to even those people into going out one night with somebody just to kind of make sure that all is good and make sure they have their their but then you go on your own i and we don't we don't supervise people if they don't want it and we'll go hiking with people um but if you want to go

out on your own no problem at all so we do have permanent tent camps so um there's what we have at at all our camps we have um so we call them tambos um so it's just a screened-in wooden structure that you can sleep in, sleep two to three people in. And so then you have mosquito netting on a cot and a place for your suitcase. And it's very, it doesn't sound comfortable, but I sleep better there than I do anywhere else. Even you come back at 2 a.m. or 2.m. or 2.m. and go lay down. And man, that three hours of sleep you get until you hear the bird's six is just incredible. heart asleep. And then we have a community area, so like a mess hall, usually a classroom. We do have

a lot of, we do teaching, teaching, and classes at some of the sites. So we have a classroom and a mess hall at all the sites. And it's, I mean, I don't want to say it's primitive, but it's, it's primitive. There's no air conditioning. There's no ceiling fans. So it's hot when it's hot. It's wet when it's wet and so but it's it's very comfortable uh usually at at night the attempts are are are palatable for good sleep okay oh that's cool yeah and the overstorms are the best so uh if you get a storm that comes in a night it's just the best for sleeping that's cool that's really cool um so you mentioned tree beaus in the context of the tree falls

I did kind of want to walk through, if you don't mind. And the answer, when you're finding hundreds of species on a trip is there's too many to name. So what are the sort of particularly for snake guys? What are the big ticket items that people are hoping to see when they go either on a trip generally or across the different locations that you all have? I mean, it's the biggest thing is probably Bushmasters. That's what seems to be the big thing for the herpers. and so we've gotten knock on wood

pretty efficient at finding them it's funny I didn't find any until I'd been going the Amazon a long time and finally found and now we find them quite often I think I've gone I think I've gotten Bushmasters on 16 consecutive trips

so hopefully we'll keep that streak going and that's with a group I don't find them every time but I find them a chunk of time Tunk of times, but, you know, as a group, we've gotten a Bushmaster on, at least one Bushmaster on 16 consecutive trips now. And so we see them quite often. They seem to be active at the time of year we go, which is, you know, January, February for right now is what we've been doing.

And so that's probably number one. Emerald Tree Boa, definitely anacondas. They're tougher to find where we are. It's just so, there's so much water where we go. and that it's and we're going in the rainy season so between the combination the anacondas are very dispersed we find them but not a lot um i mean we find them maybe i probably average one every two trip maybe you know one one every two trips we'll see we'll see an anaconda usually we can catch it if you usually um so what else um emerald um emerald three bows we got um

Botryos binelianatus is the arboil viper, which is quite incredible, and they're tough to find. We've been finding them more commonly. All the coral snakes, we have eight coral snakes species that we found. That's cool. And they're all spectacular. Obviously, the atalopus, the monkey frogs. So what else? We have Cernam, Toads.

PIPA Pipas, all sorts of stuff. That's very cool. Do you see annulated tree bows at all, or they don't come down? No, we have the Coronals Hortulanus, the... Okay, Amazon's, yeah. Amazon's. Sure. Yeah, and they're down there.

I mean, they fill that niche, and they're quite abundant. I mean, we get them every trip sometimes. 10 or 15 on a trip. And you can find as many as you wanted if you, if that's what you were after. And of all colors, all colors, color patterns, red, orange, yellow, gray. So they're incredible. Cool. Very cool.

Are they coming down to basically hunt at the bottom of trees at night? Or how do you encounter, are you spotting them during the day, shining them at night? But what does that look like? Almost always at night. hiking or from a boat so you can get them hiking um i mean they they have quite um a lot of i shine so you know you get them in your flashlight um and uh you can see i mean if you get one in your light you know exactly what it is if you found one you know what it is um and they go i mean you get them way up high you know so i you can't get to them but you know what it is uh and then we also

go out at night on a boat where you get them going down corridors uh you know down the rivers and in the trees. And sometimes we can't get them. They're so high we can't get them. But we see them doing that. It's almost always at night. They're active at night. I've seen them during the day.

But it's definitely, it's definitely tougher to, tougher to find them during the day. They're not as active. Totally fair. Are the Emerald similar in terms of their behavior and how you find them? Or are they different from the Amazon's? the emeralds are tougher to find i mean they're they're really hard to find uh i don't have a lot of experience finding them in in peru i found more of them funny in outside of peru in south america but um well the trips i've done to peru i have not seen very many um and they're just moving

through trees um a friend found one on the ground uh in peru um so usually in the trees and um not on the rivers, which we find them on the rivers in, I mean, find horchalinas on the rivers. And the emeralds, we just don't, I've never heard of one in our area being found on the river. I've heard of them being found around Akitos on the rivers, but we haven't found them on our, on our tours doing it. Always horchelanus, so, yeah, explain it. How often do you spend, or how much time do you spend boating at night, I guess?

We'll definitely go out at Madre Selva where you're in the deep jungle. That's where it's more fun. It's truly like the jungle ride. So you go out at night and you see the kingfishers and river dolphins and all the fish and shine snakes. You can shine frogs. You get snakes swimming through the water. Occasionally you get you can see all the fish.

excuse me um and it's just i mean it's like it's truly like the jungle ride and uh the jungle ride at disney you know where you're just out and seeing stuff um and it's a little bit of sensory overload sometimes and we also we find the the night wasps as well uh so that always on your toes but angel fish we see angel fish i mean it's just it's it's experience and and uh that's when we find anacondas as well. So that's one of the one of the places. So we do that as much as we want. So if we have, I mean, two or three nights, we'll take everybody out.

It depends on how many people we have. We'll make sure everybody gets out on a night or two to do that. That's cool. And if we want to do it more. Yeah. I guess that's your road cruising in the forest. It is. It exactly is.

very neat right on and um how many this might have already been asked but how many people are typically on your trips so i've taken up to 15 i hate taking that many um so now we try to cap it at 12 and um so it always happens if somebody wants to bring a friend or something so i you know i have to if i do that i got to make special circumstances but um so i try to cap at 12 if it goes over that it it's very tough tough logistic for me actually ideally for me is 10 10 um 12 is even a little tough to manage um but uh 12 we make work especially if i have mike and christoph um there to help um but uh one time we had we ended up with 15 it was kind of a uh it was a problem it was just too much it was too many people yeah right so we try not to do that yeah

that's about eight to 10 just fine that's actually great it's great heaven. That's a great size. Yeah. I was going to ask a question regarding like when you're doing subsequent trips. If you're finding the same animals, like if you go and oh, we saw a bushmaster here, you know, 10 days ago and it's still in the area or still close to where you found at the first time. I have never found, okay, I'll have to go through this whole thing. The bushmasters will stay in one spot for two, three, four, five days and then they move and we don't see them anymore so if you find one one night and you leave it alone it will likely be there for the next night the next night and eventually it disappears right so if especially if you leave it alone

if we'll get close they'll they'll stay in the same spot um if you um and i have never found the same i'm pretty careful of looking at the bushmasters and getting their path and even taking pictures and trying to get trying to make sure and i found up to like 40 of them now um when i try to do um you know to it's not 100 because you know the pattern changed a little bit and then fade and whatever um i only have one that i found two years i found it two consecutive years in the exact same spot so um okay that was fun and now so every time i go to look in that spot and um i haven't I saw it like three years ago and then two years ago, and it hasn't been back. But I always stop at that spot.

Right. Right. It's hard not to when you have a spot where you know it's been, yeah. Every time. I can't walk by that even during the day without going and looking in that little crevice. Right. Very cool. Yeah, that's, that's, I was in Costa Rica and I asked, you know, this, I paid to go on this land to look at, look at stuff.

And they said, I said, any snakes today? And they said, oh, go, you know, go on this trail until you see the police tape. And then there's a viper in the middle of it, you know. It's like, okay. So this must have been there for a few days anyway. Yeah. No, I've done that in Costa Rica, too, with eyelash vipers where they sit in the same tree for a week. Right.

Yeah. It's nice to have those creatures of habit sometimes. Yes, for sure, for sure. What are the more difficult to predict? and but exciting to see species. Is that a weird question? Yeah, I mean, Creebos definitely are, I mean, everybody wants to see a big Creebo. The Yellowtail Coybos are spectacular down there.

They are really hard to target. They show up when they show up. And so, you know, we end up with them a lot. But, I mean, as far as, excuse me, going out and targeting them is really hard to do. I mean, you know, I'd say go out in the morning and it's sunset, but we find them midday. You find them sleeping in trees at night. So you find them everywhere but nowhere. Spillotis are kind of the same way.

It's spectacular when they show up, but really hard to target. And what else? So the other thing everybody wants is my crue. So Hempricks Coral Snake, which is the spectacular one with, look it up. Mycoris Hemperkeye. They're spectacular. And everybody wants to see one. We found some incredible ones that have gone kind of viral down there.

And so people want to see it. And they don't. show up very often so i think i've only found six six six live ones oh we got one this year and it was really nice that's cool yeah a lot of black and just very narrow rings of alternating white and orange is that the look yeah um and actually i i take it back so uh not hemprakeye uh hemprachy is the black and orange one um they're cool looking but yeah really different looking They are. Hang on. The name is Hemperkeye is, we see more commonly. I'm sorry about that.

No, no problem. Lingsdorf. Lingsdorfe. We'll get Lingsdorfy. Okay. Hey, it's to be forgiven. There are a lot of species. knees of my curse especially down there i'm sure yeah yeah i mean you say the eight that you found eight to nine yeah emberka we find fairly often uh is the black and orange one um and we probably get one a year on uh one one a trip usually um and so they're a little more common um and the the

langsdorf is the is the uncommon one and with the this the neon colors crazy crazy little And when you see them in a flashlight, it's just, like, blows you away. Wow. Their common name is the confused coral snake? That's, that's true. Maybe. I don't know that they have a common name. According to Wikipedia, that's it.

They have a pretty small range in the Amazon. So they're in Ecuador and Peru. Oh, yeah, they're fantastic. They've kind of got that, like, fishnet yellow on red. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of the pictures online will be one. that we found. So, and not many people outside have found them, so outside of our tours.

Wow. Yeah, that's impressive. I could see how that would just glow in the, in the flashlight for sure. They're spectacular. Yeah. So the my curse are a little hard to predict as well. They're just kind of, you find them when you find them. Yeah, the, the, um, the, um, Lemnisgatus is the probably the most common.

and then we get is it more of a traditional tropical coral, very very brilliant red and they move when it's raining. Hemperkai is fairly common and then obviously the aquatic corals are

there in numbers too and if whenever it's been raining the aquatic corals should be findable and attainable and they get big man I found some of that were close to two meters and it's just a handful of a coral snake and they're and they're kind of like they have those big old heads right like kind of yeah they strike sideways and so they strike a little different than other coral snakes right everything is as toxic as dangerous as any coral or everything i've heard about them i've no no firsthand account luckily um but everything i've heard is that they're very toxic yeah

Yeah, speaking of that, I guess maybe this isn't the best question to ask, but, you know, are there incidences or, you know, what do you do in case of an emergency like that? Like somebody gets bit or grabs the wrong thing or, you know, that's the risk with 10 people on your tour, you know. It is. It's very risk, very risky. And I, you know, I try to, you know, at the beginning of the tour, I try to get everybody's, you know, comfort level and dealing with, with, with, with hots and, and, you know, I get everybody from, you know, I get everybody from. from people who work in zoos and work with Hots every day to people that have never seen any venomous snake. So, I mean, you kind of have to go through the whole thing and figure out what they want to do. And the first thing I do is tell somebody if you see something, it doesn't mean you have to put it in a bag. You can just enjoy the moment and enjoy the moment and take a picture if you can. If not, enjoy the moment.

Let the thing go on its way. and there's nothing wrong with that and so but it's you know getting a measure of how everybody's doing and their comfort level their experience level and you know what they want to do and and I mean I if people want to do stuff we'll do it we're real careful when we have Hots in our possession I mean that's a we're we're very careful personally I think if somebody gets bit it's going to be an accident that we have one in our possession that ends up in the wrong place or somebody brings something back that they don't know what it is and just we have we have spots where we bring stuff back so in the night you know when you come back

in the morning and and you know what's in this bag and get you know and I don't want that I've actually had that happen to me where we brought back a baby Ferdalance and I'm you know in the morning and I'm feeling the bag and open it up and I'm like oh geez you know yeah I'm really really more careful with it, and I explain that story to everybody first day, and we're real careful. So now if anything comes in that's not identified, it goes in a specific place different than everything else. So only stuff that we know what it is can go in the spot. Everything else has to go a spot where a staff member or somebody I trust will be able to identify stuff. And if we do have some hot it stays in that area so yeah it's you know somebody if somebody wants to photograph it we'll

we'll make that we'll make that happen but um you know it's just not accessible to everybody no it's good practice yeah it's a problem and i mean it could be it could be the end because you know if you're at madraselva and you get bit by a bushmaster it's going to be it's you're going to be fighting for your life so and we'll get you as quick as I can, we'll get you to treatment. But you could be three hours in the jungle. So you have a three hour hike and then

a five hour boat ride. And yeah, it's that's eight hours of letchesis venom going through your going through you. It's not going to be pretty. Not a good scenario. Yeah. And there's other things we can do. We can stop at a local

village on the way that may have Samantha Venom. So, but ketos is where it's going to be and you might be able to get a vial or two on the way but it's it's not going to be pretty and it's also going to slow you down

so we can try and you know I would let our local teams you know try to make that decision you know whether we stop at a little village where they might have some Anna Venom and it's hard it's I tell people that don't get bit

don't get bit he's ever gotten bitten on amy tours they have on other tours that we've sponsored and I have two snake bite stories from from those and people survived but it's it's not pretty both were coral snake and venomations one was misidentified and the other was being handled recklessly so yeah so you know we try to make sure that that doesn't happen yeah I set up Facebook groups before, and Facebook has its issues. Obviously, we all know those, but it's really good. You know, pack lists, here's what to expect.

Here's everybody who's going to be on our tour. It kind of gets to know each other. And then I do some ID stuff and throw everything up there that, you know, might be venomous. And at least people can realize that if you touch the wrong, thing. It could have really, really bad. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Is there a way to screen out those like hot dog influencers, cowboys that just want to like become one with the Bushmaster and handle it? You know, it's funny. I know probably 60 to 70 percent of the people that come on my tours that repeat handle the people I know. So I'm pretty picky with, you know,

I kind of, you know, I'll screen people a little bit and make sure that this is something that is going to be good for them. There's no air conditioning. There's a lot of body. I mean, there's, there's malaria, there's amen. There's, I mean, there's night wasps that, you know, form. There's a lot of things that are not so pleasant. And you'll sweat more than you've ever sweat. you'll get mosquito bite and you know you have to be for herpers herpers know all this and it's

people that are just going out there to birdwatch and see that see my tour on the internet oh that looks fun they saw macaws and they saw this and that and um so they come on and and they're you know their bird watchers are not used to to you know sleeping in the jungle outside essentially I mean, you're dry, but you're out, so you're still outside. And, but, you know, that's what we deal with. So I try to screen as best I can and make sure people are prepped for what they're going to experience. Yeah. So are you kind of branching out or taking advantage of the burger money?

You know, like they're getting, getting attracting, putting out feeders, things like that, or not really? You really know. It's funny. I'm at the point where, of doing this that I don't have. a lot of desire to really expand. So I love Peru and I spend a lot of time down there, but I also like the rest of the world. And I spend much time in Peru.

It's taken away from me going elsewhere. So I do my tours. I usually fill them up without much advertising. I don't advertise very much. And I have no trouble filling my trips. So that's sort of, you know, people come back. I have people who have been back six, seven times and have a good time. And, you know, it's, it's fun.

It's fun. That's awesome. Yeah, that's fantastic. I mean, you hit on it largely there, but I was curious, too, of, like, you know, traveling itself, right, the stressors that you kind of talked about can be harsh enough for people that are committed to the cause of kind of what you're doing. Do you find, you know, do things go sideways? occasionally with people who haven't been before, don't really know what to expect.

Might even, you know, come to enjoy it and appreciate it, but a lot of it, I'm sure, is pretty much type B or type 2 fun, so. You know, I can get, I can, all personality types, my prior career, you know, I always I'm, I can communicate with people and I can get people to have a good time no matter what. I've had very few instances where, where I've had irreconcilable differences with somebody. I can count on, you know, maybe two. people in all the years that it's been then there's been an issue where we had and actually but nobody left it was that we I just had to say if you want to go home I'll get you to I'll get

you to the airport you know in six hours you'll be at the airport and that's happened twice and you know and and usually it doesn't come to that very often and both people stayed we just had to have a little heart to heart and if your if your problem becomes other people in the tourist problem it can be my problem and i don't care but if you're causing an inconvenience to other people that paid money to be there is where i kind of have to draw the line and that's how so you know i have to i have to get involved in something and i don't like to do that well if i have to at this point you probably have it down pat the speech and come here for a minute Yeah, and I do that very occasionally.

Yeah, yeah. But most people are great. And again, most of the people that come on the tour are my friends or friends of friends or people that, you know, I've known on Facebook, but maybe not met or met one time, you know, 15 years ago somewhere. And, you know, it's always been on their list to go on my tour and they finally got to do it. And so that's cool. That's most of my clientele.

That's a nice position to be in. that's really cool um and uh you know i i guess uh you're going to have you know occasional things but for the most part if you're doing that many trips you know that's that's pretty impressive to just have a handful that or you know count on one hand the number of times you'd had to deal with an issue like that that's cool um how you might have already answered this and you can say pass if you have but how many uh different areas are you taking tours to and how much of it is like personal you your trips you know um we just crashed a little bit so oh yeah sorry did you catch um i just asked um how many uh trips or areas you go to and uh how much herping are you doing

on your own like just your trips for me um i mean i'm always going somewhere um so just this year I've been to, well, all over Florida. I did a week in Louisiana. I've been to Georgia. I'm herped in California a little bit. Not very much, but a little bit. I'm going back to California next week for other stuff to do a rattlesnake training, but I'm not doing much.

I'll get out a little bit. I actually take it back. I'm going to stop like a day and a half in the field. And I went to, Europe went all over Europe So The UK, Belgium France, North France, South France

It's all through Spain, Morocco Japan And I was in Japan Early this spring as well I'm kind of all over I have a bunch of places that I want to go And do my best

To get there So I got a lot of places still on the list That I got a hit in my life that's cool yeah how are you choosing where to go now is it a reflection of sort of lifeless things is it a function of you know do you have an itinerant crew right of folks that you're going with or if you're going by yourself or whatever is it kind of dictated by yeah as they say your life list i just want to go to japan or is it specific species driven what does that look like it's a lot of it's species driven uh and destination driven i mean like um comoto's been on my list

for a two to go list for years and so it just needs to happen and I'll mix that with you know a couple other locations in Southeast Asia but I got to get to Komodo Madagascar I've had yeah I've had two trips that were planned that didn't happen for one reason or another and so it's also going to happen that's like one of those herb destinations that you just have to do in your life if Here are Herper, and those two are it. But I am species-driven. I mean, there's some things that I just want to see, and so I'll do my best to put myself in this situation

where I have a good chance to see some, see stuff. Nice. Hard to say. Hard to say exactly why I want to go places, but. But you do. Absolutely. In terms of Madagascar. um so sorry go ahead i don't know if you heard heard my question i've lost you can you can you can you hear us or is it i can't it's just cut out i heard in terms of madagascar

and then it cut out oh okay are we back now yeah yes okay okay i was just going to say that seems like one of those areas? Maybe not. I'm not in the area. In terms of Madagascar, that seems like one of those areas where a tour might be useful, right, relative to safety, certainly there's safety concerns, things like that. Definitely a tour or at least being with somebody their local who has, I mean, I don't know that it's even safety.

I mean, I'm comfortable renting a car, even in Madagascar, in, in, going out on my own, but getting to the sites, having it set up to, so, I mean, I can get to the sites, no problem. But then there's all those little micro habitats inside them that, you know, if you don't have the right person, you walk right by the, the, where you find the stuff. And somebody there knows where you can find this stuff. And can, so you're not wasting time. Yeah, you know, if you're going to go to Madagascar for two weeks, you don't want to be spending half your time, you know, in areas that are not as productive. And you get, so, you know, and that, it might be very worthy of having somebody with you

who can take you those spots and get you the local help that you need to find what you're looking for. Right. Especially in those areas that might be challenging to get to in the first place. Like, you know, I've heard it take several flights just to get to Madagascar. And then once you get there, you're kind of okay. but, yeah, getting there is a big chore, and so you don't want to, you know, waste your energy that way.

How much would you say if your trip planning is, like, looking into, you know, areas that you probably shouldn't go because of they're dangerous or, you know, like things like that? Do you take that into consideration much? Yeah, I mean, I do. And it's funny, my group of friends, you know, we're kind of on the spectrum about where will, where we'll go in the amount of danger.

And I'm kind of right in the middle. I mean, I'm not going anything stupid, but I also don't mind going somewhere if we have a good chance of finding something. You know, I've been in some areas of Mexico. I probably shouldn't have been. But that's okay. I'm okay with it.

But I have friends that have gone places they definitely shouldn't have gone in Mexico. I mean, it's okay. I do the research. I know enough to try. to keep myself out of trouble and try and blend in as best I can. And, you know, it's, I do my, I do my research is the bottom line. But, you know, a lot of times you're in areas where you don't see many other people.

So that's not a, not a, that kind of leads me to the next question of like, do you, do you try to just get out of Dodge as quick as you can and, you know, you're roughing it out there, sleeping in a tent? Or are you coming back to civilization? to eat and sleep and things like that. Excuse me. So, you know, I've done all of that. I've slept in my car.

I've slept in tents. I've slept on the ground. For me in, you know, I'm 55. If I can get a cheap hotel somewhere, that's my preferred way of doing it. And I certainly don't have a problem roughing it and, you know, sleeping outside. But I'll do my best to get a hotel if we can. And or camp, I mean, I've gone back, even in the last year, I've gone backpacking for herping where, you know, you just can bring what you can bring for three nights. And that's been great.

You know, and you make it work and you know that you're going so more special and it's, you know, it's a full day of hiking to get there. So, but, you know, I don't mind a hotel. I don't mind paying for a hotel at this point of my life. Yeah, it sounds like most of the places you're going, the hotels aren't going to be too terribly pricey for the most part. Yeah. I guess you're up and, you know, some other places, but yeah. Yeah, it's funny.

Sometimes you are somewhere where, you know, all the hotels, you know, start at $140. It's just, you know, you either deal with it or, you know, include it in the budget or sleep in your car. So, right. There's a lot of times you can, you know, get two or three people in a room and it cuts it down a bit. Yeah, yeah, for sure. What's the biggest spot next on your list that you really want to get back or get to?

Hmm. I have some spots in Mexico. I definitely want to go. Yeah. The west coast of Mexico, the southwest, you know, is, you know, is. I mean, I've been all through there. It's just, it's been a while, and I haven't, and there's a lot I need to find there on the Pacific, Pacific side. And so that's definitely on the list.

Komodo, Komodo's happening soon. Vietnam. I want to do Vietnam. Cool. Bali. So, got a lot on the list. So, you know, I have to plan accordingly and, you know, try not. to do too much in one year and and uh but it's it's it's fun you know i end up with these with

you know i sometimes i do these four to five week trips and it's just so much fun and i come back with so many photos and it's just it's just so much fun and the you know i try to eat you know obviously i don't skip many meals you take a look at me you know so i try to enjoy the food and i partaking an adult beverage or two on the trips and you know just make it an experience and yeah um you know obviously the herping comes first but uh you know make make me my experience right oh very cool yeah what's the place that just you'd go back to any day anytime like what's your kind of favorite spot or do you know probably some areas in mexico yeah i mean other than peru peru is for me is the home away from home other

than that, there's some places in Mexico that are just that I've had so much fun in Bahá and in Sonora and the other spot, Costa Rica. I've spent a lot of time in Costa Rica and there's so much fun. It's funny, that's all New World stuff, but

those are the places I'm very familiar with. So, you know, when I go to Thailand, I see a lot of stuff and it's just overwhelming a little bit. I mean, You guys know how that is, and you come back and you have great memories of it. But the spots that I've been to many times and just, you know, really want to enjoy and go over and over our new world stuff.

Yeah, very cool. You mentioned having gone to Louisiana earlier this year. Anything in particular you were hoping to see, and did you see it? oh so um i mean we were looking for all sorts of stuff i i lived it down there for a while and so i found pretty much everything down there but some of that was before um before digital photography so i had only not good photos of so i had to redo a lot of that stuff um but again like i said i'm old um so uh but we went up we we hit the the the the southern part of Louisiana got all the stuff and then went further north.

I mean, we were looking for some of the rare stuff. I mean, we definitely were looking for black pines and, you know, just to, you know, sort of a dream and struck out on that, but, you know, it's okay. It's got to have some goals, and it's good to have stuff that you still need to find. But that was probably the, you know, we were hoping to come across. right sure yeah i you know ideation so i've seen i haven't seen pamelaus i actually haven't seen the catanifer catanifer um and then there are those two and so that's as i say kind of working through stuff on a list perspective of like okay what have you seen so i call it 10 u.s forms i have you know

two or one's a task but straightforward another is should be super easy it's a timing a year i was three weeks early a couple years ago and then uh those two are uh something that's why I asked yeah it's I mean those are the two down there are tough and so I don't have either of those and maybe someday maybe someday do you keep a running total of all the species you found and if so what are you I I do not have a I don't I do not have a current life list so something I've been meaning to do it's like number four on my list they have stuff to do

and so I mean I have it all I have it all written down I just haven't compiled it and so it will happen at some point I'm right now arranging Peru photos and trying to get them

arranged for some sort of project that is coming up but that's kind of taken all my extra time which I mean I'll tell you what for being sort of retired the extra time I thought I would have a lot more

than I actually have that's cool yeah that's a challenge I wonder if that's also you know a challenge mostly for people who have been doing this for a long time because you know when do you start that list you know you've been doing it forever

and then you're like well I've seen a lot of stuff and that's going to be an undertaking you know I think I have a handle on the bird count I have versus the herb count. Yeah, and then you have the, you know, the list of stuff from the 80s. Right. Versus now when the taxonomy has changed and you count subspecies and what do you do with all the, with all the rat snakes that have changed names and what do you go with?

Right. So, yeah, the list could change yearly based on taxonomy if, you know, if you're unlucky. It's that personal thing of what you do. And I don't have any, you know, if somebody, counts in Everglades Ratsnake in 2025. I have, there's nothing wrong with that in my book. So that's a separate list to cite them. So, you know, call it what you want and put it on your list.

So. Yeah. Very cool. Well, Rob, any further burning questions? No, this has been fantastic. Thanks, so I'm not. I really appreciate it. This is fantastic.

I'm glad, Justin, we got you for the back two-thirds. And, yeah, really good. Good. Super exciting. I think you give it. Go ahead. I appreciate it. You guys have been great. I've enjoyed the chat. And so. Yeah, this has been really fun. And I feel bad I missed the first half. My wife had a banquet that I had said I would go to and I forgot in double books. So my bad there. But I'm glad I caught the last part of it and was able to ask you.

questions and hear some of your stuff that's really cool i i don't know i love australia so much so i just keep going back to australia but i need to branch out and do you know peru and things like that we did costa rica as a family but those family trips get pretty pricey so i need to do some solo herb trips to the tropics australia is i see why you get stuck there i've done it twice and had a great time for it's fantastic yeah so many places though i i agree there's a lot of cool places out there to hurt. Why don't you give your information again, just so we have it at the tail end as well?

You can get me, the easiest way is check my website, which is, I think it's been said here, cages.smugmug.com. And then the tour is mt.amazon.com. Okay. So for the tour company. My email is Cages,

2000 at msn.com so feel free to reach out that way as well so um and i'm on facebook as well so if somebody wants to find me just look for my name my name cool well we really appreciate you coming on matt thanks so much and it was a great we'll have to have you back when we think of some more good questions for you all right well sounds good and uh hopefully you guys can come down to prove sometime i'd love to get it done that'd be awesome all right well we appreciate you listening and thanks to Eric and Owen for the umbrella and we'll catch you again next time for Reptile Fight Club.