The Galapagos Postman and His Global Adventure with Jon Beardmore

Speaker A: 00:01:12

Long before emails and text messages in the remote wilds of the Galapagos Islands, sailors had their own version of a messaging app, only it came in the form of a wooden barrel. Welcome to Post Office Bay.

A centuries old mail drop on Florina island, where 18th century whalers and explorers left handwritten letters in hopes of that a passing ship might take them home. No stamps, no formal addresses, just faith in the kindness of strangers. Today, the tradition lives on.

Travelers from around the world need postcards in that same weather beaten barrel and others pick them up to deliver by hand across oceans and continents just out of the kindness of their hearts.

After visiting the Galapagos, John Beardmore, who's joining us today, and picked up over 50 of these letters and hand delivered them to total strangers all around the world. Hey, I'm Luke. I'm an author of archaeological adventure novels.

I travel the world looking for stories to put into my books and share with you right here on the Adventure Story podcast.

So, so far on this season of the podcast, we've talked about adventure stories from near and far, true and supposed, but this one is as real and human and honest and lovely as they come. It's about a man, a bunch of letters, and a bold experiment to connect people all around the world. John, how are you doing?

Speaker B: 00:02:54

Very good, Luke. Nice to chat.

Speaker A: 00:02:57

Yeah, really nice to chat. Really nice to chat. So tell me about this Galapagos post box. Where does the tradition come from? How did you first hear of it?

Where did you come up with this idea?

Speaker B: 00:03:08

was there in New Year January: 2023

rel that had been there since: 1793

There's like 300 plus letters in the letterbox at any one time. And with other people on the boat, we all sort of divvied up and said, anybody going to London, I'll take a couple of those.

And I took them back to London and thinking, wow, this is, this has got something, there's something about this. And when I made, I made. I turned up on a West London doorstep unannounced and just knocked on the door to deliver one of these letters.

And the recipient was so stoked to get it that I thought, ah, there's something in this, maybe I should do this on a grand scale.

Speaker A: 00:04:09

So that was letter number one.

Speaker B: 00:04:10

Wow. Unofficial, unofficial, unofficial. That wasn't part of the actual challenge, but it was part of the.

What gave me the idea and then actually proved the concept that there was something about it.

Speaker A: 00:04:24

Wow. And that's amazing that you say there's 300 letters in this box at any one time or around thereabouts.

Speaker B: 00:04:30

Ballpark, there's probably, I estimate there's sort of possibly 50 to 100 people per day going to this island. You know, three or four boats stop with 10, 15, 20 people on them, they're going.

Everybody's writing a few letters, one or two or three, and then they might take the same amount. So the numbers are staying fairly consistent, but the turnover is really high.

Most of the letters, when I went back to get it, hadn't been there for very long. I see.

Speaker A: 00:04:58

So where did this tradition begin? You say it was back for several hundred years at that point?

Speaker B: 00:05:03

Yeah, I think sailors and whalers that were working out in the seas for multi year voyages were looking at some way to get their mail home. And they came up with this idea of everybody sailing through the Galapagos. Well, let's just stick a whiskey barrel there, you can stick it in.

And anybody coming past, if they know that there's litter boxes there, if they're heading in the direction where some of the letters are addressed, they'll pick it up and they'll deliver it by hand to the destination.

Speaker A: 00:05:29

So tell me about some of the letters you delivered. Then you took a certain number from the box and you made this pledge. You were going to deliver them all.

Did you choose them specifically or did you just grab the top handful and went for it like that?

Speaker B: 00:05:43

Early: 2023

st of March,: 2024

In most places, I took all the ones that were there.

And then where there was more, like America, North America and Europe, I just selected random ones that were places I hadn't been to before or even quirky letters that caught my attention and went, right, I got 55 letters. Now I gotta go out See if I can deliver them.

Speaker A: 00:06:32

And you must have had some notable. Some notable deliveries during that time.

Speaker B: 00:06:37

Oh, loads, mate. The one thing that was unique about it was that every.

Every letter kind of had its own little story to it, whether it was the recipient who got it, knew it was coming, or had no ideas. Some people had written them to themselves. There was one addressed to a lady in Houston that just said, show me your boobies.

So I thought, oh, man, that looks pretty cool. I'm curious to meet that person. And there was happened to be another letter for Houston address to the mayor of Clown Town.

And I thought, oh, that's curious. I want to go. I'll do both of those. Turned out they were both related because it was mother and daughter who'd sent the letters on the same trip.

Speaker A: 00:07:15

Oh, right.

Speaker B: 00:07:16

But because the handwriting's different, the tone of it's different, I always spent this time looking at.

They became characters, the cards, trying to work out who was involved and what was the backstory behind it, and then trying to guess, and then obviously trying to meet the people and find out the story in person.

Speaker A: 00:07:33

You said one of them. You almost got arrested trying to deliver this letter?

Speaker B: 00:07:37

Yes, I turned up in Bergen near the end for letter number 50. Customary I'd go up and I'd make an attempt to deliver in the afternoon.

Nobody was home, so I went back in the evening, and there was a young lady there that was a helper looking after the child. And the letter recipient was at the gym. And so I told her what I was doing, and she just thought. I thought everything was fine.

But unbeknownst to me, after I'd said, look, it's okay for me just to wait here. Be kind of flipped out with the girl inside. And they.

They mistook my selfie stick as a potential knife that was just sitting in my pocket at the top of it, coming out of my selfie stick. And so about an hour later, while I was still sitting there waiting, the police turned up to question me on what was I doing here.

And everybody turned once they found out that it was legitimate and I was storing the delivery was from one of the letters from the friends, and it wasn't. It was a selfie stick. Everybody was kind of relieved, and we went inside, had a cup of tea, and had a nice chat.

Speaker A: 00:08:37

It all ended well.

And there must have been some that were quite emotive to have picked up, because maybe there were a few people that they hadn't seen in a long while or.

Speaker B: 00:08:45

Yeah, there was a love letter in Belize that when I got there, the couple had actually split up and so it was like, oh, damn it.

Speaker A: 00:08:54

Too late.

Speaker B: 00:08:56

Yeah, exactly.

I delivered one in China to a Chinese heart cardiac surgeon and he was looking after his father, who was on his deathbed, and I delivered it to him that day and his father died later the same day. It was quite surreal because it reminded me of my own father.

And it was my father passing from motor neurone disease and was acting as one of the key inspirations for this journey to try and raise awareness and raise funds for motor neuron societies and ALS organizations around the world.

Speaker A: 00:09:33

Yeah.

And coming onto that, that brings us on to sort of my next question, really, because ultimately the challenge of delivering the letters, whilst a great connecting point, a great touching point, this was about more than just that physical challenge, wasn't it?

Speaker B: 00:09:46

Yeah, look, I wanted to get out in the world and I was getting a little bit frustrated with the way things were.

For me personally, I sort of get a little bit catchy and the world is post Covid and we got all the social media now and so I was feeling a little disconnected. You know, you can't catch up with your friends. Nobody turns up just on the doorstep anymore. You don't message three weeks in advance.

You really think you're a bit strange. So I wanted to get back out in the world and actually reconnect with people.

And so I decided that the letters and the ability to just turn up and not know where I was going or what was going to happen was meant there was spontaneity brought back into my world and gave me a unique opportunity to go and travel and meet new people.

Speaker A: 00:10:35

And you raised some money whilst doing this for motor neurons disease and als?

Speaker B: 00:10:40

Yeah, that's right.

The MMD in New Zealand charity that helped my dad raised some money for them and also had a charity here in the uk cause that's my sort of second home for a charity called Stand against mnd Here was raising money for them as well, which was great.

Speaker A: 00:10:58

So you filmed the whole process, did you? You've turned this into a video or an audio?

Speaker B: 00:11:03

I shared the story. There was always, I try to do journeys that have a purpose to them.

Now, there's nothing wrong with the weekend escape and everything like that, but to go and travel and explore the world, I like to have, be motivated and have a purpose to do it. And so this was a big purpose to try and do it. So I wanted to share the story.

I chose to do it via Instagram to try and keep it as simple as possible with one platform. That meant trying to turn into portrait shooting, which as a filmmaker in the past, bugs the hell out of me.

So I started to share the story via Instagram, making little videos as I was going of some of the deliveries. The media picked up on the story when I hit North America in May last year.

And so they started coming along and following the story and sharing the story. So that started to put more and more content out there.

So I've got lots of footage of various things throughout the year, but the final three or four weeks of the trip, I filmed it back into landscape so that I've got the basis.

I did a little mini challenge called Post Haste across Europe, where I. I let social media decide how I was going to get from A to B to deliver the last half a dozen letters and what challenges I'd have to do before I was allowed to make the delivery. And so example being I turned up dressed as a Viking in Copenhagen and then I got thrown off the property by the lady.

Didn't think it was appropriate. So I filmed the last section so I can. I've got the footage there to make a film, a documentary of the journey.

Speaker A: 00:12:38

Oh, that's fantastic.

I could just imagine her not realizing that you're there for such sort of honorable reasons and just asking you to get off her land before, you know,.

Speaker B: 00:12:49

Normally the goal is everybody I've turned up, unless they've. It's the letter, right? They've sort of like, everybody's a little bit sort of uncertain when you first turn up, what do you want?

And you're trying to explain what it is. But then ultimately you show them the postcard, the letter that's come from a friend of theirs. And that all of a sudden changes everything.

Everybody goes, okay, this is. Your crazy story is legitimate, it's come from somebody. I know you can't. It'd be bonkers. How else would it work?

So that normally works, but in this one particular case, I showed her the letter and she was just like, yeah, nah, leave the letter in the letterbox and leave, please. And I was just like. It was frustrating cause I loved the interaction.

Even though every one I did, I was still nervous no matter how many times I did it. Cause you never quite knew how it was going unfold.

So that was a bit of a disappointing one, but I understand stranger, big guy, had a massive beard that had been growing for a year, dressed as a Viking because it had been voted by the public. And I'm standing outside her door in the snow at 3 o' clock in the afternoon on a Saturday. And she's just like, yeah, bestie go, mate.

Speaker A: 00:14:00

I can understand her apprehension to welcome you in for a cup of tea, in a chat, but also knowing you, I feel that that would have been a great thing to do as well.

Speaker B: 00:14:09

Yeah, it was the one time it didn't really come off, unfortunately. There was a couple that I tried to make deliveries and nobody was home and I left them a note and they haven't been in touch.

But the vast majority of the letters I've met, the people involved, I'm still in touch with them and we had a big finish line party a few weeks ago and 10 or 11 people came internationally from that I'd met around the world for the party to finish, which was brilliant.

Speaker A: 00:14:35

That's amazing. So the people you've given letters to, you've. You've met again since?

Speaker B: 00:14:39

Yep, yeah, yeah. I had people from Panama, Mexico, North America, Houston, New York, Dublin, Estonia. The taxi driver from Estonia that helped us deliver Letter Cave.

And then at the head of the mmd, Iceland came along as well. So it was brilliant to see everybody again.

Speaker A: 00:14:59

Oh, fantastic, Fantastic. So did this mission take you anywhere or this challenge take you anywhere you wouldn't otherwise have gone?

You've mentioned a load of countries there. I know you were a bit of a true traveler. Anyway, was there anywhere that you. That you went sort of, that you.

That you hadn't been before or never would have considered otherwise?

Speaker B: 00:15:15

The letters dictated where I would go, but how I got there was up to me. So I, and I wanted to go to all seven continents.

I wanted to be global and I hadn't been to Antarctica before, so I, I went to Antarctica after I delivered the first letter, after I'd picked them up, I, I made a. When I decided to book a cruise down there a couple of weeks after, I started hoping that I might get a letter to go down there.

I didn't, but we did go to the most southerly post office in the world. That was awesome. I mean, I got to do so many bucket list activities along the way.

I went to all the big waterfalls in the world, Iguazu, Niagara Falls, Vic Falls in Zimbabwe, you know, I went to see the gorillas in Rwanda and Uganda as well. I was sumo wrestling in Japan. I went to Bhutan, which is a bit of a trickier place to get to on a, on a, on a trip.

While I was just traveling around, I was able to try to squeeze in as, as much of new places and I went to, of the 52 countries I spent time in, 19 of them were new for me. So there was a lot of retreading of the ground, but there was a lot of new stuff at the same time, which is great.

Speaker A: 00:16:27

Yeah, I can see that. It's important to have a mixture of both of that when you're. When you're on the road, I think, too.

Speaker B: 00:16:32

Yeah, I didn't mind. I want to go to. I'm trying to go and see. Visit all sort of 193 UN countries. And I added 19 more over the year, which was nice, good to do.

But, yeah, I did go to a lot of places that I've been to before.

I mean, but what you start to learn is that even within those countries that you've been to before, there's so many other little places within them that you can go and check out for the first time. And the more important thing actually was the people that I met along the way, which is what I always get excited about.

Speaker A: 00:17:03

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right there. And that sort of brings us back to the point of doing this, wasn't it?

Because you're thinking about and you're considering that big question, connectedness, disconnection, how digital lives have stopped that real connection. Did you have any epiphanies or realizations or make any progress on your thinking of that problem whilst you were on the road?

Speaker B: 00:17:27

Well, I think it kind of confirmed my suspicions. Even though we'd never been better connected before, where personally, I think we're less connected. I struggle to see my friends.

We all seem to have this busy lifestyle and you don't get a lot of communication is done electronically now rather than just meeting up in person.

And so I suspected this would be the case because I've traveled and I spent a lot of time and I go out into the world because it's the greatest way to get connected on a personal level with people is when you're traveling and meeting new people. But when you come back into your sort of own sort of lifestyle, sometimes, you know, that shrinks rapidly.

And literally I've been back about a month now, and it's like I could have gone. I've never been anywhere. It's gone straight back down to quiet again. And I'm not seeing very many people.

It's just the way the world sort of operates now.

Speaker A: 00:18:21

Yeah, I understand that. And sometimes I almost think that you feel you see people more when they are on the road because they've got stories to tell you.

You're seeing their photos and Hearing their adventures and their, and their mishaps and all of these sorts of things. Whereas if you're in the, the normal life, it's like, well, what, what happens that's that interesting on a weekly basis.

Speaker B: 00:18:42

And it's also, it's having the time and the space to do it. We're busy lives, jobs, careers, families. It just takes up all your spare time.

And removing yourself from that situation is not something that everybody can do. So I'm fortunate that I can work and travel at the same time, which allowed me to help pay for the, make it possible. And I was. And when you.

But when you remove yourself from that sort of day to day stuff, then you free yourself up and you, all of a sudden you've got a lot of time that you can actually spend towards making relationships and meeting new people and chatting to somebody that you might not normally do.

Speaker A: 00:19:21

Yeah, I understand that. I can get that completely too. I suppose in a way you're participating here in a tradition that's sort of 200 years old, aren't you?

But yet in a, in a very different way.

What did you learn about the world and the scale of the world and the number of people in it and the differences that we have between various continents and cultures that perhaps would have been obvious 200 years ago because of the speed of travel and the, and the, and the lack of connection in the Internet sort of sense. Whereas now we are connected. But I think those differences still exist. Right.

Speaker B: 00:19:54

As a human race, we've got some pros and we've got some cons, but we haven't really changed that much. And everybody's still human. We still love to hang out with our friends and our family. And actually we're not at all different.

Everywhere I go to explore countries and places to find out for myself what they're like. And everywhere I go I find similar traits of all mankind and people that I meet along the way. So I think we're a lot closer than everybody thinks.

There's a lot of division in the world and the media is a bugbear of mine because I both use the media to help tell my story. But at the same time they have a very much focus on the stories that they tell.

And trying to tell good stories like I was doing around the world wasn't that easy to get time and people's attention spans move so quickly. But I don't think the world's a pretty good place. Right.

You know, we hear a lot of negativity, but it only makes up a small portion when the vast majority is positive and that balance is the wrong way around. And people need to just try and remember that, that you and I, we've just been introduced by some friends of friends.

People will generally be warm and welcoming and hospitable. And I think if we all had more friends into a bigger, wider international community of friends, we would have less sort of issues in the world.

Speaker A: 00:21:15

Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. I think that's absolutely true. And it's something that I try and spread. That's that message as often as I'm able as well. Yeah, totally.

So I have a question I ask to everyone on the podcast normally towards the end of our conversation, because we're all about adventure stories, whether they're. Whether they're fiction, whether they're real, whether they're movies, whether they're books, in whichever form they come.

And I want to ask you what adventure stories, whether books, movies, legends, history, whatever sparked your imagination and your want for adventure and you'll want to see the world and you'll want to go out there and live it and experience it.

Speaker B: 00:21:54

Oh, look, I mean, in terms of big film buff.

So there was all the classics when you were growing up in New Zealand, because, you know, saw New Zealand, I didn't leave New Zealand really until I came to the UK, until I was 25 years old. And so I'd only been to Australia prior to that sort of thing. And so it's all Outwards film. So Razor the Lost Ark, always a classic.

Indiana Jones, Star Wars. A lot of those sorts of imagination and science fiction inspired me or got me excited.

I think as I've got older, I've started to look back into history more. And I did a trip about 12 years ago now where I drove across Central Asia because I wanted to explore the history of the Great Game.

ssia and British India in the: 1800

And I'd read some books about it and I got to there and it was telling me about all the great explorers and the adventurers from the Royal Geographical Society and so on like that. And that gave me something that was actually something in past human history that I wanted to go back and explore.

And that inspired me to drive across all of those countries from London to Malaysia and back 30,000 sort of miles over what, nine and a half months.

And that was an amazing experience to be able to go back through time with knowing about the history of the region and also how it also affects everyday life today. Because as we know, we're still seeing issues through that part of the world that affect us all.

Speaker A: 00:23:27

Yeah, that's absolutely fascinating. And I think you're. Yeah, I like what you've said there, that that's changed over time and, and that you've.

You've done something to sort of uncover that and discover that in your own way. I think that's powerful.

Speaker B: 00:23:38

Yep. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker A: 00:23:40

So once again, John, tell us where people can find about your challenge, about the charities that you're supporting and where they can support you or find you should they want to.

Speaker B: 00:23:51

Easiest way to look back and see the history of what I've done is on Instagram, Big o Adventures or one word iGoadventures in there. In the bio, there's links to a Facebook page, there's to a T shirt website, there's links to the charities. You can find out and research more.

And if you just actually Google Galapagos Postman, you will see me all over the Internet for all of the media stories that were published, a lot of news articles along the way, so you can read a little bit more about it. But Instagram is the best place to see it all sort of laid out. And if you stay tuned and follow me, there'll be.

You'll be kept in the loop for film and book and talks and presentations that will come out in the near future. Well, in the future, yeah. As an author, I'm sure you never can be sure how long it's going to take.

Speaker A: 00:24:43

It takes a while. Yeah. The muse is a fickle thing. Yes, indeed.

Speaker B: 00:24:47

Indeed.

Speaker A: 00:24:48

John, that was fantastic. Thank you so much.

Speaker B: 00:24:51

Excellent. Thanks very much for having me. Luke,.

Speaker A: 00:24:55

This is the Adventure Story podcast. Thanks so much for hanging out today. It's great to spend some time with you.

As John just mentioned, there are loads of links to all the various causes and the various adventures that he's had in the show. Notes for this podcast, it's a bit of a bumper one, so please make sure you check that out.

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