PEOPLE ADVENTURERS
LYSLE TURNER
DAVID GRIER AND BRAAM MALHERBE
Brave
hearts
Like pioneers of the past, modern-day explorers are set to challenge the limits of
human endurance. Gillian Warren-Brown rounded up some inspirational adventurers
who are living their dream.
W
hen Roald Amundsen and
Robert Falcon Scott toiled across
the Antarctic wastes, the South
Pole was the last great prize for
explorers. The race to claim it was on. Having
been beaten by Amundsen by a full month,
Scott and his team perished on their return trek.
In 2011, when extreme endurance adventurers
Braam Malherbe and Peter van Kets represented
South Africa in the centenary anniversary, they
competed against six teams in an unassisted
race over 888km to the Pole. Their equipment
was more sophisticated, but conditions,
and personal trials, were just as harsh.
For modern-day adventurers, this is the
new frontier: exploring the endurance of
the human spirit through challenging their
physical, mental and emotional resources.
30 SIYASIZA September 2016
For most, it starts with a dream. Often, the
dream is fired by a worthy cause. Sometimes,
the feat becomes a world first. Always, it is
a personal victory.
Earth warriors
‘Our race was deemed to be the toughest on
Earth,’ says Braam. ‘We man-hauled sleds
weighing 85kg each in high winds and an
average temperature of -45°C.’
Peter says what got them through was
humour and the pact that he and Braam
had made ‘to look after each other’. ‘Humans
are incredibly made,’ he adds. ‘If you have
a vision and a plan, nothing is impossible.’
They are pairing up again to row from Cape
Town to Rio de Janeiro during the Cape to
Rio Yacht Race in January next year.
Says Braam, ‘Pete and I will not succeed
by simply reaching Rio safely; we succeed if
we all pull together. Our conservation goal,
via a free app download, is to have someone
Doing One Thing (DOT) for the Earth for
every stroke we pull. That’s around 2.3 million
DOTs, which can cause a tipping point.’
Peter is well acquainted with the challenges
they’ll face. He has rowed some 5 500 km,
unsupported, across the Atlantic twice
– with a partner and solo.
In an expedition planned for 2018, the
DOT Earth Challenge, the duo will undertake
a 15-month circumnavigation of the globe
along the Tropic of Capricorn, using only
non-motorised means. They intend to rally
a billion children to hold adults accountable
for the destruction of our natural resources.
DESHUN DEYSEL
(Second from left)
This links directly with Braam’s dream: ‘To be
the greatest asset I can be to the Earth and to
connect one billion people around the world
to do the same.’ He believes that when you’re
driven by a purpose beyond the ego you can
achieve incredible things.
When, in 2006, he and David Grier achieved
a world first by running 4 200 km along the
entire length of the Great Wall of China in
a single attempt, their goal was to raise money
for Operation Smile, which provides cleft lip
and palate repairs for children. ‘I was motivated
by how many kids would get surgery and smile
for the first time. I couldn’t have finished without
the kids. They were my purpose,’ says Braam.
Two years later, he and David completed
a 3 300 km ‘smile’ run around the tip of Africa,
from Oranjemund via Cape town to Ponta do
Ouro in Mozambique.
In the same year that Peter participated in the
South Pole race, his wife Kim (a lawyer) ran, cycled
and kayaked along the coast and the perimeter
of South Africa to prove to their daughter that
mothers can be adventurers and heroes too.
The dual focus of her 6 772 km expedition was
to raise funds for a charity she and Peter support
– the Carel du Toit Centre, which teaches deaf
children to speak – and to highlight the potential
of South Africa and its people.
Testing the waters
When Riaan Manser cycled the perimeter of not
just South Africa, but also the African continent,
he wanted to ‘do something great for Africa,
in Africa; something nobody had done before’.
Setting out in 2003, it took him two years
and, among other challenges, exposed him to
temperatures of over 50°C in the Somali desert.
Other world firsts followed: circumnavigating
Madagascar by single kayak, and Iceland with
Dan Skinstad, who has mild cerebral palsy, by
double kayak.
Three years ago, when Riaan’s girlfriend
Vasti Geldenhuys, an advocate, said she’d like
a holiday in New York, she never imagined
they would row 10 765km, or take 172 days,
to get there. But she decided to embrace the
challenge; to do something extraordinary with
her life and to test her own limits. With this feat,
she became the first woman from Africa to row
across any ocean, and the couple became the
first to row from mainland Africa to mainland
North America.
Their relationship survived many lifethreatening situations and, after marrying
in May this year, they set off on a two-month
honeymoon in July: destination Hawaii.
Sound idyllic? That’s if you don’t mind
rowing over 4 000 km from California on
a 7m boat with your new spouse – just the
two of you – and facing tropical storms
and the threat of hurricanes en route.
While Riaan says they did this ‘to have
amazing stories to tell our children and
grandchildren’, Vasti adds, ‘and to leave
a legacy of love and adventure’.
VASTI GELDENHUYS AND RIAAN MANSER
‘Humans are
incredibly made. If
you have a vision
and a plan, nothing
is impossible.’
PETER VAN KETS,
EXTREME ADVENTURER
To support this goal, Riaan has founded
a charitable organisation that supplies sporting
equipment to Western Cape schools in need. He
believes that, for many of these children, being
able to play sport is all it will take for them to live
out their dreams and aspirations.
Summits for a cause
For Monde Sitole, dance was the catalyst.
As a young teen on Dance for All’s Scholarship
Programme, he learnt that focus, dedication and
hard work are the drivers of dreams. Since then,
‘with the suppressed dreams of every township
kid in my backpack’ he has climbed three of the
‘seven summits’ – his personal goal. At the end of
the year, Monde intends to climb Mount Everest
PEOPLE ADVENTURERS
PETER VAN KETS AND BRAAM MALHERBE
RIAAN MANSER
ARMCHAIR
KIM VAN KETS
ADVENTURE
without oxygen to raise funds for his Foundation’s
Next School Initiative, which is focused on making
education ‘innovative, engaging and empowering’.
In his most recent expedition this year, he
led four young Khayelitsha women up Tanzania’s
Mount Kilimanjaro as part of a campaign to
raise awareness of women’s empowerment
and girls’ education.
‘There is still a low expectation of what girls can
achieve but this expedition can help shift that.
We want to give wings to the women figures who
are role models, and who are already shaping our
world,’ says Monde.
Deshun Deysel qualifies as one of these.
She was a member of the first South African
expedition to Everest in 1996 but, as a novice
climber, did not make a summit attempt.
Since then she has been on some of the
world’s highest mountains in 14 expeditions
over five continents and, as a black woman
mountaineer, has waged an ongoing struggle
to overcome stereotyping.
Deshun, a business coach and motivational
speaker, says, ‘I hope to become an icon
of making dreams come true. It all started
with the flicker of a dream when I was
growing up in apartheid South Africa.
'Then, our reality was too stark for my
generation to think we could dream the way
I was encouraged to. Now, I’m living that dream.’
In her role as an ambassador for the Laureus
Sport for Good Foundation, she mentors
township children. In her view, mountains are
a metaphor for life. ‘No matter how high the
mountain,’ she says, ‘there’s always a way up.’
32 SIYASIZA September 2016
This has been demonstrated repeatedly by
entrepreneur Lysle Turner, who was just 13
when he and his family climbed Kilimanjaro
‘as a family team-builder’.
This year, at 26, he became the youngest
South African to summit Everest. His real
purpose was to raise awareness of Huntington’s
Disease, a neuro-degenerative brain disorder
that has affected his family for four generations.
His is the first generation to be free of the
disease. Despite this, he has dedicated his life
to helping those who are not so fortunate.
At 3.30am on 19 May, standing on top
of the world for a few brief moments, he
unfurled a South African flag on which he
had written 400 names he’d been sent of
people who had succumbed to Huntington’s.
‘I’d memorised those names and every time
the going got tough, I recited them,’ he says.
While heading to the summit at a height of
8 848 m, Lysle was exposed to -55°C with wind
chill, which almost froze his right eye (he wasn’t
wearing goggles because it was still dark).
Last year, his summit attempt was scuppered by
an avalanche caused by an earthquake in Nepal.
The disappointment, and staying to help remove
the bodies of those who died, he says, was
‘a bigger life lesson than this year’s summit’.
Lysle has climbed Kilimanjaro seven times (one
in which he ran up and down in 11 hours), and
Aconcagua in Argentina, where weather also
prevented him from summiting.‘No matter who
you are, go passionately in the direction of your
dreams’ he says. ‘No matter how long or how
bumpy the road, keep working at it every day.’
‘One learns
just what one is
capable of – which
is always more
than one thought!’
PATRICIA GLYN,
ECO-ADVENTURER
Across country
Kingsley Holgate, the ‘greybeard’ of African
adventure has certainly embraced this attitude.
His expeditions have included many world
firsts, such as his family’s 1993 peace and
goodwill journey in open boats from Cape Town
to Cairo, followed by an east-west crossing
on the Zambezi and Congo rivers along the
route taken by Livingstone and Stanley.
As a child, Kingsley was enthralled by his
father’s tales of Victorian explorers. As an
adult, his Great Explorers Expeditions followed
in the footsteps of Victorian explorers who
faced starvation, fever and even death to
open up Africa to the Western world.
Now, his Foundation aims to save and
improve lives through adventure – distributing
malaria nets (and doing education), water
purification devices and Right to Sight
spectacles. Conservation, with a focus on
rhinos and elephants, is also on the agenda.
IMAGES: GALLO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES, GALLO IMAGES/REUTERS PHOTOGRAPHER, CHRISTOPHER CLARK, JACQUES MARAIS, LYSLE TURNER AND SUPPLIED.
Visit Siyasiza.com to
read more about these
intrepid explorers.
MORTANDI ERIONFE
FROM LEFT: Lihle Ntsukumbini, Happy Bashe, Monde Sitole,
Nandipha Mahijana, Asenathi Sonkosi
Like Kingsley, former radio and television
broadcaster Patricia Glyn was inspired by
explorers of the past. These, however, were
her ancestors Sir Richard Glyn and his brother
Robert, who came to Africa in 1863 because they
were captivated by Livingstone’s account of his
‘discovery’ of the Victoria Falls. Using Sir Richard’s
diary to map her route, Patricia walked 2 200 km
in four months, with her dog Tapiwa, from Durban
to Victoria Falls.
Before that, she accompanied a South African
expedition to Everest base camp and, in an
ongoing eco-adventure, she records Khomani
San heritage sites in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier
Park and helps the elders teach children about
their history and disappearing culture.
‘My trips are eye-openers,’ says Patricia. ‘One
learns just what one is capable of – which is
always more than one thought!’
REMEMBERING
GUGU ZULU
South Africans were saddened
by the news that racing car
driver Gugu Zulu had died
while attempting to summit
Kilimanjaro in July this year.
Zulu and his wife were part
of the Mandela Day 2016
Trek4Mandela expedition, which
aimed to raise enough funds
to ensure that 350 000 girls
wouldn’t need to miss a day of
school owing to menstruation.
The Great Run
by Braam Malherbe
The Eighth Summit
by Peter van Kets
Footing with
Sir Richard’s Ghost;
Off Peak; What Dawid
Knew – a journey
with the Kruipers
by Patricia Glyn
Courage and Rice
by David Grier
Cape to Cairo; Africa
– in the Footsteps of
the Great Explorers;
Afrika – Dispatches from
the Outside Edge
by Kingsley Holgate
Tri the Beloved Country
by Kim van Kets
Around Africa on my Bicycle;
Around Madagascar
on my Kayak; Around
Iceland on Inspiration
by Riaan Manser