I find I want to pinch myself quite often, as this fabulous 35-metre yacht anchors at yet another paradise island in the Sulu Sea off Borneo. Sadly though, it’s not a daiquiri-on-the-deck kind of yacht. Right now it’s noon, 36 degrees, and instead of lazing about with a good book, everyone’s toiling away under a tropical sun, building a metal aeroplane on the aft deck – as you do on the Mike Horn Pangaea Expedition.
Pangaea is the name of the yacht, as well as the super continent that existed 250 million years ago, before it split into the bits we know today. The expedition’s trying to reunite the world again – only this time in the fight for nature.
The man behind the expedition has an air of invincibility. South African extreme explorer Mike Horn has completed a variety of outrageous adventures, such as journeying around the Earth on the Equator using no motorised transport, just the wind and his legs, and hydro-speeding the length of the Amazon. He’s walked to the North Pole in the permanent dark of winter, and walked around the Arctic Circle – a solo journey of over two years.
“I’ve seen beautiful parts of the world, and I want my kids to see it the way I’ve seen it,” says Mike. “We got it wrong – they need to get it right. The youth is our most sustainable energy source.” He hopes that if you can show youngsters how beautiful – and how fragile – the Earth is, they’ll grow up to become its custodians.
So the Pangaea expedition is sailing around the world, gathering ‘Young Explorers’ aged 14 to 20 from all the continents – anyone can apply to join – to do a variety of environmental projects, from cleaning up Antarctica and recording salinity levels in New Zealand’s fiordlands for researchers, to conducting island clean-ups in Malaysia.
Or making metal aeroplanes ?
Pangaea is currently sailing around the north-eastern tip of Borneo, and we’re a floating United Nations – South Africa, New Zealand, South Korea, Brazil, United States, Russia, Poland, France, Switzerland, Germany and the Czech Republic are all represented on board.
This group is on board for three weeks, and the projects cover helping at orang-utan and turtle sanctuaries, researching and creating new coral reefs, and cleaning up islands as we go.
Mike, typically, looks at life from a slightly different angle: “You see so many shipwrecks at dive sites – how about an aeroplane?” The metal framework taking shape on the aft deck, complete with a propeller and a ‘Pang-Air’ sign, is being anchored on the sea bed off Lankayan Island, a conservation dive centre in the Sulu Sea. In time the plane will become a new reef supporting an eco-system of corals, sponges and fish stocks. Eventually the metal with rust away, and by that time the coral will have grown enough to support itself.
“I’m already planning to come back to get involved with conservation at Lankayan, and hopefully by that time it will have become a proper coral reef. Let’s see!” said Simon Havas, 16, of Prague, Czech Republic.
That’s the whole point, says Mike. “I want to get the youth emotionally involved in the environment. I’m tired of words – I don’t want to raise awareness about plastic in the ocean, for example, we should all be aware by now. I want get out there and clean it. And I want these Young Explorers to get out there too.”
The idea behind Pangaea is to mix nations, languages and cultures, so that we don’t care only for our own country, but rather for our planet.
“We’re all kids of the Earth, borders are just political. These youngsters need to become ambassadors of the world.”
The kids are bursting with ideas and enthusiasm for what’s up ahead – and I’ll keep you posted. If their passion is anything to go by, our world’s probably in good hands. It’s all probably worth giving up a daiquiri for (although I’m still hoping).
For more updates, see Adelle’s blog posts on The Wanderer at http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/wanderer
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