Sometimes you just have to do it
After nearly 4 years and travelling over 38,000km with my tractor and a dog I arrived on the ‘Cape of Good Hope’, South Africa. All these years I’d been searching for beautiful projects, initiatives and inspiring people’s stories. And I’ve collected (on film, in photos and in writing) so many stories that inspire courage, that prove that ‘sometimes you just have to do it!’
While travelling I’ve collected dreams of people everywhere. Wishes, written on small pieces of paper, and they’ve travelled with me on the back of the tractor. The Antarctica2 expedition sees me take them all the way to the South Pole and there I want to build this big snowman with the dreams of the world in its belly. Keeping a document of the dreams of the world for future generations. I hope that people will hear about this story and think to themselves: if you can drive a tractor all the way to the South Pole, and be safe, maybe this one dream that I have is also possible. Maybe I should just do it!
WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL BE THE TOUGHEST PART OF THE EXPEDITION?
Travelling through the mountains and the crevasse area. But maybe that’s going to be the scariest part. The toughest part would then be the areas with sastrugi, frozen ‘snow waves’, they will make for an extremely bouncy tractor-ride!
WHAT’S BEEN YOUR TOUGHEST CHALLENGE SO FAR?
Three years of bush camping and solo travelling in Africa with an old tractor and a dog I’d adopted on my way.
Seeing this project come to completion, to never give up and keep positively working towards that seemingly impossible goal: setting up and undertaking a South Pole expedition by tractor and finding all the help, support and finance needed for doing that. It’s become a ‘life work’. Now, 12 years after I created the concept and decided to ‘do it’, it’s finally going to happen! The real-life happy ending to the adventure story I once invented/dreamt up/ envisioned.