Peter van Kets is back

Leadership’s favourite adventurer is at it again: After rowing single-handedly across the Atlantic in no more than a glorified ‘shoe box’, Peter van Kets has set his sights on circumnavigating the globe along the Tropic of Capricorn, all by his own steam to highlight the serious environmental issues that face the planet.

The 44-year-old hard man will use a combination of sailing, kayaking, hiking and mountain biking to achieve this feat spanning 37 500 kilometres, which amazingly has never before been completed single-handedly without the use of an engine, and which will take up to a year.

Renowned adventurer Mike Horn has circumnavigated the equator, but Van Kets hopes to write himself into the history books on the Capricorn Expedition in early 2012.

Van Kets told Leadership in an exclusive interview: “When I got back after the Solo Race, the thought was: “Okay, what next?” and there’s definitely not going to be another row, not for the time being. I actually don’t know if my hands would make it – I have quite serious tendonitis. I’m sure it will go away, but at the moment, I just don’t feel like I really want to go and do another.

“A lot of people say, ‘Come on, Pete, everybody knows you as the Rower.’ And I’m not a Rower, I’m an Adventurer.

“The idea behind Capricorn is to do something different; it’s going to be a wild expedition.”

He continues: “I will be crossing six deserts. So it’s a very dry part of the planet. One of them being the Atacama, which is the driest place on earth. Then there is the Great Western Desert in Australia, the Kalahari, the Namib, to name a few.

“So I have half a degree on each side of the Tropic of Capricorn. A degree is 60 nautical miles – I have 30 miles on each side leeway.

“If there is no path or track, or whatever, then I have to bundu bash,” enthuses Van Kets.

Deeper message

The environmental and charitable sides to the trip are close to his heart as he hopes to raise money for charity and heighten awareness for climate change issues.

Plans are afoot for a documentary on the entire journey, earmarked for either National Geographic or Discovery, which would be a tremendous feather in Van Kets’ battle-hardened cap.

He explains: “It’s good for South Africa as well – just the whole exposure to South African adventures.

“I’m by no means one of the great South African adventures, but it will be a great opportunity to for me to expose South Africa and the world of adventure.

“There is massive media following on this Capricorn expedition. So whoever comes and is part of my trip is just going to get massive exposure,” he adds.

“It’s not just me in South Africa doing my thing, or a South African doing his thing across an ocean, but I am going to be able to expose businesses in Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Australia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Botswana and South Africa.”

Something like this requires a tremendous amount of training and preparation, from securing a sponsor, to ensuring you are not kidnapped or eaten by a lion – a real possibility while bushwalking through Mozambique on the final leg.

Between Two Rivers Expedition

As a result, Van Kets decided that a serious training mission was in order, and rounded up good friend, Arno van der Merwe, and thought up a good way to punish himself to the limit – all in the name of preparation in November 2010.

“So the whole idea with Between Two Rivers was to get out there and test myself and see what it is going to be like on the Capricorn Expedition,” he says.

“We actually chatted about doing something together and we decided to do this trip from the Orange River in the south to the Kunene River in the north. So basically, from the southernmost point of Namibia, right through Namibia lengthwise, right up to the border of Namibia and Angola. And we wanted to do it in hot temperatures because I needed to test myself for that as well!”

Ironically, Van Kets had gone from mountains of water on his Atlantic race, to a waterless desert. But the friendly East Londoner sees direct similarities between the ocean and desert conditions.

He elaborates: “There were so many days where I was sitting on the boat and it’s just absolutely calm, nothing moving. There’s not a sound, sitting on a floating mirror, and there were many times that I thought to myself, ‘Okay, so the difference between this and the desert is just the colour.’

“When we arrived in Namibia, on the Tropic of Capricorn, nobody else was around and I had a look in the distance and for as far as I could see – hundreds and hundreds of kilometres – there was nothing. Not a blade of grass.

“And the thing that shocked me the most was there were rocks. It looks flat, but there are just rocks, so you can’t cycle on it. Every now and then, you may be able to cycle for a few metres, but for as far as you can see, it’s just these small rocks,” Van Kets adds.

Brutal realisation

“So as I sat there on that middle hill and I looked around, I went: ‘Oh, my nerve. What have I let myself in for?’

“It’s just that sudden realisation that this dream that you have, this plan that you have, even though you know it is going to be really hard and really, really tough, is perhaps going to be tougher than you have anticipated,” he says.

For Van Kets, if it were a walk in the park he would probably not be interested and so he soldiered on regardless.

“For me, my quests are about doing things that I know are hard, from which I can learn things, and then sharing it with people and improving their lives. The only way that I can do that is by pushing myself to the absolute limit, and then discovering things about myself that I could share with other people,” he says.

“And that’s where my talks come in. That’s why my talks are an important part of my life because my life is about improving the quality of other people’s lives. It may or may not work with some people, but I know that it definitely does work with a lot of other people.

“I’m raising funds for charities, which is a huge part of what I do; those are really big driving forces for me,” Van Kets adds.

Champion spirit

So what separates him from the average weekend warrior? This is a man who is prepared to spend days exerting his mind and body to the absolute limit, and still enjoys it!

Van Kets clarifies why he is able often to be the last man standing when it comes to endurance: “Often people say that I am by no means a supreme athlete. All I know is that I am able physically to carry on for great lengths of time.

“I’m going to be beaten in a 100-metre sprint and a 400-metre sprint, a 10-kilometre run and a 20-kilometre run, maybe even a 100-kilometre run. But put me out there for days and days and days on end, and I’m fine. I’ll probably win the race. I just have that ability, I can just carry on.”

Obviously, Van Kets has to worry about more than fatigue on this trip, with political instability a concern in some countries on the 2012 Capricorn Expedition route.

Security concerns

“On Mike Horn’s trip through Brazil, when he did his Equator trip, he was held up by some rebels and actually put before a firing squad.

“His life nearly came to an end there, but he got out somehow,” he relates.

“I will definitely be going through some wild areas, especially in Madagascar, where they probably might not have seen a Caucasian or white person before.

“I know that Riaan Manser had a bit of hassle on his Madagascar trip, and Madagascar has been a little bit of a hot spot recently, so I’m hoping that things would have calmed down by then,” Van Kets says.

“I have tried to get hold of Kingsley Holgate, who did in a Land Rover.”

“Wherever you are by yourself and you look like you have something to take, you are at risk.

“So I’ll just use whatever knowledge I have of the areas and make sure that I protect myself as much as possible,” he concludes.

Van Kets’ trip is sure to be epic, and we look forward to his updates in the coming months. ▲

Gregory Simpson