West2Wild 2011
A couple of enthusiastic Young Explorers are on a mission to spread the Pangaea message by ACTing as ambassadors for the Mike Horn Pangaea Young Explorer Program while doing a 2 500km roadtrip along the coast of South Africa to take part in the Pangaea Haga Haga Project.
Departing from the West coast (Cape Town) on Sunday, 11 December 2011 they will EXPLORE the southern Cape coastal route down to the most southern tip of Africa, Cape Agulhus, continue through the indigenous forests of the Garden of Eden and then travel on to the Sunshine Coast until they reach the magical WILD coast where they will join in the Pangaea Haga Haga Project from December 14 - 18, 2011 before doing the return trip home to the Mother City, as Cape Town is referred to.
The Young Explorers hope to LEARN from the people and places they visit, and of course each other!
Aim of the Project
To promote the Mike Horn Pangaea Young Explorers Program and Pangaea Projects by supporting NGO’s and raising public awareness on various environmental issues. We hope to inspire other youths, share our experiences and vision and encourage them to join the YEP community/projects!
Blogs
Pangaea and Young Explorer Promotion Presentations
The Pangaea YEP message of Explore Learn Act and preserving our beautiful natural heritage will be presented at various communities along the coast.
Sunday December 11
- Books4Buddies, Life Community Services, George
- Care2Share, Life Community Services, George
- YEP Green Wave Project Tree planting, George
Monday December 12
- The Shark Lab, Mosselbay, 8h00-10h00, YEP Presentation
- Oceans Research marine biologists talk
- YEP Shark Project , awareness & products , Mosselbay beaches
- Green Wave Food Project, Mosselbay restaurants
- 19hoo YEP Presentation, Carmel Camp, Victoria Bay
Tuesday December 13
- Victoria Bay – East London
- 17h00 : YEP Presentation, Summer Youth Camp, Nahoon Dam, East Londen
Wednesday December 14
- MBSA Coastal Education & Visitor Centre, Nahoon Point , East London
- MBSA Factory Plant visit, East Londen
Pangaea Green Wave Food Project
Flyers on various topics such as sustainable seafood choices and recycling to be distributed at restaurants & tourist hotspots.
December is peak summer holiday season in sunny South Africa with 1000s of young people visiting coastal holiday retreats. With the support of Shark Spotters we will distribute Shark Safety Tips on beaches. Our aim is to educate ocean swimmers about shark behavior & how to react in the case of a shark attack. By doing this we hope to reduce people’s risk to shark attacks. The sale of shark products will be investigated at curio shops and reported to the Pangaea Shark fisheries and Product Sale Project. We will also visit a Shark research centre to learn more about these apex predators and also show Young Explorers support for shark projects!
As it is the end of the South African academic school year, the aim is for all YEPs from Cape Town to collect and donate 2nd hand school books, examination guidelines & magazines to schools or libraries for underprivileged children.
Care2Share
This road trip will also see the YEPs collecting and distributing many boxes of donated clothing to hand to less fortunate communities.
The Young Explorers West2Wild team
The tour will give YEPs the opportunity to develop their project planning skills by distributing tasks and responsibilities, combining their individual talents and working as a team to achieve a common goal - spreading the Pangaea message!
Lani van Niekerk (18, Amazon Selection Camp Young Explorer) – donations, accommodation, media, photographer, blogs
Robyn Lighton (19, Himalaya Selection Camp Young Explorer) – donations, photographer, logistics, collections, blogs
Kai Fitchen (18, Himalaya Expedition Young Explorer) – donations, videographer, presentations, graphics, network
Leeni Gruendl (18 , Mongolia Expedition Young Explorer) – ambassador, donations, blogs, photographer, cook
Janno van Niekerk (20, Young Explorer community member) – donations, photographer, media
Henko Roukema (19, Nunavut Expedition Young Explorer) – coordinator, sponsors , budget, presentations, driver
Day 1 - December 11, 2011
Amazing last 24 hours!
Kai and Robyn arrived at Henko's late last night. We all instantly got along while packing the Mercedes-Benz Vito courtesy transportation Crew bus and discussed what would happen over the next few days. The four of us (Henko, Leni, Kai and Robyn) set off at dawn on our new exciting road trip up the beautiful South African coastline.
Despite Kai´s constant need for the loo- the trip went super smoothly. We stopped off at Heidelberg, which excited Leni as it reminded her of the German town with the same name. We had some coffee and Robyn practiced her first day of veganism! Go team!
Finally we arrived in Tembulethu, which is just outside of George. Meeting new Young Explorer Lani and her family was wonderful. They showed us the stunning landscape inhabited by wild zebras, bonte bok, and ostrich, which we will now call our home for the next two nights.
After setting up camp, we explored the area around us, experiencing true South African beauty. We then headed to the Carmel Holiday Farm
to organize our presentation details for the following day. After meeting Gary, the organizer, the four of us headed down to Vic Bay, a famous South Africa surfing spot, to explore the beach front.
We arrived back at camp, and failed terribly at making popcorn on Henko´s gas burner. All in all, we had an incredible first day, enjoying each other’s company!
Thanks to Lani´s family for the land!
West2Wild - Day 1 
Day 2 - December 12, 2011
Early in the morning we crawled out of our damp sleeping bags and headed straight to Mossel Bay, where we were given a very interesting presentation at the so-called „shark lab“, which is a shark research facility. We then even dissected a small shark…. After spending the morning at the shark lab and surrounding area we drove back to Lani’s house to collect some more secondhand school books and clothes which we donated to the local “Life Community Centre”. The smiles on the childrens’ faces made our day seeing how happy they are about the clothes!
Lani’s Dad explained to us what they are doing to preserve the land (that we are camping on) and how their project works! Afterwards we all felt really excited about the project and how the community will benefit from it and also the hard work that people are doing to preserve this very special piece of coastline close to George! We did some more exploration on that truly stunning piece of land; we hiked to a lookout point with the most amazing view with the waves crashing hundreds of meters below the cliff.
At 8 p.m. we had our presentation at the Carmel Holiday Reserve, which went very well.
Tomorrow we will leave very early and unfortunately we have to say 'Goodbye' to Lani as she is unable to join us on the next leg of our exciting adventure.
West2Wild - Day 2
Day 3 - December 13, 2011
After waking up at the break of dawn, we packed up all our camping gear and got back on the road. Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to a local Young Explorer and new friend, Lani, as we continued on our journey up the beautiful coast of eastern South Africa. The drive up to East London was LONG, but filled with laughs and fun times never the less.
Driving through the Tsitsikama forest was spectacular! We all rolled down our windows to smell the fresh air and smell of new rain. It’s only been three days, but already we feel like a family, and enjoyed listening to each other stories and plans for the future. Despite getting a little lost in Kingwilliams town, we eventually found our way to the Summer Camp where we were to spend the night and give a presentation on "Pangaea".
We arrived and were so excited to find a working toilet and shower! Our camp was set up within a few minutes, then we were off to do a Clean Up project on the Hanoon Dam. After a series of funny events, (which I’m sure you will all see in our own version of a ´moose cut´) we made it to the dam and got to work! We were disappointed with the large amount of litter, but were very proud after picking up 4 big black bags of rubbish!
After about 14 hours of travelling in the past three days, we were super keen to have a nice early night but not before making some delicious popcorn on our little gas stove! We had a very successful day, and look forward to our presentation tomorrow morning!
West2Wild - Day 3
Day 4 - December 14, 2011
Today we had an opportunity to sleep late for a change and gather some energy after a hectic couple of days filled with lots of EXPLORing, LEARNing and ACTing! We could enjoy a nice warm shower for once and had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. We did a presentation at the summer youth camp next to the Nahoon Dam, with a great turn out of about 80 youths who all enjoyed the talks about our expeditions and projects! The Youth Camp’s theme was “Illumination” – and we adjusted our presentation to show them how youths can help to “illuminate” earth with clean-ups and also how we can all help to brighten the lives of others by being part of PANGAEA .
Afterwards it was really special for all of us and made our hearts all warm when so many youths came talking to us and was excited about the Pangaea Project and how they wanted to get involved! I am convinced we will soon see many new Young Explorers community members from the Border District ☺
This made me realize that the Young Explorers community is not just about nature but also about helping others and shining out and setting an example for others to follow, and brightening our special world with good deeds! Because Pangaea is about the environment, and environment includes nature and people! We have all learned so much from the West2Wild Project especially about project planning - despite planning everything with precision, always be prepared to have plans changed at any moment due to unforeseen circumstances…and one should be able to adapt to these changes!
We left the Summer camp with so much inspiration to continue spreading the Pangaea message and only have about 100km to travel before joining the Pangaea Haga Haga Project and we are all very excited!
West2Wild - Day 4
Day 9 - December 19, 2011
After spending the last 4 ½ days at the Pangaea Haga Haga Project, the Pangaea West2Wild road trip continued with Young Explorers Robyn Lighton, Kai Fitchen, Reghart Pistorius, Henko Roukema, HH photographer Steph and the Mercedes-Benz Vito crew bus on the 1 200km long return trip from the Wild Coast to the mother city (Cape Town) on the West Coast of South Africa.
With the help of a map of a completely foreign city to all of us, we took a couple of detours to reach our first stop – the Mercedes-Benz Coastal Education and Visitor Centre in the Nahoon Point Nature Reserve in East London. It was really interesting to learn about the local environment of the East London area and how Mercedes-Benz is involved with environmental education in the area.
The aim of the MBSA Coastal Education and Visitor Centre is to make exceptional strides towards education and awareness of our natural heritage and to protect a valuable heritage site and conserve the wealth of coastal biodiversity in the area. This center provides an eco-tourism facility to educate children, city residents, and visitors to the area, and given MBSA’s CSI focus on community upliftment, protecting the environment and education, funding establishment of the Centre was a perfect fit.
The Centre is providing a number of social benefits, including job creation through opportunities offered to small, medium and micro enterprises (SMME’s) to become involved in the operation of the facility. The footprint found at the Reserve that scientists believe to be 120'000 years old (the oldest known humanoid footprint in the world) inspired the shape of the MBSA Coastal Education and Visitor Centre.
As ambassadors for YEP we provided flyers of the Mercedes sponsored Pangaea Project and we distributed our Shark Safety tips as provided by the Shark Spotters and also SASSI consumer pocket guides on Sustainable Seafood.
After a long drive down the Sunshine Coast we reached our pitstop for the night where there was a nice warm plate of pasta waiting for us…
West2Wild - Day 5
Day 10 - December 20, 2011
We were up very early this morning as we had another 800km to drive today! We said good bye to Reghardt and Steph at Great Brak River and late afternoon we all arrived safely home in Cape Town - but not without a few scary moments as people drive like mad to get to their holiday destinations L .
Fortunately our Mercedes Vito crew bus have excellent safety features and we always felt safe and secure. During the Young Explorers Selection Camp in Châteaux-d’Oex we spent time with the Mercedes-Benz team who taught us various environmentally friendly driving techniques and this came in very handy on this trip! The Blue Efficiency technology of the Vito really lived up to its reputation on fuel efficiency – even when carrying a full load of enthusiastic YEPs, their camping equipment and many boxes filled with donations!
I think the projects, West2Wild and Haga Haga were a great success as we certainly spread the Pangaea message where ever we were! We could have taken the “easy” route & just flew to East Londen, but by car-pooling we not only reduced our carbon footprint, we (as Young Explorers) got to know each other better & LEARNt from each other & the experts/places/people we visited, EXPLORED more of South Africa’s beautiful coastline and ACTed by spreading the Pangaea message!
During the West2Wild road trip we managed to support several Pangaea Projects such as :
- The Shark Project ( Shark Lab visit / Shark Safety tips )
- Clean-ups ( Nahoon Dam )
- Green Wave Food Project ( distributing SASSI sustainable seafood pocket guides)
- Presentations ( Shark Lab / Carmel Camp / Border Summer Camp )
- Books4Buddies ( Life Community Centre, George )
- Care2Share (Life Community Centre, George )
- Environmental studies ( MBSA Coastal Centre)
I will never forget the smiles on the kids faces when we delivered all the books & clothes in the township, camping under the African stars with zebra & bushbucks roaming in the veld, all the fun and laughter, the sharing of our dreams for Pangaea - this made the many hours of driving certainly more than worthwhile.
All in all the past 9 days have been a great success with 6 Young Explorers exploring a total of 2'500km of the South African coastline and returning home with lots of enthusiasm for more ACTion !
A HUGE “Thank You” to the Pangaea Project & Mercedes-Benz SA for helping to make this possible!!
West2Wild - Day 6
