A South-African based team led by legendary explorer Kingsley Holgate have just completed an epic nine-month, 35 000km journey from the southern tip of Africa, Cape Agulhas, to the Nordkapp in Norway’s Arctic Circle.
The Defender Transcontinental Expedition saw the team travelling in three customised Land Rover Defenders, while conducting humanitarian work that assisted some 300 000 people along the route through Africa.
This was the first 'Hot Cape to Cold Cape' transcontinental expedition to travel the entire length of Africa and Europe in recent years, and the 40th geographic and humanitarian odyssey for the renowned Holgate and his experienced team.
To give the occasion some African flair, the team built an isivivane (stone cairn) on the Nordkapp cliffs, topped with pebbles from Cape Agulhas, and symbolically emptied seawater collected from Africa’s southern tip where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet, which had been carried in a well-travelled Zulu calabash.
