Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Extreme kayaker tackes circumnavigation of South America

Freya Hoffmeister : one woman, one kayak, one continent

From
ExplorerWeb

The German Freya Hoffmeister is well known for her long distance kayak adventurers. September 1st she left Buenos Aires on her next big undertaking.
She will try to circumnavigate South Africa on her own in a kayak.
The trip will cover more than 24.000 kilometers and last over 24 months.

Freya Hoffmeister has kayaked round continents and big islands before.
In 2007 she did a 33 days speed record for paddling around Iceland together with Greg Stamer.
Two years later she was up for a paddle that took tens times longer.
She did a solo circumnavigation of Australia in 332 days.

This time she is heading out for an even bigger adventure.
South America has it all when it comes to probable adventure stoppers along the way: Huge seas right on the nose round Cape Horn, horrendous winds in Patagonia and long distances where both the Atlantic and Pacific ocean gets to hammer her.

But the same areas also will give her the most fantastic experiences if she manages to hold it all together.
In a kayak you get as close to nature as you possibly can, and the intense feeling of handling the sometimes brute force of the ocean alone in some of the most remote parts of the world must be worth all the hardship.

The German kayaker has divided the expedition in to three stages in a clockwise direction.
The first will take her from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Valparaiso, Chile.
Then to Georgetown, Guyana, and she plans to finish her circumnavigation on her 50th birthday on May 19th in 2014.

By then she will have paddled 24.000 kilometers through 12 countries.


Besides her kayak adventures, Hoffmeister is a businesswoman, former Miss Germany beauty contestant, competitive gymnast, bodybuilder and sky-diver who lives in Husum, Germany.

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