She's already way ahead. At 35, the chartered accountant has explored 48 countries- on foot, horseback. ferry and bus, as well as planes and trains. Add snow-shoeing, jet-boating, sand-sailing and scuba-diving, and she's close to having "done it all".
But from March next year she takes on the biggest yet: 40 000km across Africa and Europe on the Mitsubishi Africa Adventure Cape to Cape Expedition.
The team of 14 will explore Africa from its southernmost tip, Cape Agulhas, for four months, before getting to the heart of the expedition: hosting roadshows in Europe's major cities, all the way to Norway's Nordkap, to showcase Africa as a tourist destination and raise funds for development.
Applicants were selected in a 10-day, "Survivor-style camp on the Cape Garden Route. Aged between 23 and 65, they bungy-jumped from the Bloukrans Bridge, night-hiked the Tsitsikamma Forest, rock-climbed, abseiled, zip-lined and learned to handle 4x4s. 12 emerged, muddied but victorious, to accompany the two women behind the Africa Adventure, Enya Fehler and her partner Andrea Doerfert.
Julie's father, engineer Peter Farrington, fuelled her wanderlust during marathon road trips "in an ancient Land Rover with no windows, then an adventure abroad for her 21st, - at a Romanian ski lodge in the Transylvanian Alps. A highlight was hitching a ride in a "clapped out old hearse' complete with corpse and coffin.
As London ambassador for Ernst % Young, she saved leave for a rail trip through Europe, Egypt and Israel, and an epic bus ride from Cairo to Jerusalem.
She's dived with ragged tooth sharks off Mozambique, been woken by bushpigs burrowing under her tent in the Ngorongoro Crater, and by lionesses and their cubs on her doorstep in the Serengeti. The Baltic, Madeira, Morocco beckoned… then she and her sister chewed up something like 52 000km driving through 38 states in the US and Canada.
Julie navigated India with a backpack to see the Mughai-era Red Fort, Humayun's Tomb and the Taj Mahal. She hiked the Himalayan Annapurnas, cycled Zhuang's Jade Mountain Valley, horse-trekked to Tibet's Ice Mountain and looked in on the 2000-year-old Terracotta Warriors at Xi'an on her way to the Great Wall of China.
She "stumbled on a place called Paradise"- Thailand, and in Cambodia stood in awe of a spectacular sunrise over the ruins of Angkor' explored the coral gardens off Fiji's Treasure Island and inched across the ice walls of Franz Josef Glacier on New Zealand's South Island. Then she rode a jet boat to glimpse the harsh, remote Doubtful Sound.
But something was always missing, "I've felt selfish- me going to gorgeous places and that's it. Now I'll travel, raise awareness and promote sustainable tourism."
In today's global economy: Africa's niche, to be found and consolidated, has to be tourism- it's is the continents' number one commodity", she says.
And she's a committed player. "I want to promote out wonderful people and natural resources- and made sure we do so without destroying its attraction: its incomparable character."
The Africa Adventure Cape to Cape Foundation, a non-profit organisation, has been set up to direct funds raised to tourism education of young Africans. |
