The project at a glance
Duration. Sixteen months, from January 2012 to May 2013.
Departure. Fairbanks (64° 50′ N), Alaska, USA. Just below the Arctic circle, it is the last city before the Arctic ocean.
Arrival. Ushuaia (54° 48' S), Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. Located at 8,260 miles from Paris, the city is considered to be the southernmost in the world. It is the gate to the Antarctic.
Route. 25,000 miles. 16 countries.
Itinerary. Alaska, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina.
Goal. To live a personal adventure and to raise awareness on environmental protection through travel story.
Budget. 21,000 US$.
The project
A child’s dream. To explore the world is a dream that numerous children have; I was one of them. At first, this project is a personal adventure. But this is not going to be only an initiatory journey. I want to make those fifteen months of adventure useful, content-wise.
The relation between Man and Nature. I want to study the link that people have with nature. I am a city dweller but I often faced nature, wild and uncompromising. In the French plateaus of Causses or in Lapland, power and greatness of nature invite to reconsider the place that man is occupying in a whole, bigger than the only human civilisation.
The Pan-American Highway go through particularly hostile regions. The idea is to study how men and women managed to become integrated to those environments, to adapt to the constraints (climatic, geographic, physiologic, etc.) with no intent to dominate nature.
Alaska, Canada, the Rocky Mountains, tropical rainforests, the Atacama Desert, the Andes, and also Patagonia are going to be privileged regions to raise awareness on how man knows its environment, knows how to make the most of it while preserving it for future generations. Man is part of a whole but is only a small piece of this whole.
Meetings. Meeting people will be an ideal mean to reach this goal. To do so, to choose to follow roughly the Pan-American Highway is justified. This mythical road will let me meet so many different people and environments.
Daily, means of transport (hitch-hiking or public transportation) and practise of Couch Surfing will let me share everyday life of inhabitants of those regions. These meetings will enrich my study.
Seen from another point of view, truck drivers over Canadian frozen lakes or Andean shepherds are job that deserve to be discovered. Accounts from people working in NGOs, firms, public institutions, to preserve environment will be inevitable. My knowledge of English and Spanish will be an invaluable asset.
At last, through this American continent, melting pot of pre-Columbian civilisations, I will better understand how the Ancients (the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Incas for the well-known) learnt how to preserve nature as it was when transmitted.
The account
Awareness. The itinerary will go through numerous and diverse ecosystems, national parks, nature reserves. This project is built to be an account of biodiversity, its resources and its importance for our planet. It will also be an opportunity to witness dangers that certain natural sites are at risk of.
Connections with schools. Partnerships with French schools will be established, particularly with those that want to have an interactive approach to geography or biodiversity. This consistent non-formal learning can be eased thanks to regular meetings via Skype. While staying in France, those children will also go off to explore the world.
The French cultural centres. Along the route, it will be interesting to interact with French cultural institutions that I could visit once on site. More than only sharing experience, public talks will help me have a direct feedback and possibly reframe the project. Organised in advance, those conferences/debates could be based on content as well as logistic of the project.
A blog. This project go beyond a simple personal adventure. It will be an opportunity to publish travel stories via social networks and this blog that would be updated as regularly as possible. Visibility will be focused on memorable people and projects.
A book. Photography will serve the goal of account. On my return, I will publish a book of photos and travel stories. I will also try to publish photo reports in specialised magazines.
