Pangaea's sails are up and its full speed ahead towards Africa.

Approaching the roaring 40's in the Atlantic ocean, nothing like a couple of challenges in life to make you feel alive.

Finally we are gaining in speed as we travel SE towards the African continent. We have covered 1'250NM and are almost half the way there. Lets hope we continue like this with good weather and light swells and arrive on schedule at our next port of call.

Rough going as we sail towards Africa with strong winds and big swells on the southern Atlantic Ocean. Heading south in the hope of some easier sailing soon.

Ready to sail from Brazil to South Africa. Weather not great but sometimes you spend your whole life waiting for better weather. Life is now!

Wednesday, May 30 – Day 2: Nespresso AAA Technician Shadowing
Blog by Gunnar Norback

What a great day! We woke up at 5:30 AM to a fresh breakfast cooked by my wonderful hosts, Hernando and Marina. We then walked down the road to meet the Jeep that would take us to our Nespresso technician that we would be spending the day with, touring around different farms. There are four Nespresso technicians responsible for surveying each of Nespresso’s farms in Jardín; mine was Maria.
On the way to farmer Carlos, our first stop of the day, we paused to examine trans-valley cable cars. Some are used to carry coffee and others are for people. I was able to get a good idea of how they worked to better my understanding and hopefully benefit the construction of more throughout Jardin as part of PANGAEA’s contributions to this community and the sustainability of this project.

Once we arrived at Carlos’s farm we toured the property taking note of specific quality control check points. Carlos showed us how he is sustainable in his coffee farming routine. We saw how he filters the wastewater from his house and the also studied both the source and final destination of water used in his coffee washing station (AKA the “benificio”). Later we were treated to a lunch cooked by Carlos’s wife. After lunch we ventured across the street to a neighboring farm. Today, I learned a lot from our technician about just what separates a Rainforest Alliance certified Nespresso AAA farms from the average Colombian plantation. I cannot wait to learn more tomorrow. I am glad I saw the cable car as I really think their implementation throughout the region would be beneficial to Nespresso’s AAA mission. From our walk today the wheels are turning about a number of environmental issues here, in the way of wastewater sanitation and proper disposal, mountain landslide prevention, CO2 emission reduction, and transportation efficiency improvement.

Blog written by Magdalena 'Leni' GRUENDL, Germany, 20 (Pangaea Mongolia Expedition Young Explorer)

Today was a super exciting day and I think even now there’s still adrenalin pumping trough our veins.

After a long discussion the night before on what route we should chose for the treasure hunt with the kids we headed off to a canyon in the morning in order to see if this would be a suitable one.

Despite the fact that people along the route told us that we can’t go any further we just kept going. We are Young Explorers. 😉 At one stage the path ended and we just followed the dried out riverbed, walking, jumping and climbing over rocks. Now we felt like real explorers. Nevertheless I have to admit that at one point we weren’t sure if we should keep going or rather turn around and walk back for four hours, since the climb ahead of us seemed very challenging. We realized that we were at a point of no return. To walk back didn’t make sense since it would get dark so the only option we basically had was to move forward, even though we didn’t really know what was lying ahead of us. We kept going up super steep passages, just following our instincts since we couldn’t rely on the map we had. After almost 8h of hiking we eventually, came across a path again by coincidence. We followed it and made our way out of the forest and out of the canyon again. It took us twice than we expected.

Michael, who had to pick us up, had to wait for us for over 4hours. “I thought you’re Young Explorers so instead of the 4h they said it will take I thought that you’ll probably make it in around 3.” Well, we didn’t know that it would be that challenging…

This great day ended with a barbecue and a detailed discussion about the program for next week.

Pangaea is currently advancing well towards Africa at 7 knots. After 4 days she has covered 730 nautical miles.

After a month in Pangaea's birthplace, Sao Poalo, Pangaea hoists her sails and begins her traverse on the 9th of June across the southern Atlantic Ocean towards Cape Town. After 3 yaers and 3 months Mike Horn and his crew return to Cape Town completing Pangaea's epic round the world trip. The Africa Expedition is due to start soon with a group of Young Explorers scheduled to arrive in Namibia in early July.

Life starts, when you know how to live it!

Wanting to know more is a need. Going out there to do it is a feat!