Pretoria - Riaan Manser has a few tips for life based on his extraordinary one. He is an international adventurer, who came to fame after a 37 000km cycling trip around the perimeter of Africa.
Over the past two decades he has gone on to perform a number of other astounding feats including circumnavigating Madagascar and rowing across the Pacific Ocean on honeymoon with his wife, Vasti.
Just back from Barbados after his latest adventure with a novice paddle partner, Fanafikile “Fana” Lehakha, Manser was guest speaker at Thursday’s Veritas Vision Solution Day held at the Maslow, Time Square Pretoria.
Orphaned at a young age, he literally decided one Sunday while running with his dogs in Cape Town’s Newlands Forest that he wanted something more from life.
It was not, he explained to the captivated audience, that he was unhappy but rather that he knew “with an uncomfortable feeling in his gut”, that it was not what he wanted. His personal motto is that “there is an ocean between saying and doing”.
He set off on his first trip from Cape Town in September 2003 and returned a hero two years later.
As in his book, Around Africa on a Bicycle, he shares with live audiences some of his experiences, including the pain and the beauty of this astonishing trip and the ones that were to follow: circumnavigating Madagascar alone and taking on a disabled partner to circumnavigate Iceland.
The stories the audience really enjoyed involved Vasti, who had her first experience of rowing when the couple crossed the Atlantic from Morocco to Miami, Florida and on to New York for what he described as a “shopping trip”.
His talk is full of humour and accompanied by photographs – such as Vasti kissing the famous Exuma Cays swimming pigs – but there is a strong message too: “Make a decision, then the journey happens,” said Manser, who indicated his decision to become an adventurer was not one made after seeing a show on TV.
It came from that day in the forest where he said to himself: “Riaan you don’t get off this rock until you decide to make your life more than it is right now.”
The tens of thousands of kilometers, the loneliness, fear and exhilaration were captured in his talk, which he ended by briefly telling of his latest journey, the one with Lehakha, a young man from the Free State who could not swim, but won a competition to accompany him on an ocean crossing.
More on this trip will be revealed in documentaries and articles in the next few months.
Manser left his audience with a message, suggesting three steps in life:
First, one must ask oneself if one is brave and can show courage. Sadly, when it comes to making a big decision in life, “we go into coward’s mode”.
The second is perseverance. Nothing in life that one holds dear comes without perseverance, he said.
The third is having the right attitude. “Attitude at the beginning of a task determines the success of that task,” he said.