Latitude Zero

This man did what no one before dared to try: going round the world following the equator.

When Mike Horn is haunted by a dream, he makes it come true. This 35-year-old South-African crossed the Atlantic Ocean, South America, the Pacific Ocean, the Indonesian islands, The Indian Ocean and Africa. All by himself, walking, rowing, sailing, biking, through jungles and tempests, through marshes and deserts. He left on June 2nd 1999 and came back to where he had started, one year and a half later. He had gone round the world following the equator.

In this crazy adventure, an iron will was requested. “When I left, I thought I knew enough to go round the world this way. Now that I am back, I know that I don’t know enough to start again.”

When alone in the jungle, a snake’s bite has left him blind for four days; in Colombia, he was captured first by drug traffickers, then by the army… He had to hunt monkeys and caimans to eat, he had to climb volcanoes, he caught malaria… He almost drowned several times, for instance on Lake Victoria where an amazing tempest had broken… He went across countries at war, where all sides accused him of being a spy and where he had become a prey. In Africa, it almost ended badly, for some rebel soldiers had arrested him and sentenced him to death. At five o’clock in a morning, he was standing in front of a firing squad, and barely just escaped it.

Why did he embark on such an adventure? Because he was dreaming of it. But he confesses that, for a while, he has thought that he wouldn’t make it. And he says that, for one year and a half, he has lived more than in a whole life. In his account, you will discover a man who is afraid, who is filled with wonder, who suffers, a man who — however — is going on and on.