This woman is attempting to be the first to travel 26,000 km by horse

Olivia Cazes is attempting to suit the number one adult female to move around solo on ahorse along the transcontinental Pan-American Highway.

An epic journey that measures roughly 26,000 kilometres, the road extends from South America to North America, starting in Ushuaia, Argentina and ending in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. To date, Cazes has completed 3,415 kilometres and made it to Chichinales, Argentina.

The route spans 14 countries — a distance that could be covered in about a month by car or roughly 26 hours by plane. But on horseback, Cazes estimates the journey could take as long as seven years.

“We're travelling at four kilometres an hour,” Cazes, 30, told The Current’s host Matt Galloway. 

Cazes, who is from Armagh, Que., set out on the journey early last year. She says the idea grew out of a deep-seated desire to connect with people and learn from different cultures. But it was also shaped by a lifelong bond with horses that comes from being raised on a horse farm, she says.

“I was sitting on a horse before learning to walk,” she said. 

In the history of long riding — the equestrian term for a continuous journey on horseback — only a handful of people have ever accomplished this particular test of endurance.

According to the Long Rider's Guild, an association of equestrian explorers, Filipe Masetti Leite, a Brazilian Canadian, set out to do the same route on horseback in 2012 and completed the ride eight years later. Decades earlier, Russian rider Vladimir Fissenko began the same expedition in 1988 and finished after five years.

Known as "Lady Long Rider," American woman Bernice Arlene Ende logged 48,000 kilometres but over numerous shorter journeys. Ende died in 2021.

Travelling by horse may be slower, says Cazes, but it offers a unique vantage point.

“You see pretty much everything. You see every rock, every animal, every tree, plant, person,” she said.

The horses themselves, Cazes says, have also taught her a lot. She currently travels with three horses, and rotates between which one she rides, which carries gear, and which travels without a load.

By travelling with them everyday, she says she has come to understand the special “co-dependent” relationship they share.

“I take care of them, but they [also] take care of me,” said Cazes. “It’s not like a vehicle, a bicycle … they’re sentient, conscious beings.”

Cazes begun the expedition with a friend, but partway through the journey, he had to return back home due to health issues, leaving her to continue alone. 

After returning to Canada for the holidays, she resumed the journey in Argentina in January with a new companion — her mother, Esther Dandonneau.

Cazes says the experience has been especially meaningful because her mother, now 53, once envisioned a life similar to her own: travelling by horse, meeting people and learning about different cultures. But she set those dreams aside after having four children.

“What we did together in the last four months was doing some things she had dreamt about for the last 30 years and more,” said Cazes. 

Her mother has since returned home.

On an average day, Cazes says she aims to travel between 20 and 25 kilometres, but she adjusts her pace depending on how the horses are doing.

If the horses haven’t slept well, eaten enough, or had access to clean water, she shortens the distance. 

Cazes has crossed a wide range of terrain, and she says she values the solitude of the journey and the perspective it brings in vast, remote landscapes.

“You just see the sun rise … [and] you feel like you’re the only person in the world that it’s rising for,” she said. 

But Cazes adds that, in addition to the beauty of the landscape, she is also focused on how it affects the horses’ access to sustenance.

In Patagonia’s sub-arctic desert, she described conditions as “cold and flat and very dry,” with limited feed and water. In the Andes mountains, she encountered frigid temperatures but abundant grazing and water.

She says that as a woman travelling on horseback, she’s drawn a lot of attention along the way, but it’s been overwhelmingly positive. 

People often stop, she says, to ask what she’s doing or check if she’s okay. Many are also welcoming and often offer help, from a place to stay for the night to food, water, or feed for the horses.

In one example a few months ago, she says a friend connected her with a local family who stepped in to help, transporting her and the horses out of town and welcoming her and her mother into their home, where they stayed for 10 days.

“People you don’t know just open their homes to you and it’s just so, so generous,” she said.

While Cazes says she doesn’t see herself as being exceptional for taking on the journey, she hopes it helps challenge assumptions about who belongs in extreme adventure and endurance travel — spaces that have traditionally been dominated by men.

“I want as women to understand that we can [do it],” she said. 

“It is hard, it is challenging, but we can [make] it.” 

Journalist

Audio produced by Théo Lemarchandel

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