After 196 countries, 250 flights, five passports and hundreds of thousands of dollars, 27-year-old Cassie De Pecol has finally reached her goal of visiting every country on Earth and, not to mention, breaking a world record while she was at it.
The ambitious traveller from Washington, Conn., easily broke the Guinness World Record for travelling to all 196 countries in the fastest recorded time when she made her last stop in Yemen in February. De Pecol took 18 months and 26 days to complete her journey. The previous record holder, an American named Yili Liu, took three years and three months.
On top of her world record achievement, De Pecol also became the first documented woman to visit every country in the world. She told CTV’s Your Morning that it was “tough” touring so many places for her “Expedition 196” at such a whirlwind pace.
“I can’t even say that I was confident I was going to finish up until the very last country,” De Pecol revealed from New York in an interview on Monday.
In order to break the Guinness record, De Pecol said she wasn’t allowed to stay in any one country for longer than 14 days. On average, she only spent two to five days in each country.
“I was pretty sleep deprived the whole expedition,” she said. “I would go anywhere from 24 to 68 hours without sleeping and that really affects your mindset.”
Despite the gruelling schedule, the globetrotter said there were countless special moments for her during the trip. De Pecol said meeting with university students around the world, through her work as an ambassador for the International Institute of Peace through Tourism (IIPT), was particularly meaningful.
“I would talk to the university students about the Global Peace Index, how we can actually quantify peace through a series of statistical data, how to promote peace through sustainable hospitality,” she explained. “It was a big project but it was really cool to focus on peace through tourism on this expedition.”
In addition to speaking to university students, De Pecol said she would also meet with government officials around the world, in order to promote peaceful tourism and encourage friendship among nations.
On top of her work with the IIPT, De Pecol collected water samples for Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation and worked for an organization called Skal International, which promotes tourism and friendship around the globe.
De Pecol said she relied primarily on sponsorships to fund her expedition, which ended up costing nearly US$200,000.
After such a tiring journey, it would be safe to assume the expeditioner would want to spend some time relaxing at home, but that doesn’t appear to be the case for De Pecol.
She’s just returned from a trip to Antarctica and plans on travelling to the North Pole next.
When asked if she has any intention of returning to her old life as an employee in the corporate world, De Pecol gave a firm “No.”
Instead, the entrepreneurial traveller said she’s going to finish writing her memoir about her experiences, wrap up an educational documentary she filmed during the journey, and launch a seminar in June aimed at helping others find funding for their projects.
