A woman has become the fastest documented person to visit every country in the world – and she did it in record speed.
Cassie De Pecol set off on her journey in July 2015. Eighteen months and 26 days later, she’s travelled all 196 sovereign nations.
Not only is the 27-year-old the fastest person to do so, she’s also the first.
Cassie, who quit her corporate job in 2012, funded her expedition through a mixture of ‘planning, saving money, obtaining sponsors and endorsements’.
And as of February 2017, she’s broken a Guinness World Record with her project Expedition 196 – charting the entire journey on social media.
Explaining her thirst for travel, she told the Daily Mail:
Since school, I’ve had this desire to visit every country in the world, intrigued to learn more about every culture, natural habitat, and religion.
In America we are lucky to have such a vast melting pot of cultures and people from all over the world who make the country what it is today.
I wanted to learn about where these people came from, more specifically, where I came from, with my ancestors originating from Europe.
Going to every country was for me a personal quest to learn as much as I could about our world, stepping outside my comfort zone and becoming comfortable in the unknown, while also aiming to leave a legacy behind.
In addition to her personal thirst for adventure, Cassie’s mission behind her travels was designed to promote peace through sustainable tourism.
According to Lonely Planet, the 27-year-old promoted sustainable and regenerative tourism by speaking to university students. She also collected samples from waterways around the world to send them to a lab for Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, who test them for the presence of micro plastics.
But that wasn’t enough for Cassie.
Not content just with breaking the record she now says she plans to travel to Antarctica.
