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Subscribe today for some amazing stories and content from our expedition team or find an outfitter for your next adventure.
Subscribe today for some amazing stories and content from our expedition team or find an outfitter for your next adventure.
Growing up, Mandela spent a season in South Africa, a season in Montana & various seasons traveling the world with her flight attendant mother & vagabond father. At an early age Mandela fell in love with juxtapositions between cultures, music, food & weather of the northern & southern hemispheres. Mandela started filming her adventures when she was 14 & by age 19 started studying Mandarin & interviewing Chinese citizens on the edge of the Yangtze River during the construction of the Three Gorges Damn project. Mandela started her radio career at age 18 with a live adventure-travel talk show on KBGA college radio. The show ran for five years until it was picked up by the award winning KDTR Trail 103.3 FM & Missoula Broadcasting Company. She is still producing short adventure films in her spare time and when not in the studio, Mandela teaches Ashtanga Yoga & works as an international adventure guide/instructor in the field of whitewater rafting, whitewater kayaking, sea kayaking & riverboarding. She guides two week expeditions through the rapids & tributaries of the Grand Canyon May-October & records on location wherever the rivers of the world flow. Mandela guides in New Zealand, Idaho, Montana, Grand Canyon, Morocco & Southern Africa.
Mandela was raised on a nature reserve at the most southern point of South Africa. Growing up in the bush cultivated a passion for wildlife conservation & human rights which is a consistent theme in her broadcasts & outreach programs. For the past decade Mandela has worked on a series focused on the genocide of African elephants & rhinos, the slaughter of protected species of sharks in Australia, the use of 1080 by the New Zealand government to control invasive predators & heritage theft/illegal wildlife trade across Asia.
Mandela’s family made frequent trips to Australia throughout her childhood. Mandela started studying Aboriginal anthropology & didjeridu sound theory in Australia in her teens & has continued these studies into her thirties. In 2007 she started an organization in Missoula, which continues to educate students worldwide in didjeridu & Aboriginal anthropology. Mandela presents adventure lectures at the University of Montana & other public/private schools around the world. In 2016 her outreach program was able to connect with over 10,000 students in Thiruvananthapuram, India.
In between her international gigs as a whitewater adventure guide & instructor, Mandela travels to remote locations in the world interviewing fellow adventurers who live in radical harmony with nature. She’s recorded aging raconteurs, living legends, camera-shy thrill seekers & people thriving in little-known corners of the earth. Their stories inspire & surprise. They give us new insights about our diverse & amazing world. That’s Mandela’s intention. She aims to thrill and engage audiences by taking them to places they would never go, sharing the stories of people they could never meet & learning about our mysterious, sometimes dangerous, world filled with wildness, diverse cultures, hardship, courage & alternative ways of living and surviving.
The Trail Less Traveled, hosted by Mandela, is dedicated to documenting humanity & planet earth by gathering stories & sounds from the most remote locations around the world. The goal for the show is to take you, the listener, back to mankind's earliest form of entertainment: story telling. Therefore, every week features an interview with an adventurer in their natural habitat in order to provide an audible journey packed with information & inspiration. Everyone has a story & different perspective, we aim to share the stories from the world’s diverse cultures & unknown lands.
Besides my knife, the most important piece of gear I always travel with is my didjeridu. Music is an international language, humanity’s common denominator. The didjeridu is my skeleton key of choice. On the river I seek harmonically acoustic side canyons where I share the story and sounds of the didjeridu with my guests. It has also gotten me out of a tight spot more than once. A decade ago, I ran into money issues while traveling solo through Uruguay. With just a couple dollars left, I settled onto a cobblestone street in the old part of Colonia del Sacremento and started playing the didjeridu. By the time darkness descended, I had made a few friends and earned enough money for a night at a youth hostel and some empanadas. It would not have been good if I stayed out on the streets that night, the didjeridu literally saved my life. I have busked didjeridu on the streets of London, Paris, Cape Town, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, L.A. & Mexico.
Other than a good knife & my didjeridu, I always have the following items on my rafting expeditions:
Black Diamond Mega Light (you can set it up on your oar rig and easily sleep on your raft)
Ammo Can ("Dry" storage for your books, maps, etc.)
x6 AIRE thwart handles so my guests can easily get back into the raft on their own if they need to.
Stohlquist Descent PFD + front pocket throw bag.
Sun hoodies with hat.
Astral shoes for big water days & Chacos Sandals for everything else
ZINC for face ZINC for lips
Bandana or buff for sun protection
Long Prana pants for sun protection
Large straw hat for flat water days in the sun.
x2 "Foamie Friends" www.foamiefriends.com
Julbo Vermonts (classic glacier glasses for flat water days)
HyperFlex Playa Harness Zip Neoprene Jacket (Good for kiteboarding and rafting during monsoon season)
Paco Pad for sleeping on the rafts all summer long
Exploration of the Colorado River by John Wesley Powell
Face Mist for a nice pick-me-up after lunch on the river
Zip Fizz (Vitamin B energy all day everyday!)
Flip Line
Duck Tape
Allen Key
Spanner
AquaSeal
Eurythromiacin for Tolio (flesh eating bacteria from too much time with wet feet).
SuperGreens Powder
Vitamins
Recording Equipment
Camera(s)
GoProHero7 Black
Selfie Stick (for whitewater footage, I attach it to a spare paddle on my rafts)
Sheet
Warm Sleeping Bag
Coconut Oil
Fizzzzy Water
Sprout seeds
Leopard print onesie :)
