25-year-old Filipe Masetti Leite, who immigrated to Canada when he was a teenager, intends to spend the next two years riding his two horses, "Bruiser" and "Frenchie," through 12 countries in North, Central and South America. Leite is expected to eventually cover about 16,000 kilometres and reach his final destination in 2014.
Leite's family returned to Sao Paolo, Brazil, seven years ago and will meet him at the end of his journey. The young cowboy, who has a journalism degree from Ryerson University in Toronto, intends to document his travels.
"The whole point of this trip," he explains, "is to point out what's going on in Latin America, the illegal drug war. Eighty eight per cent of the drugs produced in Columbia and Central America are going straight to the streets of the USA. There's a lot of innocent people dying down there so I (he) feel if something does happen to me (him) it will help bring light to something that is so hypocritical."
"We only ride, on average, 30 kilometres a day, only four to five days a week, there's a lot of resting time. If one of the horses is sore, we wait. If the horse is sore beyond a month, we trailer him ahead and ride the other one until he is feeling better."
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