2024-01-25 09:23:47
At the end of a Covid period that he experienced very badly, Olivier de la Houssaye, at the head of the Carib Voyages group, felt the desire for a “special trip”. A different trip that he has “never done”. It will be the ascent of Kilimanjaro with the Cediv Travel network. The opportunity for this 60-year-old Martinican who calls himself non-sporty to “gauge his abilities and try to take on an exceptional challenge”.
Born in Schoelcher near Fort-de-France, Olivier de la Houssaye grew up in a heavenly setting. Within a family “which has always had a tourist activity”. “It was she who in the 1960s built the Bakoua hotel in Trois-Îlets, which would later be sold to the Accor group” he specifies.
Olivier got into tourism at a very young age. Various activities on the islands led him to found his own group at the turn of the 2000s, Carib Voyages. Having its headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), it presents itself as a receptive to the Antilles, and a specialist in overseas business travel. Carib Voyages is a member of the network Cediv Travel“a structure on a human scale that gives us what we need”, and is also the representative of the MSC Cruises company in Guadeloupe and Martinique.
Ward off the Covid crisis with a different trip
The pandemic and the Covid crisis in 2020 are affecting the leader’s morale. Faced with “the fear of tomorrow”, he finds it difficult to bear the fact of “not being able to move and the world stops turning”. Resumption of activity will not be easy. It was then that the idea of taking “a special trip, a trip that I am not used to making” emerged in his mind.
“I had heard regarding the agency Sun Side at Cediv. In October 2022, I contacted her, and I said: “Here I would like to do Kilimanjaro, when is your next expedition planned? “. “The departure was in January 2023, unfortunately too tight in terms of deadlines for me to be able to organize and prepare” explains Olivier de la Houssaye.
But sometimes fate works out things well. In December 2022, Cediv, which is celebrating its twentieth anniversary, is organizing its annual convention in the Caribbean aboard the MSC Seaside ship. Oliver is in it. Just like Isabelle Mislanghe who runs the Côté Soleil Voyages agency specializing in expedition travel. When the “Kilimanjaro challenge” was announced, the Martinican decision-maker immediately seized this opportunity.
“I have never gone hiking, either on the flat or in the mountains”
“I, who am not sporty, who have never gone hiking, neither on the flat, nor in the mountains, many people ask me why I signed up to climb the highest peak in Africa (5,895 m). I’ve never really known how to answer this question because it’s so far out of my comfort zone.” comments the founding president of Carib Voyages. His only certainty, “to take a break different from what he is used to doing”.
“When I see the WhatsApp group and all these Cedivians walking, training in the mountains…, I tell myself I’m really going to have to believe it because for me, Kili is not my garden” analyzes with humor the leader who himself is “always on the motorbike, at the office or on the plane to go to Martinique at least once a month”.
“A secure trek with Cedivine friends”
If he does not have a training plan, he prefers to remember this wonderful human adventure that he is regarding to experience. An expedition that he sees as “a secure trek with Cedivine friends”. “There is an incredible confidence boost from Isabelle and her daughter Constance who have managed to convince and reassure people who are not keen on sport and who are not going to evolve in their comfort zone” summarizes the leader.
Comforted by the idea of “living a turnkey adventure”, Olivier de la Houssaye, although he has the desire to succeed in this challenge, does not make it an ultimate objective. “ I will gauge my abilities. I’m not into performance. What I can do, I will do. And if I don’t succeed, well I’ll come back another time, a little more trained, and I’ll reach that f… summit of Kilimanjaro “. This is also the positive attitude.
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