Experiencing the world, one adventure at a time
For all its faults, the Internet has a wonderful way of bringing interesting people into one’s life. It was a series of random clicks that led to Matt Fudge and his website Ends of the Earth.
Fudge has turned traveling the world into an extreme sport. He has jumped out of a hot air balloon in Arizona, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and gone shark cage diving in False Bay.
He’s been to countless places—Cape Town, South Africa; Chobe Park, Botswana; and El Chorro, Spain only begin to scratch the surface. He is already looking forward to climbing Mount Elbrus in Russia this June.
It’s almost as if those “Most Interesting Man in the World” commercials are actually about Matt Fudge.
All of his adventures are captured using a GoPro 3+, an iPhone 5S, and a MacBook Pro. He shares his experiences on his website, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
On a mild January evening, Fudge sat down with The Ontarion, at one of the many Starbucks in Guelph.
Fudge grew up in Ottawa and has lived in Guelph for the last 21 years. He started his website in July 2014, during a 12-hour layover at JFK. His goal was to keep in touch with family and friends.
When asked as to whom his website appealed to, Fudge replied, “I think mostly to my mom.”
His website doesn’t have a specific target audience. Both younger people, who want to know how they can do what he’s doing, as well as older people, who are interested in the places he has visited or the experiences he has had, have contacted him.
Fudge hates the term “adrenaline junkie” because it implies addiction, and he doesn’t view what he does as an addiction.
“I just really like things that happen to be associated with that term.”
He later shared a story of his most transformative experience; it is a story that reveals his passion for the whole experience and not just the parts where he’s falling through the sky.
Fudge explained that Botswana was “the loneliest place. I landed in a small little airplane there, and there wasn’t really an airport, it was more of this weird structure. It was a dirt landing strip […] and a few people got off the plane. By the time I got out there was no one there and I was just alone. And it was just this long road. […] It’s hard to describe the feeling of being totally on your own in a place that is totally forgotten or unknown from society. And you have no means of communication, no idea where you are or what you’re going to do. It’s like your mind goes through these cycles of being terrified and just being like, ‘Oh no, wait, everything is going to be fine.’”
I wondered if perhaps it was more possible for men to experience the kinds of adventures that Fudge goes on. He explained that although that is what a lot of people think, he has met many women who are solo travellers. He added that the women he has met were all “totally travel savvy, and smart, and aware, and knew what was going on.”
He believes that traveling is an education like no other.
“I would encourage people to just travel right away, before working or getting a job or anything. There is no school or parents or influential person that can teach you more than the world will.”