After they returned from their world trip, we caught up with Florent Carral and Sandra Baratte. While travelling,  Sandra used Flexyfoot crutches to get around. Here’s what they had to say about the second half of their 7 month adventure:

WERE YOU HAPPY WITH THE PERFORMANCE OF THE FLEXYFOOT FERRULES ON YOUR TRIP AROUND THE WORLD?

“To begin, here is our feedback on the Flexyfoot ferrules for crutches, we are really satisfied with the resistance! The ferrules all held for more than 3 months of intense activity on difficult terrain. In an urban environment they are very good too, the ferrules are perfect in the city and rarely slip. The only concern would be on surfaces with dust or fine gravel on mountain paths. Perhaps Flexyfoot could make special ferrules like their winter ones with a spike or other system to avoid falls.

We had a lot of questions throughout our trip from people interested in this technology, especially in Hawaii. You can see the final state of the ferrules in the pictures, the black rubber rings really help to prevent the ferrules from compressing too much after a lot of use. In short, these ferrules really helped us on our world tour and we were super happy with their performance!

On the second half of our trip around the world we visited Hawaii. We did not expect so much nature, we were able to climb the mauna kea to see the stars and sea lava flows on the Kīlauea. Many people were interested to see that Sandra’s disability does not stop her from travelling, and were immensely surprised to see someone on crutches at the top of a mountain. During the trip we caught the eye of a lot of people, many did not believe that we could reach the top and told us to turn back. Still, some people were really impressed with what we could do.  After Hawaii, we arrived at the part of the trip that we feared the most, South America and those high summits. For us the challenge was the altitude and how far Sandra could walk. We travelled much further than we could have possibly imagined on the rainbow mountains in Peru, where Sandra was able to walk to the 5000 metre mark. There was also an opportunity to do a lot of activities such as biking on the Chimborazo, again over 5000 metres, and horseback riding. We had to explain Sandra’s situation to local guides, but they always helped us to make it to the end.

This trip has shown us a lot about what we can do, we can go further now. The encouragement and congratulations from people in response to what we were able to do touched us a lot. This trip has also given us the desire to make the most of our region because we have a lot of new challenges ahead! Flexyfoot helped us get to the end. For many of them it was the first time they had worked with people with disabilities, and they all found it exciting.