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Interview
1 April 2018 2.00 h

Albert Bosch.

Adventurer, entrepreneur and writer

’Do what you want, but do it’

Listen to on:
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If you only go for ego, For the goal, you are weak. If you are connected to the purpose, you are strongYou mustn’t say “I want to”, you have to say “I will”. But you must be realistic; you can’t do all of your wishes
You’re here today to share with us your ex­pe­ri­ences as an ad­ven­turer. One of your great­est achieve­ments was cross­ing Antarc­tica in 2012. How did your pas­sion for the ex­treme start?
I started be­cause I like being part of the ac­tion. I wanted to be an elite sports­man. I wanted to com­pete and live off that. But when I achieved some of my goals I re­alised I couldn’t be a pro­fes­sional. Maybe you don’t have to win, but to do other things.
What would you say was the biggest chal­lenge of your Antarc­tica jour­ney?
Maybe being there alone for 48 days, es­pe­cially when I hadn’t pre­pared my­self for that – I started with a friend, but he gave up. Being alone for so long was a real gift that life gave me, as I dis­cov­ered many things. There were ups and downs and I re­ally missed my kids, my fam­ily, my safety, my Christ­mas. I needed to be fine in my mind in order not to go to the neg­a­tive side. I had to look for the pos­i­tive things. And I had a chal­lenge there and I suc­ceeded. I was re­ally happy every day. I wanted to be there. If you do what you want to do, it makes you strong.
But did you know you had this strength be­fore?
Maybe a lit­tle bit yes, be­cause it wasn’t my first big ad­ven­ture. I had done many things be­fore, climb­ing Ever­est, eight Dakar Ral­lies, etc. I have trained a lot all my life for this kind of men­tal strength, but you can never trust your­self, you are never ready for that. I’ve seen many peo­ple who are very strong and ex­pe­ri­enced and when there’s an ob­sta­cle they fail. Maybe I’ve been very suc­cess­ful in the South Pole, but when I go to the North Pole, hope­fully in two years, who knows?
What was the key in man­ag­ing to achieve what you did?
Con­nect­ing to my essence of life, I was con­nected to the pur­pose. The goals are there, but are not im­por­tant. Goals are one thing, you can achieve them or not, but pur­pose is an­other thing. I was where I wanted to be, and that’s the key point. If you go there only for your ego, for your goal, for the media cov­er­age, then you are weak. If you are con­nected to the pur­pose, you are strong.
What was the most dif­fi­cult and chal­leng­ing mo­ment of the jour­ney?
Christ­mas Day, but not men­tally, phys­i­cally, be­cause the day be­fore there was a lot of fog and I couldn’t see any­thing and went off the route I wanted to fol­low. I started to see crevasses and there were 2,000 me­tres of ice. I thought to call my fam­ily by satel­lite to say Happy Christ­mas and the next day it was sunny. I had to find the way out. It was one of those days when your only goal is to reach night­time alive. I have ex­pe­ri­enced very few days like that, when your only goal is to stay alive. But maybe the most dan­ger­ous mo­ment of my life was de­scend­ing Ever­est, be­cause we had many prob­lems there. We had a very high chance of dying be­cause of a huge storm. It was the only time I thought “bye-bye”. You need the courage to quit some­times and it’s dif­fi­cult when you are under a lot of pres­sure.
How do you pre­pare for these ex­treme con­di­tions?
We were nor­mally work­ing be­tween -15º and -30º. We’re lucky be­cause the equip­ment is very good. I am soon going to Canada to cross the Great Slave Lake, one of the biggest and cold­est lakes in the world. They are now at -47º, we check every day. But you have ex­pe­ri­ence of that, you get used to it. But of course, the equip­ment is es­sen­tial.
What tips would you give peo­ple to achieve their pro­jects?
Well, I would tell them that they need to take it se­ri­ously. In that as­pect I’m firm, I don’t like to dream from my dreams, I like to live from my pro­jects. At the be­gin­ning of the year you have a lot of dreams, a lot of mo­ti­va­tions, a big to-do list, but you don’t put these on a list of pro­jects, you put them on the list of wishes. The first key to achiev­ing it is chang­ing the tense of the verb: you mustn’t say “I want to”, you have to say “I will”. But you must be re­al­is­tic, you have to kill some wishes be­cause you can’t do all of them. I will do these three or four, but I will do them! And I won’t think about the ob­sta­cles, I will think about the so­lu­tions. And the big ques­tions: What am I ready to lose? What is the price I will pay for that? And what am I ready to change? The tip I would give peo­ple? Be what you want to be, but do it.
What are your plans for 2018?
I have quite a few pro­jects. I did a big ex­pe­di­tion in Antarc­tica in March. I will do seven marathons in seven days here in Cat­alo­nia in May. We will in­vite a lot of peo­ple to come with us to run, and Nicole Rivera and I will run the marathons in seven days for the en­vi­ron­ment. It’s con­nected with a Eu­ro­pean pro­ject called “Let’s clean Eu­rope”.
Sus­tain­able pro­jects are im­por­tant?
That’s my real chal­lenge for this year, to go one step for­ward on my com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­ity. Lov­ing na­ture is not using na­ture. Lov­ing na­ture is look­ing after it and fight­ing for it. This year I want to put more into that. I think that I have some vis­i­bil­ity, some cred­i­bil­ity, and I’m a rad­i­cal. I de­cided that in 2004 be­cause I re­alised I was being a liar, I wasn’t being sin­cere with my­self or so­ci­ety. On Sun­day, when I was in the moun­tains, I said I love moun­tains and na­ture. But on Mon­day, when I was going to work, I didn’t care about that. I de­cided to put to­gether the val­ues of what I thought on Sun­day and what I did on Mon­day, metaphor­i­cally speak­ing. My life had to be con­nected to my val­ues. So I de­cided I would never walk on a thing that dam­aged na­ture. Do you want your kids to be proud of you or just have a com­fort­able life? I think it’s very easy to make con­nec­tions. If you do good things, you are con­scious of the bad things. You must com­mit to being bet­ter.

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