Person of the Week: Marianne Du Toit

Jan. 16 -- Marianne Du Toit is taking an 18-month, out-of-the-ordinary journey, riding by horseback across South, Central and North America and raising money to help disabled children in the Dublin, Ireland.

She has traveled 10,000 miles from Argentina to Bolivia, then Brazil and Venezuela. From there, she rode to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, into El Salvador and then Guatemala.

"I am very independent. I like to do my own thing," said Du Toit, 32. "I've always wanted to do a journey that's a little bit out of the ordinary and something that would also benefit people or individuals and … I've been dreaming of doing something on horseback."

ABCNEWS caught up with her in Saluda, S.C., which is just west of Columbia. Born in South Africa, she now lives in Ireland.

Her journey has been pretty rough at times.

"During the day you have to put up with the heat, with mosquitoes and insects, horseflies that bother the horses," said Du Toit. "You're hungry and thirsty. And you don't know where you are going to stay that night … You begin to see shapes and things in the trees when darkness falls and you feel a little bit weary and you realize you are so on your own."

She traveled alone, she said, to get better exposure to the local people along the way, which at one point meant scaring away a thief who tried to hold her up. But she learned to overcome fear. "If you're fearful, you project vulnerability," Du Toit told ABCNEWS.

‘I’m a Doer’

"I'm a doer. I like to go out and do things and I like to finish things," she told ABCNEWS. "I just knew I had to continue, didn't matter how bad it gets, and there were days where it got really, really bad and you just knew that it must get better."