After achieving their childhood dreams of going in search of the last dinosaur in the Congo, Jordan Deall, Luke McDonald and Donovan Orr, their cameraman, decided to go on another adventure.
Known as the Hitched Crew, after their web series, the team decided to go on their next adventure as they had wanted to share the stories about “authentic Africa”.
Deall, one of the team members, told Lowvelder, “We want to show the daily life of Africans. We realised many people overseas do not see all parts of Africa because a certain part of the continent is dictated by the media.
You always see the violence, war and poverty. But through film we wanted to show this different part.
So we thought, what better way to showcase this than on an international platform such as Hollywood?”
The trio decided to give the public a chance to decide where to take their next adventure.
The public voted for Ellen DeGeneres, and so the journey to Hollywood began. The team started the journey to Hollywood and eventually met Ellen DeGeneres after eight months of hitchhiking.
Deall commented, “We let the public decide on everything we did.” The journey was planned for three months, but it took nine months.
“We eventually focused on travelling from Durban to Northwest, instead of trying to travel from South Africa to Russia. We treated it like eating an elephant, taking it one day at a time,” he said.
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The journey was challenging for the trio. Deall explained, “We travelled on an extreme budget.
Our journey was constantly channelled by countries that allow South Africans to get visas in a neighbouring country. This was difficult. We also had to pass through countries where there
was chaos”.
He added, “Africa has an amazing culture towards guests. We experienced kindness and generosity in different ways. We realised kindness is universal.”
Their documentary was not played on Ellen’s show, but they are still in talks with the celebrity.
The team has since been busy editing the adventure to Hollywood, and the first episode will be released by the end of March on their website.
The team is not planning on going on another adventure for now. In fact Deall is getting married this weekend. However they are open to it and it will be a journey to a Kanji River in India, or something similar.
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The trio can be followed on @hitched.series on Instagram and hitched.congo on Facebook.
Photos: Hitched
