Two men, Kobus Esterhuizen and Marius Burger Lourens, are taking on an adventurous road trip from Cape Town to Stuttgart, Germany, in January 2025.
You’d be forgiven for thinking them … eccentric, seeing as they are already preparing to take the trip in a 1996 Mercedes-Benz along with their mascot, Garfield, and absolutely no budget for their piggy bank, Miss Piggy.
Esterhuizen and Lourens said this journey has nothing to do with raising money for charities, however, they do plan to donate the vintage car to the Mercedez-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. They hope to meet wonderful people and to see some amazing places along the more than 12 000km straight route as suggested by Google Maps.
They are inviting everyone before and along the trip to sign the car Esterhuizen inherited from his mother, and it will be handed over to the museum with all these signatures all over it. “We hope people will be interested in signing their names on the car to be displayed for as long as possible. Throughout this journey, we want to give people something to talk about and just to make them happy. We hope our journey will bring people closer in some way,” Esterhuizen said.
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Both he and Lourens are originally from Cape Town and found themselves settling in the Lowveld for personal reasons. They work as VIP security consultants and also do some close protection work.
With not much of a blueprint plan on how to tackle this adventure, they both said: “We are just winging it and we will be during the whole trip, and take everything as it comes. We both have been in the security industry for most of our lives, so we will survive. We are already training to sleep in and basically just live in the car to prepare our bodies and minds.”
“Already, many have called us crazy, because we have no plan for the whole trip. We have no plan on how to navigate the roads, borders, food, fuel or anything. Call us the crazy two guys, but we will see how we get there. If the car breaks down or anything, we will fix it and continue the journey. We do not have a time frame on when we have to get to Stuttgart,” Lourens said.
They plan to document the journey on their Facebook page, Vagabond Travels.
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After the handover of the car, the duo said they will continue travelling around the world.
These guys would not be the first ones to embark on this kind of adventure. A hitchhiker and TikTok content creator, Timo de Jong, set out on a journey of a lifetime in February, travelling from the United Kingdom to South Africa, with just his backpack, a black marker and a piece of cardboard. Another extraordinary adventurist and athlete, Deo Kato, began his journey on July 24, running from Cape Town to London in 381 days. His journey tells the history of human migration from Africa to the rest of the world.
