TWO young adventurers have travelled from the comfort of Germany through Africa's jungles to one of the most "historic townships in the world" - Soweto.
Travelling in a 1962 Mercedes Benz 4x4, Max Schwenn and Nils Pitz left Frankfurt in November to be in South Africa for the World Cup kick-off next month.
From Germany, they headed for Spain where they boarded a ferry across the Mediterranean Sea to Morocco.
They then embarked on an epic journey through Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon,Congo-Brazzaville, DRC,Angola,Namibia, Botswana - and finally arrived in South Africa early last month.
Orlando West has been their home since, sleeping in their truck or at the Backpackers Village. "We had two motivations: the adventure and coming to help Ikageng Itireleng, an NGO that helps more than 1500 HIV-positive kids with food, school uniforms, transport and counselling," said Schwenn, 21.
"We wanted to see the real Africa and get to know the people. When you do a trip like this by car, you get to see things that most tourists don't experience.
"Ubuntu is something special. African people in all countries have been kind to us," said the 20-year-old Pitz.
"We slept in the car and ate mostly street food that we could find on the way," Schwenn said.
Despite sleeping rough and eating food they were not used to, the pair said they were surprised they didn't get sick.
"(Ox) lungs were the worst thing I ate, They are too spongy. But give me goat feet any time. We mostly used the bush to relieve ourselves," said Pitz.
Now that the World Cup is 29 days away, they are very excited they made the trip and arrived ahead of kick-off.
And despite having car problems on the way, they never doubted they would be here to witness the first soccer spectacle on African soil.
Adventurous duo in town
TWO young adventurers have travelled from the comfort of Germany through Africa's jungles to one of the most "historic townships in the world" - Soweto.
Travelling in a 1962 Mercedes Benz 4x4, Max Schwenn and Nils Pitz left Frankfurt in November to be in South Africa for the World Cup kick-off next month.
From Germany, they headed for Spain where they boarded a ferry across the Mediterranean Sea to Morocco.
They then embarked on an epic journey through Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon,Congo-Brazzaville, DRC,Angola,Namibia, Botswana - and finally arrived in South Africa early last month.
Orlando West has been their home since, sleeping in their truck or at the Backpackers Village. "We had two motivations: the adventure and coming to help Ikageng Itireleng, an NGO that helps more than 1500 HIV-positive kids with food, school uniforms, transport and counselling," said Schwenn, 21.
"We wanted to see the real Africa and get to know the people. When you do a trip like this by car, you get to see things that most tourists don't experience.
"Ubuntu is something special. African people in all countries have been kind to us," said the 20-year-old Pitz.
"We slept in the car and ate mostly street food that we could find on the way," Schwenn said.
Despite sleeping rough and eating food they were not used to, the pair said they were surprised they didn't get sick.
"(Ox) lungs were the worst thing I ate, They are too spongy. But give me goat feet any time. We mostly used the bush to relieve ourselves," said Pitz.
Now that the World Cup is 29 days away, they are very excited they made the trip and arrived ahead of kick-off.
And despite having car problems on the way, they never doubted they would be here to witness the first soccer spectacle on African soil.
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