In the spring, we shipped the Woelcke Autark Runner back from Port Elizabeth to Bremerhaven with the agency Seabridge, Germany, to have maintenance work carried out on the vehicle.
Encouraged by the truck travelers Matthias with VW-MAN, Freddy and Rita Reck from Reckfilm, Tommi and Conny from Mantoco, Peter and Gabi from Pegasus-Unterwegs and others, we stealthily looked around for a suitable truck base vehicle, which we found after a long search – a MAN 14.285 with all-wheel drive. 14 = 14 tons total weight, 28x stands for 280 hp and xx5 for the fifth generation.
The restoration of the chassis and conversion into an expedition vehicle at Füss in Bingen-Hitzkofen (near Sigmaringen) took 8 1/2 months, from September 2017 to mid-May 2018.
Goals
What goals are we pursuing with the new expedition vehicle? Given our age, this question is more than justified.
We would like to travel for as long as our health allows. In between, there is always a stay of 2 or 3 months in Switzerland.
First stage: Cairo > Cape Town
The first stage will take us from Cairo through East Africa to Cape Town. We expect this to take one to two years. We don’t want to rush, we want to take our time. However, local conditions and political developments in the individual countries will also influence our travel plans.
Second stage: Panamericana
After Africa, the journey is planned from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska. Provided, of course, that our health and the general conditions allow it.
We are also attracted by the trip to Mongolia and many other destinations. But despite all our planning, we are aware that things may turn out quite differently than planned.