Armed with just their wits and a little Fiat Panda Cross 4X4, intrepid Polish explorers Jolanta Czupik and Dominik Stoklosa are intent on covering 70,000 km around Africa in only six months. With Cape Town scheduled as a halfway stop the pair have covered 14 countries and clocked just under 32,000 km since departing from Poland on January 18.

The twosome have travelled from their home country through Germany, France and Spain, across the Mediterranean Sea by ferry to Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo – Brazzaville, DRC, Angola and Namibia along the continent’s West Coast. When they depart from the Mother City on Sunday, they will make their way up to Botswana, and travel through Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Russia and the Ukraine, before arriving back in Poland.

But while Czupik is quick to stress that the sticker-clad Panda Cross 4X4 (equipped with Fiat’s 1,3-litre JTD Multijet engine not offered in South Africa) used on their trip is not ideal for off-roading, their little car experienced hardly any problems en route to South Africa. “We only had one problem, in Angola, with the starter. It burnt while we were crossing a big water-filled hole, but we pushed to Kinshasa where Fiat sent us a new starter which we replaced ourselves. Without a support team, we are mechanics, electronics experts, drivers, co-drivers, journalists, photographers – too many professions,” the two quipped.
 

And their toughest challenge faced along the route? Definitely the roads in Angola, where the country’s infrastructure is severely damaged after several years of civil war. “We drove through Angola for 14 to 17 hours a day at an average speed of about 10 or 15 km hour, sleeping in a tent along the road for six days because we only had a seven-day transit visa. We covered 2 316 km in a country without any roads.”

For their efforts, Czupik and Stoklosa had only one tyre “situation” along the route, which was swiftly resolved with a tyre repair kit. The veteran explorers have, on their journey so far, spent 466 hours behind the wheel (the equivalent of 19 full days!) and their turbodiesel Panda has consumed 1 687 litres of diesel at a rate of around 6,2 litres per 100 km.

The gutsy vehicle saw the inside of a workshop for the first time in South Africa since leaving Poland almost three months ago. “We’re changing our tyres, replacing our oil and air filters, and fixing a few minor things, and then we’ll be good for another 35 000 km,” Stoklosa said. “The next service will be when we get home to Poland.”