From Europe to Oudtshoorn in a House on Wheels

Five years ago, everything changed.

Susi saw an expedition style truck parked outside her practice. Her former boss had been a ship-based world traveler, then bought an overland truck to explore by land. The sight hit her like lightning. She walked around the truck, went home, opened her laptop and started searching. She discovered a global community of people who travel and live in vehicles like these.

She came home and told Kim, “We are going to do this. We will sell everything, buy a truck and travel the world.” Turns out, he did not need much convincing.

The decision was simple. The process was not. They both had to get truck driver licenses. Susi had to close a successful veterinary practice. They had to sell their house and almost everything in it. They had to find ways to bring their dogs along. From the first moment of inspiration until the day they owned only the truck and their essentials, almost five years passed.

They stopped taking holidays and saved every cent. They sorted, sold and gifted their belongings. The slow goodbye helped. By the end, mowing the lawn and maintaining the property felt like a burden. The house had served its time.

Letting go became a relief. “Stuff holds energy,” Susi explains. “When you free yourself from it, you feel lighter.”

Their philosophy is simple. Life is short. You do not know if you will reach seventy or eighty. Many people work toward “golden years” that sit far in the future. Susi and Kim see the golden years as now. The time when you still have health, strength and enough income to move, learn and explore.

They also saw how easy it is to get stuck in a cycle of work and consumption. Work more, buy more, show more, impress others, repeat. The price is often stress, debt and poor health. For them, the answer was experiences, not possessions.

Two rescue dogs travel with them. Lina and Kaja are both eleven years old. Susi adopts only rescue dogs, mostly from large shelters. One came from a shelter in Romania that houses hundreds of dogs outdoors in extreme temperatures. Another came from Italy. Bringing them along was never in question.

“They are family,” Susi says. “I would not go anywhere without my dogs.”

Their African route began almost by accident. The first big trip in their new truck was meant to be a short test run from Germany to Morocco, before shipping the vehicle to Canada. They fell in love with Morocco. The landscape offered forests, mountains and desert. They stayed almost three months. Other travelers suggested they continue south to Mauritania and Senegal, then return to Morocco and head back to Europe. Instead, they kept following the African coastline.

They describe themselves as the most unprepared travelers. They left with no spare parts and only the basics. The truck broke down many times. Once, they were stranded in Congo and were helped by local mechanics and fellow travelers. Another time, a Congolese driver loaded their enormous wheel into the boot of a small car, drove it to a roadside repair shack, and brought it back patched and ready for the next ten thousand kilometres.

The worst moment came on a high mountain track between Nigeria and Cameroon. They chose a remote offroad route that climbed to two thousand metres. The road turned to sticky clay in the rain. The truck slid downhill, fourteen tons out of control. They took a wrong bend on a narrow path and almost tipped over the edge. At one point, they had no option except to drive slowly into a rock wall to stabilize the truck.

“It was the hardest thing we have ever done,” they say now. “We put everything into this truck. If we lost it, we lost our home.”

But thankfully they made it through! These days, they can laugh about it. The hard parts sit next to the best moments. Campfires. Endless skies. Kind strangers in remote places. Dogs snoring in the back of the cab. A life that feels full and present.

They did not expect to end up in South Africa this year, and they certainly did not expect to volunteer at Cango Wildlife.

They stopped to ask if they could sleep one night in the parking lot. Within hours, they were helping prepare food for our turtles and learning about the daily routines behind the scenes. They also experienced our Ambassador Animal Connections, including the Crocodile Cage Dive with Jason. Susi admits she was nervous at first. Inside the water, her perspective changed completely.

Jason floated calmly beside the cage. His eye level matched hers. She found herself face to face with a powerful reptile that most of us only see from a distance. No lunging. No violence. Only a quiet, ancient presence sharing the space.

“We are so grateful,” they told us. “We will never forget this experience. The animals, the encounters, your hospitality. Everything.”

For our team, meeting Susi and Kim was a reminder of why spaces like Cango Wildlife matter. People cross continents, often at great personal risk, to connect with wildlife and support conservation. They bring their skills, their stories and their hearts into our valley. In return, we share our animals, our knowledge and our care.