M-B-backed adventurer breezes through
Mercedes-Benz-backed adventurer Mike Horn has ticked off New Zealand’s Queenstown region and the Australian Simpson Desert in his two-year quest to circle the planet via its poles. Since the Pole2Pole expedition began in Monaco in May 2016, the 51-yearold Swiss has used a pair of Mercedes-Benz G-Class wagons to traverse the length of the African continent, and a Mercedes-Benz powered icebreaking yacht to cross to and from Antarctica. In between, he became the first human to trek solo and unassisted across the widest section of the icy continent via the South Pole. Horn was then reunited with his vehicles in Dunedin so he could check out the South Island High Country, with a particular focus on
Queenstown and environs. Continuing on his yacht Pangaea to Sydney, he then led an eight-day trek from Birdsville across the Simpson Desert, to finish within sight of majestic Uluru. “The Simpson Desert is something I’ve always wanted to do. It is even more beautiful than I ever imagined, the variety of colours and terrain on each day and the stars at night are just some of the sights I will never forget,” Horn says. Horn departed Australia last month to continue the Pole2Pole expedition, heading north through Papua New Guinea, South-East Asia and Russia on the way to trekking solo across the Arctic Circle before his expected completion of the expedition in Monaco in mid-2018. Horn’s long-term alignment with Mercedes-Benz allows him virtually free reign to explore the globe in any number of G-Class models. “The G-Class enables me to go by road to certain destinations that I used to fly to,“he says. “And that makes my exploration a bit more meaningful and rich. “I can spend time with the local people, I can eat their food and try to communicate with them. I used to fly over them, now I can share with them.” He doesn’t go without while forging new trails around the globe either. As well as the usual tough-as off-road credentials like triple diff locks and a wading depth of 600mm the G-Wagens he is using on his Pole2Pole adventure are top-spec production models which come complete with leathertrimmed and heated seats, full COMAND infotainment system and a host of other comfort and safety systems. “A journalist once asked me, ‘Do you need the heated seats and the air conditioning?’ I said it’s not so much that I need it, I can live without it, but I think I deserve it. This is definitely the car that I would buy.”