Mapping South Africa’s National Parks with Google Trekker

Andre Van Kets from Cape Town Travel Massive led an amazing project to document South Africa’s national parks with Google Street View – and the results are stunning.

Andre’s company Discover Africa Group and Liam Kelly – a Cape Town-based video producer – collaborated with over 200 volunteers to map South Africa’s most iconic and remote destinations in partnership with South Africa Tourism and Google – making these destinations accessible to everyone around the world.

Take a look at the video – and our interview with Andre below.

Tell us about yourselves, how did you and Liam meet?

Liam Kelly and I met at a Cape Town Travel Massive event in 2015. Liam’s niche is video production. Mine is tech. We soon discovered after chatting over a few beers, that we shared the same passion for travel, innovation and entrepreneurial thinking. Since that meeting we’ve worked on 3 great projects that promote Africa in interesting ways to the world. The latest with Google, our most rewarding.

How did the idea for the project come about?

I stumbled across Google’s Street View loan program while doing 360-camera research online. The program allows anyone to apply to borrow the “Google Trekker” (a wearable backpack version of it’s Street View cars) in order to map out parts of the world where cars can’t go. As soon as I saw the program I simply KNEW I had to get hold of it to map South Africa’s incredible wilderness areas.

What was the biggest challenges undertaking the project?

Logistics. We covered ~50 locations in 8-months. More than 50,000km driven. 2-5 days per location: At each we met up with local rangers/guide/hikers, planned hikes, trained-up volunteers, did the hikes, filmed, photographed, edited, packed-up, loaded the car, and moved onto the next location. Rinse, repeat. Each destination was a mini-project in itself.

But what amazing locations we explored…

What were the results and achievements?

We collected 360-imagery for Google Street View in all locations on our hit list: 19 national parks, 17 smaller nature reserves, 6 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 170 trails, more than 200 volunteers carried “the Trekker”, making it a massive proudly South African team effort. Technology made it possible, but people made it happen.

PR-wise, we’ve had great coverage in social and mainstream media.

How can Travel Massive members get involved and learn more?

I encourage all Travel Massive members to checkout Google’s camera loan program – and to apply (you never know!?)

Also, you can explore South Africa’s 170 new trails on Street View.

Also we’d love for people to take a 360-degree virtual journey through South Africa.

Andre is an avid outdoorsman, tech enthusiast, self-confessed geek and co-founder of Cape Town based travel company Discover Africa Group. His latest project is a collaboration with South African Tourism and Google. Connect with Andre on Travel Massive,  Twitter and Linkedin.

Photographer credits: Rudolph de Girardier and Drive South Africa.