ROARR - Rythm of a Road Rallies

Showing posts for 2009 - Show all posts

• 01

  DEC
  2009

  Posted at 19:38

  Two Fools and Their Mistress

  Patagonia Tales

  Coleque to Rio Mata – Of all the Drives I have done, this remains the most foolish and as close to Death I have come. Not because of any near accident or highwaymen: I just underestimated the environment and the changing weather across the Argentine pampas.
  
  This is the tale of two fools and their Mistress.
  
  Jim and I left Coihaique, Chile, late afternoon with the sun still shining bright above the Alfa, and proceeded to chase the sun east across the Argentine border and in so doing enjoyed whipping up long tails of bellowing dust behind us.
  
  We had a clear plan of taking rest at the border town; a well defined town on an international map. The run to the border caused us no problem, simply the road remained unremarkable quite for the entire journey, making us doubt if we were on the right road! When our eyes caught sight of the border sign rising out of the long rolling barren landscape - ‘Malvinas belong to Argentina’, - we both knew then, with some trepidation, this was the right road to the Argentine, possibly the Wrong road for two Englishmen.
  
  The sign aside, the border guards posted to this desolate post - as desolate as their poor father soldiers had been posted 25 years past onto bleak islands of the Atlantic - made us as welcome as they would any Foreigner, rather than as Englishmen ready to squabbling over islands(!)
  
  We were, I am sure, the first car of the day, if not all week! And this showed in their agreeable smiles, even if bemused no end over an old Alfa Romeo with no roof, and her confusing accompanying paperwork. Forms past back and forth, pleasurable gestures flowed between us all until eventually Jim and I were free to be on our way to drive deeper in the Big Lands and risk being seen no more.
  
  This inhospitable road over the Andes travels at over 3000ft. There are no high peaks; on the contrary a vista of wonderful rolling countryside of burnt yellow ferns from the ever present wind keeps this backdrop bare.
  
  As I have said Alta Rio Mayo may have a presence on international maps, and in so doing gives an illusion of a reasonable expectation from this Dot. I do not think it had more than four buildings, two locked, two derelicts.
  
  Jim and I had not seen a single car or a single person since the border and would not until the early hours of the following morning.
  
  Fortunately the daylight remained high and 75 km further on the next town on our international map of the Argentina, Centro Rio Mayo (again a Dot is a better explanation, town’s and Dot’s have the same status) we both hoped would see the end of this day’s drive. The further on we travelled along the repio the point of no return was before long reached.
  
  The falling light was one concern, an Alfa with dying oil pressure and little oil another. The Cold entrapping us to play on our Minds, and then the heater sputtered dust and Died first.
  
  As the sun fell away and the Lamps of Heaven came out Jim spoke for us both ‘This is not ideal terrain for an open broken car on our own.’ I could only mumble back, more talking to myself, that he had stated no more than the obvious, and if this is all he could say, best not said. I do not think he heard me for he was pulling the blanket closer to stop his shivering, and to do so drew his neck into his round shoulders and continued to gaze over the top of his glasses into the distant dark beyond.
  Centro Rio Mayo offered no rest to two extremely weary drivers, even if there was life here at this Dot. There was no understanding to our predicament, no hotel, no fuel, no restaurant, not even the local Mate (very common Argentine hot brew) on offer, only the frightening stares of the Locals at Outsiders in an eerie open car.
  
  And so we carried on. Slow 75km toil across Patagonia to the next Dot of Rio Mayo. As the sun fell the temperature followed very rapidly. The wind was still and the night cloudless. However, soon it was bitterly Cold. It was dismal looking out into the blackness of the pampas, and we both knew home was a long, long way away. As the hours passed and the temperature fell to below freeing both Jim and I, without saying as much to each other, a night under these stars would be the end of us.
  
  We stopped once to pull on more clothing to try to stop shivering, including three pairs of Socks each. But still my hands and feet froze solid and all I could do was watch the falling pressure gauge which seemed to be exceptionally clear in the darkness as if to make fun of an edgy driver. Then on repio that had never given any trouble, I saw, and can still see, this smooth half shaped solid rugby ball lying in wait and taking advantage of our weak lights to smash into our sump guard. It flicked the sump guard away and lifted high the frontage of the car, cracking the sump once protected. To listen in blackness to this Bolder bounce all along the under part of the car, finally leaping and bouncing away all along the repio behind, the Devil - with laughter from his work in the seconds it takes – flash’s brutally to you the forthcoming consequences.
  
  Yet nothing was said, for there seemed little point in saying what we felt to add further gloom to this pitiable moment. The damage was done to finish us. Oil was now spilling out and the gauge fell further and the Cold seem ever more biting. A desolate loneliness settled upon us.
  
  With Gods faith we carried on and hoped we may at least be able to limp home.
  
  The only beauty was the Heavens. I have never seen such a wonderful night of stars. Before the Rock changed our sentiment and our emotions became fearful, we had even slowed, turned off our lights and stared high at one of nature’s most beautiful sights. It’s a pity that modern living draws a net curtain over such a breathtaking outlook.
  
  We did limp into Rio Mayo in the very early morning, for fortune had smiled on us.
  
  I will just add that the following day I woke refreshed to reflect on the foolhardiness of our drive, our great good luck, and the appalling dangers that can jump at the unprepared. The wet dirt streets of Rio were iced over and the red Alfa covered in White frost.
  
  To find a hotel to do justice to the start of the Patagonia Rally in Buenos Aries has been elusive. There is the Alvear Palace, considered by many as the Argentine Finest; however it lacks presence, so lacks charisma as it sits at the end of a long terrace. A great hotel I would not want anyone to doubt, and in the fashion of a period palace, but as I say lacks presence and without gardens. You would have expected me to have done better.
  
  And Jim & I have done so! (With a little help from our new man in Buenos Aries.)
  
  The Palacio Duhau, built in 1934, is the defining architecture of the French. Soft stone and colonnades, high slate roofs, ironwork and crystal chandeliers all recalling the Belle Époque, the Beautiful Era before the 1st World War. And then the gardens....I will say no more for it will be one of the great delights of the rally. An ideal palace to prepare for our Expedition to the Big Lands of Patagonia.
  
  And she is dancing like a whore! The pleading stare in her eyes, the indifferent look of the male as he dismisses her brazen gestures away. Then with a change in this Unrestrainable dance - pulls her tight to tease, showing contempt, nonetheless they dance together; the Slow Brooding tango.
  
  Buenos Aries is Tango, and they tango here like no other city. A dance born from Slavery, from the Slums and from the Brothels’; out of Africa and out of Spain.
  
  There are two types of clubs. Clubs where you solicit a Partner, or Partners, to fuse together in tango and allow the night to pass away in dance. Or the clubs where you can go to watch those that can tango. The working class San Telmo has many of both. Or visit the old docks of Le Boca to see street tango or pay a visit to any number of her clubs.
  
  Jim has been in Buenos Aries for the past month, learning tango and organising the rally team. Hotels are shaping up in all different shapes and sizes. Insurance for our cars is now prearranged for both Argentina and Chile. Jim has put in order the shipping team, so well organised the Landy was out of docks in 4 hours. Our support team in Buenos Aries is shaping up well.
  Jim is now finally away from Buenos Aries driving the expedition Land Rover. First drive is the cost road, followed by the hinterlands, before deciding on the final route across the Big Lands to Tierra del Fuego. Onto the Beautiful Lands to recce the how and where to drive the Pacific coast north to Valparaiso and onto Santiago.
  
  0ne of the mysteries of the road has been solved. At odd intervals along the road you will see small Dog Kennels with flags, crosses, looking like shrines for the Dead of the Road. Apparently they are shrines to their equivalent of Robin Hood. This is a Character you lived in the North robbing the rich and gave to the poor.
  
  People place cigarettes, wine and such or just water in the shrine. There is sometimes a picture likeness of Him in situ. We even watched families gather and picnic around the kennels in merriment and we supposed wrongly in bereavement.

  For those on the Patagonia Rally, you too will drive the road from Coihaique to Rio Mayo.
   

     
  Conrad Birch

   

• 01

  NOV
  2009

  Posted at 00:00

  Patagonia - November 2009

   I am not sure if I can do this far flung land justice as my writing is not up to the standard required a land as immense as Patagonia calls for Chatwin or Theroux. I will write, however Patagonia will resolve my capacity to write and I hope I give can you an idea about something of Patagonia’s unsettling grandeur and alarming beauty. Of course for those who are coming in February, they themselves, I am sure, will be unyielding in portraying what they will have seen in the imposing land of Patagonia.

  Why? Because this land stretches broad in every direction and in every direction the land is immense; for this is substantial land. The big flat lands are without trees and without a high point - or a low point - just pampas for 2,750 km south, Buenos Aries to Tierra del Fuego, and then west for too many miles before the steppe rise up upon a plateau, at its lowest, higher than any point in Great Britain, to ultimately meet the mighty Andes.

  So this is a big land, a very big land the size of Europe. And this apparent empty land stretch’s out to bamboozle you, from the Rio Negro to Ushuaia, and what a land of nothing! However be patient for you will see more, much more in the vast emptiness as the journey unfolds.

  Darwin put this question; 

   ‘Why, then, ....do these arid wastes take so firm possession of the memory?’ ....but why?, is this land no more than a large open featureless terrain - a waste land? Or is this the hallucination of the destitute of life without feeling or vision? An observation of those who feel a coldness when the wind blows against their face and see nothing in an open landscape without being able to see the heaving underneath of the pampas grasses?

  And I say again this is a land of slow, very slow changing pace, with a measured undulating place of being in Big Lands, and so Patagonia, the east cost more so, needs to be driven, and then driven slowly to see her colours; to see the tuffs of grass change their muted mixture of greens, and see the yellows go from golden to sandy that cover across all of her land - splendid colours of two. And then there is the rustic red and soft pinks showing the age of her escarpments, sliced by nature own time not by man’s.

  The rolling countryside outside BA is a false dawn of the lands to come. This countryside of Surrey is not the start; this is the lands we are leaving behind. It is not until the Rio Negro is crossed that we leave Argentina of tango and revolution and enter the ruthless lands of Patagonia.

  

  But remember Patagonia unfolds her splendour at a very slow pace, and so for eight days travelling south the magnificence of this land takes it shape and as an observer you soon see Patagonia, and understand life is hard and nature can be cruel. And then the world changes - the flat lands are no more, never to be seen again – the Deep South comes upon you with backdrops seen nowhere else on earth. Maybe Mt Kaillash or Kanchatka Peninsula will jump high and make their claim as rivals to this obscene title. But that is like Mouton Rothschild making a claim over Petrus, the point is pointless for the point has been made.

  Then this beauty seen in the Big Lands will play on your mind and maybe, having seen the great rampant beauty of Pines, Frit Roy, Moreno Glacier and the Lakes, the Big Lands in hind sight will be remembered with more love and affection than these great facades of beauty.

   

  My experience of big lands, mountains or plateaus is limited, for I am a driver from man’s land where man has shaped and sheltered himself from nature. He has changed the natural world to protect himself from this cruel environment. I mean to explain this better; in my lands, once nature’s land, man controls to shape and cut. If man’s presence had never been, or suddenly vanished,  gone, what a change, reversed back to the days as uncultivated as nature intended.

   

  However, that is not the case here, not in the lands of Patagonia. Man has made little, in fact no impact, and if suddenly man exited Patagonia, would Patagonia know? This is still the same silent land Darwin came upon.

   

  And the wind blows; at first I cursed this natures wind, then I started to understand. It is nature and nature’s way and not air conditioning or central heating: this is a blowing unsettling wind not programmed to man’s ways, not controlled by man’s machines. I now love this wind, for it howl’s and blows and defies and so reminds you who was born to be King, and still here in Patagonia you start to understand nature reigns supreme.

  The Big Lands undress very slowly. Consequently you fall in love with the solitude of the Big Lands of Patagonia; then you have then started some understanding. The beauty of Pines and Frit Roy are only on a cat walk, immediately beautiful, are they jam-packed with the same Personality?

   

  Buenos Ares was made to start such a journey. For she is Tango, and Revolution, and the Argentine. This city follows in the steps of well-dressed Paris, except she is a whore, tardy, brash and has a recent tale of betrayal, tragedy and death. This city is not yet at harmony with itself, and for that reason should be known as Carmen de Buena Ares!  

  And to Santiago we all travel. Not worth my pen on paper - Soviet, dull and poor. I can accept this in a city for it makes for intrigue, except Santiago lives without soul and is devoid of passion. Santiago seems dreadfully exhausted. Fortunately her costal neighbour Valporaso has the rawness of working youthfulness I can enjoy. Certainly not beautiful, invitingly cheeky and so a great place to conclude a raw journey across unrefined lands.

   

  I came to drive and had adventure. After the Big Land and the Beautiful Lands are the Driving Lands.   The Carreterra Austral disappointed as much as many cooks in France can these days. Big build up, the ‘must be done’ rhetoric. The road was harsh and broke the Alfa and so I care not for such a road. I have driven many such roads in India, but there I forgive, for they are alive and heave with personality. The Carreterra is a broken road, as are many Chilean roads. On the other hand the roads of Argentine are a treat for a driver, on gravel the car gains confidence and then speed and so start to break out of line, understeering to awaken the driver. On the black top the roads run and run.

   

  For many the highlight of the journey will be Torre del Pains. For me? the great drives of Seven Lakes. I have driven many roads and Route 40 is above all roads - El Bolsen to Balaocha - is near as perfect driving as is now on this earth. A 170 km drive that is not taxing, for you have no hair pins to power the car through, little in the way of corners to upset the ride, just allow the car to find her momentum, in the Alfa at 60 mph, no faster and no slower, and soon you will tango with the car. For any driver this is a life remembering drive. We journey for 23 days before we reach the El Bolson and the expectation of this drive will live with me every moment of every day out of Buenos Aries.

   

   

  Then the following day is the short 30km around Llao Llao. This is the Argentines own Nuremburgring. I drove this early Sunday morning a road rising and falling with camber changes sweeping left to right, right to left. Astonishing to drive these lightly backed corners joined by quickening short straights, and not a car in sight.

   With Jim and I in the Alfa she was cramped, overweight and so in hindsight we treated her harshly. Her oil pressure died on day one and so had to be treated like an old dame. Pity, for this Alfa is not elderly, and in February I have been assured by Frances (first Alfa trained mechanic in Argentina who is preparing the car) with this engine the Duetto will "sing" like no other. It will be a very different journey.

   

  Jim’s Landy has arrived in Buenos Aries and for the next six weeks he will be putting the final touches to the leisurely journey many of you will be making with me across the unhurried lands of Patagonia.

   

  If my writing has failed, I do however hope that my enthusiasm for this journey has broken through. So as you can finally see, after being fascinated and intrigued for many a year the Patagonia wilderness has take possession of my soul.

   

  I suppose I have finally seen, and been touched, by the lands of Darwin.

   

  Conrad Birch