THE INCA TRAIL
the big South American adventure rally
Day 41: Rio Gallegos - Comodoro Rivadavia (906km)
More fantastic landscapes on Explorer Section |
Car club cabaret entertainment - and lots of Brylcreem |
Twelve drummers drumming ... |
'Won't turn? Can't turn! Now let's get this right ...' The Secrest Ford powers along on Regularity. |
The rally hits Route 3 today: the road whose termination we celebrated two days ago at our Lapataia Control, at its 3,065th kilometre. This is Argentina's Great South Road: seemingly endless ruler-straight two-lane blacktop through more sparsely-vegetated pampas. For the 4x4s, there was a trip to see the Petrified Forest national monument: a weirdly deserted science fiction landscape.
Soon after, the 4x4 route took them via Route 12, the nearly deserted 'loneliest road', to pass alongside a stretch of painted desert: multi-hued stratified mini canyons carved by watercourses.
A final run up the coast led crews to Comodoro Rivadavia, where we were welcomed by the Mayor and an army band, and Clay Regazzoni was presented with a special memento of his visit.
But before that, we had another circuit lap consistency test for Classic Reliability Triallists, as guests of the local motor club. A super little circuit, which also happens to be home to a flock of gulls who fly up off the tarmac whenever a car approaches.
The same club had invited all of us back later in the evening for a barbecue at the circuit clubhouse. They had been roasting a whole animal for three days to feed us beef, and three sheep made up the balance. After we had eaten, entertainment arrived: tango dancers and drummers. A lively end to a brilliant and hospitable evening.
A change of road from small and twisty with the potential to wrong slot to long - very long - and dead straight meant a change of strategy for the Bill Secrest Ford Custom Convertible. 'We've got gearbox problems,' he explains. 'We can choose between overdrive, for distance and speed work, or no overdrive and the chance to engage reverse gear. Driving Route 3 for so far today means that we'll need to forgo reverse, or we'll never get anywhere. So we'd better not make any mistakes: we have to get the jack out, crank the car up and swivel it around if we do!'