Progress Report

Since our last update of 25 September, we’ve made a lot of progress. Joanna and I had a successful trip to Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil in November, finding some great new sections and sorting out some terrific overnight halts. We visited the Argentine version of the Mille Miglia, the Mil Millas, and took some nice photos - in November, we follow this, South America's most prestigious classic car event , into the town of Bariloche and the superb resort hotel of Llao Llao, and will use the same finish ramps, etc.

We sorted out our new overnight halts in the finest hotels of the three leading Atlantic resorts of Mar del Plata (Argentina), Punta del Este (Uruguay) and Florianópolis (Brazil), as well as the historic seaport town of Paranaguá (Brazil); not to mention some memorable new rally sections in all three countries.

The Reliability Trial has now been inscribed by the MSA UK on the FIA Calendar as an International Historic Regularity Rally, while after over a year of negotiations we have at last agreed terms with Codasur, the consortium of South American ASNs (national motor sport clubs or federations affiliated to the FIA), for their issue of a collective permit for the event.

Now read the rest of this carefully - there's LOTS to do!

Briefing Days

The programme and booking form for the Briefing Day at Gaydon on Saturday 7 April is enclosed. As you see, it's a very full day, and I do urge you to attend if you possibly can, ideally with all crew members. The Inca Trail participants' fee of £30 is to cover lunch and coffee. Please return the booking form and cheque as soon as possible.

Please note that there will be time at the end of the Briefing Day, on the way home, to follow a practice navigation run, set up by David Moore as part of his touring practice rally of that day. Please indicate on your booking form if you want to receive the route card for this.

For the same reason, the Briefing Weekend scheduled for Saturday/Sunday 11/12 August is still on the dates planned. This will be at the National Motorcycle Museum, near Birmingham. It will include a formal scrutineering session, so do try and have you car ready by then - as it's only a week or so before shipping date (see below), it will need to be!

Rally Numbers

We are planning to hand out rally number plates (metal) and door panels to all participants who attend the Briefing Day, to give you a chance to dress your vehicle in these, to help with your own pre-event publicity. Don't lose them - replacements will cost you £25 per item! These will be mailed to other participants immediately afterwards.

We would ideally like to include your actual rally number on your plates and panels in time for the Briefing Day, but we do not yet have everyone's vehicle particulars. As the numbers, especially for the Reliability Trial, are allocated according to the age, class and make of the car, we do need this information first. Can you please check the enclosed entry list - if your vehicle's make, model, year and other particulars are not shown, can you please forward these to us urgently, as soon as known?

If numbers are not available, plates and panels will be issued blank, and strong adhesive numbers will be supplied later.

Inca Trail Apparel

We will also be handing out your free apparel at Gaydon - an Inca Trail rugby shirt, sweatshirt and cap per crew member - or mailing these afterwards to those not attending. Please URGENTLY complete and return the attached form giving each crew member's size, or you will get the default size of L (large) for all items!

Additional examples of the above, and other Inca Trail merchandise, will be available for you to buy at cost. We will have samples and order forms at the Briefing Day.

Entry List

I attach a copy of the current list. Since our peak of 109 crews in early January, we have had a number of withdrawals. We therefore do now have a few spare spaces for both classic cars and 4x4s.

Crew Changeovers

The rules printed in the information letter of 21 September have been slightly amended.

Crew members other than the nominated First Driver may be changed during the event, as permitted by the Revised Regulations of 14 February 2001 (Articles 4.4 and A4.3). The following rules will apply to all crew changes, in both categories of the event:

(i) The full details of intended crew changeovers must be supplied to the organisers on the attached form. This form and the appropriate administrative fee must be received by the Organisers as quickly as possible, and at the latest by 31 August 2001

 

(ii) At the point of changeover, incoming crew members must sign on at the time and place stipulated, and outgoing crew members must sign off. No additional or overlap hotel accommodation will be booked by the Organisers - this is your responsibility

(iii) On the Reliability Trial, awards for performance over the whole event will not be made to crew members who do not cover the full route; they will however be eligible for awards for any part of the event which they do cover

(iv) All crew members on both events will receive a full set of apparel and other event items, including a copy of the souvenir book. We therefore need the size information for ALL crew members as soon as possible

(v) To cover these items and administrative costs, including the additional personal and medical insurance premium, a charge of £250 will be made for each new crew member replacing an existing crew member at a changeover. This must be paid at the time the changeover is notified to the Organisers, by 31 August 2001

(vi) In the case where an extra crew member (not replacing a previous one) joins the event, the normal entry fee (£5,000 plus £525 supplement - see above) will be payable; this may be reduced pro rata to the number of days applicable. We must be notified of this as soon as possible, to maximise the chance that the extra accommodation can be booked - this is NOT guaranteed

(vii) On the Reliability Trial, up to four crew changes per seat (apart from the First Driver) are now permitted. There is no restriction on the 4x4 Adventure Drive

We have been asked if the First Driver can be changed. Unfortunately we cannot permit this, as it is necessary for one person to have legal and fiscal responsibility for the vehicle throughout the event, and particularly at each frontier crossing, for customs purposes.

Latest Route and Timetable

I attach the updated Revised Route and Timetable Outline, which has just a few relatively minor changes and corrections from the 21 September version, mainly the new sections we found in November.

Revised Provisional Regulations

I attach revised editions of the Provisional Regulations for both the Reliability Trial and the 4x4 Adventure Drive. PLEASE READ THESE CAREFULLY. Some of the changes have already been mentioned in newsletters; others have not. There are no nasty surprises - I hope!

Air Travel

We have appointed Last Frontiers, a quality tour operator specialising in South America, as our agency for air travel bookings from the UK to Rio and back. Because of IATA and airline regulations, they cannot handle travel from other countries - if not flying from the UK, you should apply to your local travel agent.

Last Frontiers wrote to all UK based participants in January, offering air tickets at a good price, for which they were holding a large allocation of seats. Very few of these were taken up, though; and as the airlines were very hard-nosed and insisted that these seats had to be firmly booked, with no refund, by the end of January, most of these bulk allocations have now lapsed. Did YOU miss the boat (or plane)?

Last Frontiers can still book seats at a good rate - see attached revised leaflet - BUT no block booking of space is now being held specially for Inca Trail participants on either the outward or homeward journeys. Flights between London and Rio DO get very full well in advance, and there is no guarantee that you will be able to fly on the day of your choice (or at all) if you leave it too long.

If you want to book your ticket through Last Frontiers - contact them urgently. If you are booking your own air tickets, please let them or us know as soon as possible.

Shipping of Vehicles

A further information sheet from our shipping agents, AWF, will be available in the next week or so. This is based on the best information now available from the shipping lines, whose schedules for September/October and December are not yet published.

It is possible that vehicles may have to be delivered to the docks at Felixstowe by Monday 20 August, or earlier at Rotterdam. We strongly advise you to plan your preparation schedule around these deadlines.

Martin McDonald of AWF will be at the Briefing Day on 7 April to deal with your queries.

Shipping costs are not yet fully finalised and you are still advised to budget for a round trip cost of about £3,000 per vehicle.

Ferries and Excursions

Some of these are included in the entry fee, some will cost you extra. The latter will have to be booked in advance in most cases.

To clarify, the following are included in the entry fee:

• excursion to Machu Picchu, including train; bus to site; admission to site; and transfers

• ferry across Straits of Magellan (both ways)

• high speed ferry, Buenos Aires (Argentina) - Colonia del Sacramento (Uruguay)

The following are NOT included and must be paid at the normal rate at the time:

• all road and bridge tolls (frequent on main roads - only local currency accepted)
• National Park admission tolls
• short ferry crossings (Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, c US$4 per car; Guaratuba-Caiobá, Brazil,US$1.20 per car)

 The following are NOT included and must be booked before the Start; we will send you a form:

• light plane flight over Nasca Lines
• boat trip to Perito Moreno glacier
• whale watch boat trip, Valdés Peninsula

Single Room Supplements

Just a reminder that there is limited availability of single rooms in most of our overnight halts. The supplement for single rooms will be £5,500 per 2-person crew, or £2,750 per crew member.

This does not absolutely guarantee you a single room in every location. In the event of a shortage of rooms, our first priority is to ensure that everyone has a bed of some kind.

Where one crew member requests a single room, leaving the other crew member in a room on his/her own, the supplement is payable by both. Crew members are however free to team up with room-mates from other crews, for example to avoid a third crew member having to pay the supplement.

Please notify us URGENTLY if you require any single rooms. We may not be able to provide these if you leave it too late. First come, first served.

You MUST be in possession of a Carnet de Passages en Douane. The attached information sheet tells you all about it.

During the event, you MUST get this stamped by Customs on entry into and exit from each country, EVERY time - including arrival in and departure from Rio.

 Visas

UK and EU passport holders do not need visas for any of the countries visited, except Irish citizens in Bolivia. The attached sheet lists all other requirements - but do double check these, as we accept no responsibility for errors!

Insurance

T L Clowes, our brokers, have prepared the enclosed interim information sheet outlining the cover available to participants. A further, more detailed, sheet will be available in the next few weeks. Do please contact James Martin or Tom Ellis at TL Clowes, who will be delighted to discuss your personal requirements further. They will also be attending the April briefing day.

Medical Matters

Do please study the attached advice notes on Medical Matters. A full set of medical advice notes will be sent to you in June.

Personal and Vehicle Preparation

I attach a note about supplementary odometers, available at a discount from Brantz.

A detailed set of Information and Advice Notes is nearing completion, and will be sent to you in a couple of weeks. This will cover a wide range of topics such as route conditions, climate, clothing, money, food and drink, etc.

We are also revising HERO’s advice notes on Long Distance events, covering mainly vehicle preparation. These will be sent at the same time.

Team Entries

Have a look at the entry list for possible team mates, then use the attached list of telephone numbers to make contact.

4x4 crews can also make contact with other participants, for example those in the same type of vehicle to share the carriage of spare parts, or just to team up to run together.

The Charity Shield

Please see the attached Charity Shield entry form for more details.

Media Coverage and Sponsorship

It may help with your own sponsorship fund-raising to know that two of our participants are covering the event with associated TV camera crews. Carlton TV have commissioned Chris Denham of Denham Productions to make a series of six 30-minute programmes for showing on UK network television, and subsequently for international network and satellite syndication - you may have seen Chris’s recent series on London - Peking 2000.

Denham Productions will be producing the official Inca Trail video. As well as selling the standard edition, they are offering you the option to commission a personalised version focusing on your crew and vehicle’s progress. See the enclosed information sheet and booking form.

José Capristano of Portugal, a HERO regular known to many of you, will be making programmes mainly for the world’s Spanish and Portuguese speaking markets.

The Buick Motor Division of General Motors are entering a new model of 4x4, and are planning to undertake an extensive PR campaign around this in the USA. With the resources of GM behind it, this should produce some good results.

Malcolm McKay, doing the event in his Triumph TR2, will be sending reports to the Daily Telegraph and other UK press, while Mike Johnson will again be our official photographer covering the whole event - his superb photos are bound to be widely used, as ever.

The HERO website will carry updated daily bulletins of news, results and photos, and these will also be sent to other motoring webzines around the world, notably in the USA, and e-mailed to our extensive press circulation list.

We will be producing a printed programme of the event, for use in all the countries we pass through, and our website will contain a potted description of each entry, in both cases with photos.

For this, we need your help. Do please complete and return the attached Programme/Website Information Form as soon as you can. Many thanks.

Telecommunications

We are currently negotiating terms for a rental agreement with Vodafone UK and Globalstar to make satellite/GSM phones available for all Inca Trail participants. These phones will be able to provide standard GSM coverage where available, but will also double up as satellite handsets for those areas that are not in reception. We plan to test one of these handsets during a forthcoming route survey trip, and will let you know the standard of performance on our return.

Take your Own Mitzi on the 4x4 Adventure Drive

As you must be tired of hearing by now, we were very impressed with the performance and reliability on our 40,000 km route survey last year of Mitzi, our 4x4 Mitsubishi L-200 four-door 2.5 turbodiesel pickup. We have ordered six more as our main support vehicles, and I strongly recommend this as an ideal vehicle for the 4x4 Adventure Drive: quick, rugged, comfortable, super handling on rough roads, and great performance at altitude - with a good payload, too.

The Left Hand Drive Place are offering a special deal to Inca Trail participants for the supply of a vehicle identical to Mitzi. This can be delivered as it comes (registered and taxed in the UK), or (if you get it to him early enough - he'll be busy with ours, too) Tim 'Jingers' Riley can prepare it for you to the same specification as our own vehicles, complete with canopy, extra spare wheel and other essentials. Tim, of course, drove Mitzi for the first half of the Route Survey, and is therefore fully au fait with the vehicle, and with the conditions it will face. He too will be in a support car on the event.

Details of the LHD Place's offer is attached (for 4x4 participants only); or ring Peter, Maggie or Colin on (+44/0) 1256 461173, fax 811541. Jingers is at (+44/0) 1327 860960, fax 860655.

We all hope to see you on 7 April.

Yours sincerely

John Brown

Earlier Updates:

• September 2000