11 Jan 2017, day 15 - Salta - Chilecito - cancelled stage
Argentina/Salta - Chilecito
It was supposed to be 977 km, 406 of them competitive.
Since not everybody used the rest day honestly to prep their car and not everybody even made it to the bivouac in Salta, the following stage was cancelled completely. So all that awaited us was an endless liaison of almost a thousand kilometres to Chilecito.
Luckily we managed to make it very pleasant for ourselves.
We had several thousand kilometres of empty, dry Bolivia behind us, where the huts are made of mud and the people are short, burnt red-black and the women are ugly. But south of Salta the Argentinian landscape changed unbelievably. We drove through a pass in red rocks and on the right a green (gorgeously green!) valley opened up with a river meandering through it. Then vineyards appeared on both sides, brick houses painted white and, wonder of wonders, white, blonde, tall inhabitants! As if we had suddenly ended up in the hills above Munich!
We enjoyed the beautiful landscape and the bends, raced the fastest cars from the competitor field (on liaisons they have their limiter set to 80 kph, I think :-) ) and pondered what to do about lunch. Sure, we get packets of dry food from the organisers, but just try saying no to lunch at a vineyard near Munich when you've just spent a week in the desert!
The choice fell on Bodega El Esteco, https://g.page/elesteco?share. A gorgeous vineyard, a stone building, a luxury little hotel with a restaurant inside it, Argentinian steak, Argentinian red. We were running behind, but we still spent two hours there. A clean toilet, top-notch service, a pool with a half-naked beauty, an English lawn, llamas everywhere as decoration (live ones!).
The waiter got me thinking about why there are nothing but Aryans here. He was short and dark, but he had bright blue eyes, which looked bizarre in that typically Hispanic body. I imagined the Aryan hotel owner getting it on with the native cleaning lady, and there you go, a blue-eyed Hispanic :-).
Where was it that all the fascists ran off to at the end of World War Two? Well of course, Argentina! They found a place here that reminded them of the Munich mountains, set up vineyards with Jewish gold and they're happily prospering here!
(quite a while later I looked into this theory and found out that while this region is indeed predominantly German, it's from a wave of migration sometime in the 18th century)
Over lunch we drank at least 2 bottles of wine and managed to make friends with the crew sitting next to us, that of Peter Versluis, who is fighting for the top places with his MANs. He owns a huge shipyard in Holland and bought the whole racing team from MAN. He'll show up again :-).
After lunch only Ji\u0159\u00edk could drive, as he'd held back. He went for a smoke and Adam and I dived into the wine shop. We did a tasting with the girl there and liked it so much that we each left with three cases of wine. Hopefully they'll fit in the truck and we'll bring home a proper Argentinian souvenir. That wine was seriously luxurious!
12 Jan 2017 - day 16 \u2013 Stage 10
Chilecito - San Juan
751 km, 449 of them competitive.
We arrived at some photo point announced by the organisers, which was also one of the checkpoints. There were a million people there and insane heat. We didn't even feel like getting out of the car. In the end we set off and walked up the route against the direction of travel. Cars were still coming through, it was clear the first trucks would show up any minute. Not a single interesting spot for photos anywhere, just a long straight dusty track\u2026
But after a while word came from somebody that there's a water crossing a bit further upstream! That got my blood pumping, because I still don't have a good shot of a water crossing where those 8 tonnes spray water in all directions like a grenade.
It wasn't really a proper crossing, more like a tiny stream across the track. But the locals are inventive and dammed the stream, so a nice little lake formed on the track :-). So I walk around it, study it, look for a good angle, and exactly at the moment when I'm standing right in the lake with my feet in it, Mates and Franti\u0161ek come flying in and blast through the lake flat out. I reacted quickly and got a series of action shots out of it, but Mates moved half of that lake onto my head and the rest into my camera. For a moment I thought it was my last series of photos, but both the body and the lens survived and still work to this day.
13 Jan 2017 \u2013 day 17 - Stage 11 \u2013 fireworks
Argentina San Juan Argentina R\u00edo Cuarto
754 km, of which 288 competitive.
The only interesting experience from this stage is a corner with fesh-fesh. Fesh-fesh is unbelievably fine sand, much finer than plain flour. From a distance it can look like a solid road, but up close a truck sinks into it and not even another truck will pull it out.
We stopped at a spot where the route crosses the road and set off on foot against the direction of travel. At one spot there was a local guy who kept telling us it's great here. Well, I don't know, I couldn't see anything. Flat ground, the odd bush, a slight bend. It only dawned on me when the first buggy arrived. That bend was full of fesh-fesh! So the passing buggy instantly threw up a hellish wall of red dust into the air that made gorgeous shapes. Every next car dug the outer line of the corner even deeper and the amount of fesh-fesh grew. When the trucks started coming through, it was absolutely magnificent. See the photos, which pro photographers were still talking about a year later, when we came through here again and the pros were asking me for the GPS coordinates of that exact spot.
Peter Versluis, known as Fofr\u0161lus, even declared my photo of his truck the best of that year's edition on his Facebook profile. He was going so late by then that his red MAN is at an absolutely unbelievable lean angle! It looked like it was going to roll over, so afterwards we cleared out of that area too.
Interesting
14 Jan 2017 \u2013 day 18 \u2013 Finish and podium
R\u00edo Cuarto - Buenos Aires
786 km, of which a mere 64 competitive on a small loop around Rio Cuarto.
The last stage was already only very symbolic. 64 km on flat roads around the town, with no chance to overtake, photographically uninteresting. Except for the finish!
We expected emotions at the finish. And sure enough, but completely different ones! When the Liaz arrived, they were sorting out handing the card over to the organisers. At which point Fofr\u0161lus comes tearing in at a crazy speed and rams it, obviously on purpose, into the side of Mates's cab! A really threatening nudge, accompanied by shouting and swearing.
Then they both drove through the finish area, both crews jumped out onto the ground and set off for what looked like a straight-up fistfight. And right between them, me, up close with a camera and a wide-angle. I was a bit scared I'd catch one too, but reporting is reporting, whether they're shooting or not :-).
I think the photos speak for themselves.
The thing was that Fofr\u0161lus wanted to win at least one stage at any cost. Maybe he already knew he was riding for the last time and so he wanted at least one little medal, even though overall he was about 13th. And to win, he would have had to overtake several trucks. And Mates decided not to let him past in that narrow corridor, even though Fofr\u0161lus was honking at him with the sentinel\u2026
The rest of the day was endless boredom. The transfer to Buenos Aires, 786 km in full traffic. An unpleasant change after all that driving across empty plains off-road.
In the evening the podium, the same farce as at the start, but this time in finishing order. The trucks' turn didn't come until around midnight. Mates tenth place, which, given that he's still by far the youngest among the truck drivers, is a great result. And it'll get better :-).
Finally one last ceremonial devouring of Argentinian steaks in a famous restaurant, a tired flight home and a press conference a few days later.
And then it's already looking forward to the next Dakar and summer training in the Sahara :-).
