Road Fever

by Tim Cahill

  It is also a town where smuggling is not unheard of; where officials, remembering the lessons of 1877, are likely to look unfavorably upon foreigners with little good reason to be in the country. Even comparatively innocent persons, such as myself, have reason to be apprehensive if they have no visa.

  * * *

  AS WE TAXIED into the cargo terminal, I saw a ruined 707 off to the side of the runway. The on-board mechanic told me that the plane had come down on an incorrect runway, and sheared off part of a wing by plowing into a semi-truck. The Brazilians had simply towed the plane off the tarmac. It would never be airworthy again. There was a scaffold that was little more than a series of stepladders erected against the plane. The insides had been stripped. It was a metal shell slowly going to rust in the humid heat of the Amazon. It sat against a red mud bank, and over the years this shell of a plane would become the color of the Amazon mud. “I don’t think that’s real good for their tourist trade,” the pilot said.

  I went down into the cargo hold and looked at the truck. Workers were moving some gear. Two of them simply pushed the truck on its rollered pallet to a different position using mechanized rubber wheels. Moving the nine-thousand-pound truck seemed to cost them almost no effort at all. With the cargo in the hold and the cabin unpartitioned by compartments as passenger flights are, the interior of the plane looked huge. The pilot, a sandy-haired fellow who had come down to look at the truck, said, “Sorta like the Holland Tunnel in here, isn’t it?”

  I got into the truck and crouched down in the passenger seat. The pilot leaned into the window and stared at me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m afraid someone is going to ask me for my visa.”

  “You don’t have one?”

  “Not for Brazil.”

  “I don’t think you’ll have a problem.”

  “But I could have one, right?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “I’ll stay here.”

  “And hide?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then maybe it isn’t such a good idea for me to stand here talking to you. If you’re hiding.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s going to be hot.”

  A team of men moved the insecticide out of the plane. It would be used in those areas where the trees, the lungs of the planet, had been cleared. Slash, burn, then pour a 747 full of insecticide on that land so that the poisons can be washed down the river and flow out into the ocean, along with twenty percent of the freshwater on the face of the earth.

  After the drums of insecticide were off-loaded, electronic equipment manufactured in Manaus was stacked on pallets around the truck. Parts made in the United States or Japan were assembled here in the Amazon jungle and sold in Argentina.

  We, Garry and I, had decided against coming up through the Amazon. The road past Kilómetro 85 was now paved, but the rising cost of petroleum, a major component of asphalt, had defeated plans for paving many of the roads that crossed Brazil’s lowland jungles. Instead, we would drive that narrow strip of desert between the Andes and the Pacific. The Pan-American Highway.

  It was sweltering inside the plane, hotter still inside the truck, and the special racing seats were not made for slouching with the head below window level. I went through the papers in our document case to pass the time. There was a six-page letter Garry wrote to GMC entitled “Progress Report #5, Pan-American Challenge.” The letter was a report on our recces and conclusions, and formed the basis of our master plan. In essence, what the letter said was that we had decided to go all out, do the drive in under twenty-six days, forgo press conferences along the way, and change the look of the truck. The road through Brazil—the most scenic and difficult route—would be abandoned.

  Since my meeting with various associations in northern South America, [Garry wrote] I have been receiving warnings and signals to forget the transit of the Amazon area. Apparently, when the dry season is north of the Amazon, the wet season is in the southern area and vice versa. We have reports of one road of about 1,000 kms that takes up to ten days in the dry season. North of Manaus the road is not much better, so aside from the delays involved in taking the Brazil route, there would be very difficult terrain for the truck, coupled with virtually no service support for thousands of miles. In a nutshell, we are going to forget the Amazon route and stick to our original mandate of obtaining the best possible time for the record by heading up the west coast of South America.

  As for security, especially in regard to Central America, Garry wrote that

  we have heard of a number of cases where people have safely transited this area in recent months. However, I am concerned with the consequences of the many … guerrilla groups, etc., knowing our route. For this reason, and the very real threat of kidnapping or attack, I think we should consider a press blackout until we have at least reached Mexico City. There are other advantages in that if, for some reason, problems with the vehicle interfere with the success of the project, then GMC will not be out on a limb with a lot of advance publicity. Also, we will not be hampered with making a number of untimely stops for press conferences while en route through South and Central America. Essentially I feel we would be able to make the best possible time through the areas where there are few advantages and many disadvantages in gaining exposure.

  Garry wrote that we had learned of an unpublicized, self-financed drive from Prudhoe Bay to Tierra del Fuego in twenty-six days. “Although the forty-day time period had been discussed, this was in the event we took the Amazon basin route.” We would be shooting for twenty-five days or less. “With this approach to the project, there are a few changes to the project vehicle which would alter the image of the truck somewhat from an expedition vehicle to a very serious road machine.”

  Those recommendations were:

  Take [spare] tires from the roof and install inside box on each side behind wheel wells.

  Remove roof rack.

  Install one-hundred-gallon fuel cell which will increase range from about five hundred miles to over two thousand miles. Removal of the gear from the roof will also decrease fuel consumption.

  Place one bunk only in the pickup box running down the center as low as possible.

  Keep the truck as aerodynamic as possible.

  The results of this treatment, Garry wrote, “will considerably cut down on fuel stops, lower the center of gravity to substantially increase stability and handling, and produce a vehicle more in line with the ‘it’s not just a truck anymore’ slogan.”

  And then Garry went right ahead and told them what it was. “It’s an aerodynamic, one-ton, long-range, high-tech, head-turning, fuel-efficient, record-breaking, one hell of a road machine.”

  The public-relations plan was proceeding apace.

  I finalized an arrangement with Popular Mechanics magazine to do a feature story on the project. They will do their cover photography in Tierra del Fuego prior to departure and have a writer traveling with us for a few days.

  Tim Cahill has finalized a deal with Random House to publish the book on the project.

  Considering the proposed new strategy for the press, I feel we should be set to go with an on-the-fly press announcement when we hit Mexico City or Texas. I think we could possibly do press in Las Vegas or Los Angeles, then Calgary, Fairbanks, and possibly at the finish in Prudhoe Bay. We could also consider airfreighting the truck immediately from Fairbanks to either L.A. or Detroit for a final wrap-up.

  I think this new strategy is safer for the drive team and GMC, provides a more honest approach to our mission, and could be quite a bit more cost-effective to GMC. This new plan allows us to operate stripped of ancillary commitments until we reach the prime area for marketing the Sierra, all of which results in a more impressive, safer, tougher-to-beat world record.

  The paper was sticking to my fingers, which were damp with sweat. I had been slouching in that seat for more than two hours. It was very quiet in the cargo hold. The workers seemed to be gon
e. I glanced up into the side mirror and saw, in the distance, a man wearing a short-sleeved uniform shirt and carrying a clipboard. He was walking toward the truck. His face was bronze and he wore a thin black mustache: just the sort of man who might ask a stowaway for a visa. I slipped lower in my seat. All this thought poured into the project and here I was, hiding in what amounted to a Dutch oven. When I checked the side mirror again, all I could see were an enormous pair of sunglasses above a bunch of white letters that read:

  OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER

  THAN THEY APPEAR

  THE CITY OF

  FALCONS

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  September 21–26, 1987

  “WHAT DID HE SAY?” the pilot asked. We were airborne, flying south over the jungle, toward Buenos Aires.

  “I don’t understand Portuguese,” I said, embarrassed.

  “He didn’t speak English?”

  I had to admit that he did.

  “So?”

  “He asked me if it wasn’t hot in the truck.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I told him it was real hot in the truck.”

  “Ah.”

  Irregular regulations: it’s a pattern of frustration familiar to people who travel in South America. Someone who ought to know, someone like a cargo agent for Flying Tigers, tells you something—like you need a visa for a cargo stopover in Manaus—and the information turns out to be entirely incorrect. In Latin America, it is best to ask several different people familiar with important regulations what will be required. In general, you will get as many interpretations of the rules as you have informants. These conflicting bits of information are collated and considered until you arrive at a reasonable matrix of expectation. Formalities in South America are rather like IRS regulations in the United States: no one can know all the intricacies or keep up with all the changes, so that everyone is at risk. This puts the government in the catbird seat.

  Catbird regulations would be our biggest problem on the drive. We had done our best to butter the borders in thirteen different countries. It was possible that somewhere, at some blistering desert border point, our information would be wrong, incomplete, or simply out-of-date. It was daunting to think that, in such a situation, we would have to depend on charm.

  I THANKED THE PILOT, unhooked the military-style six-point harness, and went into the passenger cabin, where I put a frozen chicken entrée into the microwave oven. Later, I went to bed in the back of the first-class cabin. It was a three-layered-bunk affair. Soon enough—seventeen hours after leaving New York—we were in Buenos Aires.

  It was 12:30 A.M. Buenos Aires time, and the airport tarmac seemed virtually empty. We deplaned and watched the workers unload our truck. It was rolled to the cargo door on its pallet and loaded onto a device that looked a little bit like a construction crane. The truck swung out and swayed just in front of the growling Flying Tigers logo on the side of the 747. There were glaring lights and men shouting in Spanish.

  They wouldn’t let us stay with the truck. We insisted and were rebuffed. The Tigers people felt that the airport was safe enough. For Christ’s sake, just go clear immigration and customs. Get the truck out later.

  We were directed to an old red Ford Falcon. A man drove us to the main airport. Two men in blue work shirts were mopping a large empty expanse of floor. There were no commercial flights scheduled that night. The Falcon man took us to a door and indicated that we should knock. The Buenos Aires airport is bright, modern, efficient, but we had arrived at an off-peak time. The immigration official had been asleep. Nevertheless, he stamped our passports with good grace.

  We went to customs. No one was there except for a man of about sixty, who appeared to be of Italian origin. He was wearing a miracle-fiber suit that was shiny with wear, and when he saw our cameras he shook his head sadly. “Electronics are prohibited,” he said. We couldn’t go through.

  We found it difficult to believe that a country like Argentina, which has a large tourism industry, would ban cameras, and we mentioned this to the agent, offered it as an observation. The man noted that different countries have different laws. Yes, we said, that was certainly a fact that no one could deny and we absolutely had to agree with him there. It was strange, however, that when we had been to Argentina only a few months ago and had flown into this very airport, there had been no such prohibitions.

  We showed the man our letters of introduction from the Canadian government, from various officials in Argentina. We gave him a thick paper handout that described our trip. We showed him our passports. All were in order and very impressive, but it was his bitterly sad duty to inform us that we could not enter his beloved country with specifically prohibited electronic cameras. We were alone with the guy. There was no one around. Over the public-address system, very bad American-style Muzak—symphonic versions of Beatles songs, and at that particular moment, “My Love Is Blue”—were playing, loudly. It occurred to us that this guy might accept a bribe.

  The gentleman simply stood there, smiling with theatrical helplessness and shaking his head sadly. He was relatively short, about five five, round, and gray. He had a great W. C. Fields honker of a beak wondrously corrugated by hundreds of tiny flesh-colored wartlike protuberances and striated by branching rivers of veins. I gathered the gentleman enjoyed an alcoholic beverage now and again.

  We pretended not to understand. Garry dug out a Canadian-flag lapel pin. We had purchased several hundred of these for just this sort of situation. The high-quality pins—we also had a bag of pins that were exact replicas of our truck—could be used as gifts. We liked the idea of gifts rather than bribes: pin money.

  Garry had used the system on previous trips and was of the opinion that every single human being on earth wants a lapel pin.

  The man examined the metal maple leaf for some time, then asked if it was something that he could wear in the lapel of his suit. We assured him that it was. This seemed to delight the fellow and he asked if we had any more. Garry gave him about thirty. The customs official said that he really sympathized with our plight, that he wished us the best of luck on our Pan-American endeavor, and that—here he put his finger to his lips—if we did not tell anyone, he would let us pass.

  The transaction had taken just over an hour. I had a vision of this gentleman in a Buenos Aires café, sitting there with his shiny suit and glowing nose, proudly wearing his maple-leaf lapel pin as if to say, “Look at me, I’m a real dickweed.”

  And so we emerged into the main terminal of the Buenos Aires Ezeiza airport which was, at two-thirty in the morning, completely empty except for one sleepy soldier. We had been told to wait in the “international hold” and had no idea where that might be. The soldier said we couldn’t go back and look for the truck. We stood there for some time, with our bags, wondering what to do. I asked the soldier for some information, explained the project, and told him that I was an international rally driver, which seemed to impress him. He took me to his commanding officer, who was in an office not far away.

  We found out that the truck could not be picked up until the next morning at eight. We had reservations at the Sheraton and decided to go there. Somehow.

  Outside it was forty-five degrees and dark. There were perhaps twenty cars parked in the large lot in front of the international terminal. I found a Falcon parked along the curb and saw a man sleeping in the backseat with an overcoat over him. I knocked on the window. “Taxi?” Yeah, he said, I’m a taxi. He’d take us to the Sheraton. And so we left the beautiful Buenos Aires International Airport via the wide and well-lit freeway. The freeway, in fact, is so well lit that thrifty Argentines often drive it with their lights off.

  We checked into the Sheraton and Garry said he wondered if we were going to have problems getting the truck out of customs. In New York, he had told Flying Tigers that the truck was worth $50,000. It was a self-declared amount, for the purposes of the flight airbill. The problem was that the carnet stated the truck was wo
rth $25,000. Would we have trouble tomorrow with that discrepancy? The worst-case scenario was that we might have to post a $25,000 bond. Garry was worried.

  We had not completed all the work on our visas as well. I needed extensions on Panama, Guatemala, and Honduras, and a visa for Costa Rica. We also needed to check on our “drive-in” status in Ecuador and Nicaragua.

  Tomorrow, I would work on the visas and permits. Garry would attempt to get the truck out of customs.

  AT NINE-THIRTY the next morning Garry called GM Argentina. Duilio DiBella, the executive who was to be our contact, a man we had talked with for some time on our last trip, was not in. Garry was referred to Raul O. Capuano, who was, in fact, the former director-general of the company until his retirement. Sr. Capuano was a gentleman in his sixties, wearing a tastefully muted glen-plaid suit. DiBella, who was out of town, had asked Raul to help us arid he accompanied Garry to the airport to get the truck.

  They walked into a long hallway, which was about the length of a football field and which was filled with agitated men dressed in a kind of unofficial uniform of black slacks and leather jackets. The customs agents all carried briefcases and they gathered at tiny open portholes in the wall. Behind the portholes, there were men sitting at desks—perhaps one hundred men and fifty desks—and in that room all was pandemonium: the New York stock exchange conducted in panic Spanish. The customs agents shouted through the portholes at the men milling around on the other side. Behind the desks were goods that had come in by air, and the men were in the process of claiming them.