London to Mexico Rally 1995
When the Bentley Continental was conceived and given that name it was obviously envisaged as a means of luxurious, reliable, fast transport in which to cross the English Channel for Continental Europe and probably with no further destination in mind than Cannes or Interlaken. We had no such ideas when we bought Hero, our 1955 Bentley Sl Continental but since owning it we have twice driven it to Continental Asia and to North Africa so when the chance to go onto another Continent, the Continent of South America emerged, we found it irresistible.
The London to Mexico Rally was going to be severe by our standards of ‘continental’ motoring as we are not rallyists, but more so, we are not competitive rallyists, merely seeking a lengthy holiday of endless driving in foreign lands with a touch of adventure and the fascination of historic roads. There would be eighteen countries to drive through; amounting to 10,460 miles which would result in an average of 418 miles per driving day. We would lose a total of five days from our overall thirty, with two days for the passages from Lisbon to Sao Paulo, Cartegena to Colon and one day off in La Paz.
A severe rally means more than rough roads, high mountains, hot deserts and long days. We knew at the outset that this rally would be to International FIVA regulations and besides being highly competitive it would be restrictive. Firstly we had to obtain International rally licenses, then the car had to be fitted with a full RAC roll-over cage, a plumbed in fire extinguisher, 4 point seat harnesses and the fire-wall had to have any holes blocked up so as to stop flames, fuel or gases entering the cabin. During each Special Stage we would both have to wear approved racing helmets which would be quite a chore, especially in the heat. The major concern though, involved being prevented from continuing with the rally at any point along it, as the rules clearly stated that unless we did a minimum of one Special Stage every two days or failed to depart within 30 minutes of our mornings’ start time we would be excluded.
With these fears we were to receive another shock just before departure at The Ramada Hotel, Heathrow. In the auditorium of that hotel, after outlining with military precision the way the rally would run, Nick Brittan introduced his staff and the two service crews driving the AA patrol vehicles. He went onto say that the London to Sydney Rally competitors had abused those AA services and that as a consequence the London to Mexico Rally would restrict the time spent on the road by the patrol vehicle to a maximum of 15 minutes per vehicle and additionally that they would not make themselves available during the overnight stops at the hotels. We were now confronted with the realisation that we must repair our own car or get assistance locally, quite a contrast to the two long Asian rallies we had undertaken where we were followed by a mobile workshop that could weld, turn or fabricate anything, anywhere and at anytime. And so it was with a little anxiety that we departed on a grizzly morning following an unknown route involving two Special Stages bound for Portsmouth.
We would be driving 10,000 miles to Acapulco in Mexico without a map but following a Road Book giving precise instructions to turn left or right at so many kilometres or fractions thereof. The first Special Stage was held in a boggy wood in the Earl of Pembroke’s estate at Wilton House, and we crept cautiously round slithering our way until it was over before heading for Portsmouth. We had done the minimum of the one Special Stage within our first two days and all was well. Meanwhile the blue fin-tailed Mercedes had leapt up and demolished both a tree and its nearside front wing, an Australian Datsun had smashed its rear shock absorbers from their mountings, and the Mexican entered Porsche had spun through 360° slowing him down forever more.
The sea crossing was calm and the garbled radio announcement at 6.30 the next morning had us panicking that we had overslept, but all was well until we had departed the hold and queuing up to go through Customs we discovered our first flat tyre. Like a bad omen we had heard the smash of glass as we had arrived at the Ramada two days previously; it was our headlamp glass which had dropped out and went straight under the front left wheel, a shard of which had obviously penetrated our reliable American 235 x 75 x 15 Michelin tyres. However, it was one of only two punctures which we were to receive during the entire journey despite enduring some of the worst roads any modern motorist can imagine.
The drive down through France following the Road Book was wonderful making little use of major roads and none whatsoever of the autoroute but we were beginning to get a taste of the pace of the event. With the weather improving as we headed south and Hero going so well, we were beginning to relax and enjoy the camaraderie that these big events always bestow. Spain was even better with untroubled fast motoring under a hot sun along good country roads, which for the most part were deserted, and then came Portugal.
It was our first venture into Portugal and the Special Stages chosen were part of the route, the road being temporarily closed to other users, leaving us no option but to do them; they were difficult. In the Portuguese mountains of red sandstone, the first SS gave us a real taste of what was to come in South America. The rough, bumpy narrow mountain roads with frighteningly acute uphill hairpins sometimes called for a three point turn with our long low slung car. Often we were dragging the exhaust pipe or over-riders as we swirled up through blinding ginger dust, or could hear the pelter of rocks and stones hitting the underfloor. Even the road surfaces of the ordinary Portuguese country roads were rough on the chassis pounding the suspension and jarring us.
It now seemed that we had been away for a month but it was only 4 days and we were soon boarding the Antonov bound for Sao Paulo. Into the cavernous bellies of these huge Russian planes our 66 cars would be driven to be disgorged some 9 hours later.
From the grey skies of the Atlantic-rain-swept city of Lisbon we awoke after a smooth flight to the sub-tropical splendour of Sao Paulo airport with its cloudless blue sky. Soon we were driven by coach to the commercial airport where Hero was waiting under the wing of one of the Antonovs for the 60-mile drive down into the congested city of Sao Paulo.
A taste of real heat had had the Mustangs boiling already and the Ford Escorts with their developed engines were popping and banging while A Mustang Convertible had caught fire and it was looking uncertain as to whether it could continue with the rally.
The underground car park giving one night’s home to all our hot cars was humid to such an extent that the windscreen could be nicely cleaned with dry newspaper and even after several hours the radiators remained hot.
We were in South America and everything around and about us told us so. The hotel, with average quality rooms, had a good open restaurant with views over a river and was in a very hilly part of town. In the humidity and all the hustle and bustle there was the real feeling that we had started our adventure and the next mornings departure out of a gateway thronged by cameramen and local enthusiasts set us off on our journey to Londrina, to the Interior and very soon to Argentina and Paraguay.
The Brazilian roads were good, comparable in every way to any good continental autoroute but evidence that we were travelling in a huge country was immediately apparent as the central reservation was a grass paddock, equivalent in width to the length of a football pitch. The petrol stations which though regular were primitive having only two or three pumps with only one of them selling petrol of a very low quality, the other would either sell diesel or a concoction brewed up from sugar cane.
That long, high quality Brazilian road undulated through a green landscape which was intensively farmed and occasionally one caught a glimpse through that green mantle of a blood red soil beneath. There were two Special Stages and we were to drive on that red surface which was soft and soon whirled up under the wheels creating red ‘smoke’ that hung around and made the tight bends through the high sugar cane very dangerous. Five cars were lost on these stages today including the car of the organiser’s wife, Jenny Brittan, who also suffered five broken ribs, fellow BDC member Tony Moy co driving with Roger Clark in the Rally Mexico Escort, and Paul and Mary Kane whose Porsche 911 had featured on the Blue Peter television programme alongside Hero. We therefore avoided the second Stage which would be highly dangerous since dusk was falling and dirt roads driven fast can be treacherous, and found our own way into Londrina, though not without the help of a local taxi driver carrying a fare, who I am sure went out of his way just for the fun of it.
Arising early the next morning it was good to see the indefatigable Alberto Hodari’s Mustang parked outside. He had bought a complete new transmission from the engine backwards and had had this fitted to his Convertible, and then driven all night so as to be in the rally – good spirit and such Terry Thomas manoeuvrings would keep him running through to the end despite daily troubles.
Looking at the state of the cars parked before the departure to Asuncion in Paraguay, we were beginning to feel quite concerned as so many were battered or leaning with broken suspension that one wondered how they would ever finish. The first Stage was just outside of Londrina and ran through a coffee plantation, the start of which was picturesque with its dilapidated farm buildings and families of bantams scooting about on the red earth, and white doves nesting in the damaged rafters above under a hot blue sky. We took it slowly down these rough undulating tree-lined dirt lanes of rural Brazil though we were always glad when we saw the finishing flag as it meant we had survived without damage and could relax from the perils which these scenic farm roads ensured were ever-present.
As it was going to be a long day and we had done our SS we decided that we would take a steady and relaxing drive straight to Asuncion, but on the way to the Brazil/Paraguay frontier we came upon Bill and Eileen in the Chrysler 77 which had broken an axle tie rod and, then a little later, Alberto who had hit something which was going to become very familiar from now on – a tope. These topes or sleeping policemen were going to become the curse of travelling through South America. They are not the gentle curvaceous thing found in Europe, but rather an aggressive piece of reinforced concrete of angular construction going across the entire road and repeated sometimes up to four times. They are painted to be visible, though often as not they are the same colour as the road and therefore invisible. We later accounted for three at about 50mph, and could never believe that the car was functioning after flying through the air and crash-landing. Alberto had hit this one doing 60mph and had done some damage to the Mustangs front suspension and slithered off to a local garage practised in the art of straightening out the damage done by these topes. These fortifications are across the entrance to garages, hotels and every bridge and very annoyingly they are sometimes unsigned, but they do slow down those cowboy lorries.
Arriving at the border we found it heavily congested and Hero’s temperature gauge was soon reading 90°C as we jostled in a column of traffic six cars wide all trying to squeeze their way to the frontier. It was all good-natured stuff with no aggression though with plenty of nudging and bluffing. I badly ‘cut-up’ a small van which was coming along our inside but he was not at all put-out and put his wheels up onto the banking to overtake us at an angle of about 45° only to say, when he got level with our window that he loved our car and just wanted to be near it. We gave him a photograph of Hero and were very soon through onto the dangerous road that runs from the east to the west of Paraguay.
If you imagine a very dangerous helter-skelter that runs 230 miles, you have some idea of what it was like driving from the border to Asuncion. Probably because of the name we had associated Paraguay with Paradise but there was little evidence of a tropical rain-forest paradise for us. Instead it was a congested highly populated land with intensive farming and ugly development while the road was under the control of bullying cavalier bus drivers who took unparalleled risks with their powerful Chevrolet buses; whatever momentum they had lost on the up-hill, they more than doubled up going down hill. We clocked these buses doing more than 85mph despite being overloaded and stacked high with luggage on their roof racks. Between the lorries and the bus drivers we knew that we had to be into Asuncion, or at least its outskirts, before dark. To make matters worse the radiant blue skies of Brazil had left us at the border and we were now travelling under a leaden canopy that threatened heavy rain and reduced visibility alarmingly. We were buzzed as we came into Asuncion by Mikkola driving his Av-gas fuelled Escort; it was like a Spitfire weaving and ducking through the traffic around a lumbering Lancaster. He is a driver of great precision. Asuncion was chaos itself with no clear-cut sense of direction to the city, bad lighting, narrow roads and manholes minus their grids. All this coupled with the Paraguayan fatalistic way of driving had us feeling exhausted on arrival at the hotel in an inky blackness. We were never to see much of Asuncion having arrived in the dark and having to depart for Argentina the following morning in the same pitch black of pre-dawn.
Now this was it, this was to be the big day and mercifully there would be no Special Stages. Asuncion to Ju Juy was given in the Road Book as 775 miles and with the first car out at 6.01am we departed at 6.27am on half minute intervals driving through the deserted streets and suburbs avoiding the open manholes, though occasionally coming up a little too fast on a tope. As dawn broke, we were going well, through the marsh land that is the border between Paraguay and Argentina, where on arrival at Customs we had a two hour delay caused by a totally confusing nonsense of form filling.
Having escaped from the border and the usual awful roads that lead to it on both sides, we were now travelling across the big flat grasslands of Argentina known as The Pampas, and mercifully we were under that travellers friend – a big untroubled blue sky. The road stretched out before us narrowing down to a pinpoint in the horizon. The black tarmac was billiard table smooth and with the sun behind us, we headed directly west ahead of it with our sunroof open and the cooling slipstream blowing through all our open windows. This was it, not the terrifying congestion of Paraguay under dull leaden skies but the open endless untroubled road which reminded us so much of the roads in Central Asia, the freedom and the adventure.
Petrol stations, though not frequent, were of a higher quality than Brazil and stopping at the first one for refreshments as well as a refuel, we found the Halls’ Volvo over a pit and David emerging like an agile, though heavily greased, monkey; they had gearbox trouble. Not only had the second and third gears disintegrated but the gear lever had also snapped off in his hands, added to which they had broken the Panhard rod, which locates the rear axle, and in doing so destroyed two tyres. There was a long way to go and with the temperature at 33.2°C at11.30am we did not envy their position, though both David and Jackie were, as ever, cheerful if not ebullient.
The wonderful scenes of morning and midday continued until early dusk when with the faltering light came our first realisation that we were in for a sixteen-hour day, the road was starting to break-up. With most of the ‘herd’ having blasted away earlier than us we were, as would be usual for this trip, about the last to be travelling up the road through nightfall lto Ju Juy. At first, we found we were suddenly upon a short stretch of potholes, the first of which almost threw us off the road and accordingly we reduced our speed to a manageable 50mph but the sections of potholes became more frequent and simultaneously the quality of the potholes deteriorated whilst the quantity increased so badly that our speed came down to 5mph. These potholes were not isolated units of two or three but whole sections of road lasting for a half-mile or more with holes that could swallow a wheel to its hub. The first sign that potholes were going to be bad ahead was given by heavy skid-marks, presumably from the fast Mustangs which had been caught-out travelling at their customary 90mph only to realise too late that even they would not be able to glide across the surface of this minefield.
That eerie light which descends just before the blackness creeps in was accompanied with the arrival of a dirt road made up from white chalk, which tricked us into thinking that it was not really so late or so dark. Even creeping along this dirt road we were sending up white contrails of talcum powder which remained suspended in the atmosphere on this windless plateau awaiting later road users. Behind us we knew that we had Alberto in the open Mustang, Bill and Eileen in the old Chrysler and maybe the Halls in their damaged Volvo. We also knew that the AA patrol vans were well ahead and probably sinking cold beers at the bar in Ju Juy.
Along this long dirt road we occasionally came up against a lorry with its trailer which would be picking its way trying to find the best surface, or a happy peasant sitting on his donkey apparently unaffected by all the dust thrown up, and frequently a group of young bare-footed children playing seemingly oblivious by the choking dust in the dirt in front of a shack with open doors and windows. The dusk wore on into night very rapidly and after about 90 miles of dreadful road we came upon an old hard-top road which even though it was cratered and cracked, and liberally patched jarring every bone in our bodies, we preferred to that chalk road on which we had occasionally come close to being stuck. Around about 9.30pm this little pock-marked road abruptly came to a junction where we turned right onto a new arterial of such high quality that we were soon buzzing along on our way to our hotel at speeds exceeding 90mph; such a reward after those horrible conditions over the last 5 hours that we almost preferred it to bed.
San Salvador de Ju Juy was our first real taste of Argentina, somewhere we would meet Argentineans for, though we had just put in about 800 miles, we had not spoken to anybody save the petrol pump attendant, nor seen anything but flat grassland and tiny shacks, so we were full of expectation as to how we would be received. The City’s central market had been boarded off forming a corral to receive us and afford the cars some security for the night. The press of people at the entrance was bewildering after such a long drive and the announcement over a very loud PA system of our arrival had our eardrums rattling against the accumulated dust we had picked up in trying to get there. Dog-tired we were quickly escorted to our hotel by local car club enthusiasts who were quick to point out the wonderful differences between the Argentineans and the Brazilians and they were right, for we were never again to feel under threat in Spanish America.
We were up early at Ju Juy but with a drip of crimson fluid from the power-steering box having stained the soil of our car park overnight and Bill’s Chrysler having fractured its radiator header-tank pipe, we sought and received enthusiastic local assistance prolonging our departure to Potosi, Bolivia until 11.30am.
The Andean foothills’ road soon lost its black top and we were churning up white dust under a deep blue South American sky. It was hot and as we stopped to help repair Bill’s electric radiator fan, Eileen announced that she had mistakenly had a swig of diarrhoea mixture instead of nose bleed mixture in the confusion of our sudden ascent to altitude. I weakened Hero’s SU carbs by three and a half turns and the power was dramatically restored, Bill doing the same to the Chrysler, allowing us both to whirl along the mountain dirt-road at speeds of up to 50mph. It was a long and dusty drive as we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and on to the border with Bolivia where we found the passage easy but wasted time in the little supporting town trying to change money. Like Sao Paulo, and Argentina, the Bolivians had none of their own currency available though they would accept grudgingly US dollars.
Venturing out of the little town by early evening there started an epic Bolivian journey through a Wagnerian landscape of unmatchable natural beauty and colour. Through canyons rose-red alternating with amber, past oases of verdant green giving settlement to low mud huts under thatched roofs, and across fords of crystal clear icy water, the rough and narrow mountain road, rock strewn, gave us a journey which recreated pioneering motoring at its best.
The majesty of this Bolivian Andean landscape was slowly drained of its colours and soon dusk lost the fight to night. In the swirling mists of dust which Hero’s wheels flung up, Bill and Eileen’s period Chrysler with its barley-sugar headlamps, disappeared and re-emerged as the mountain road both undulated and snaked its way towards the high Andean mountain town of Potosi. There was no anxiety now about over-heating, as the temperature in this desiccated mountain land was plummeting, but there was great concern over fuel as we were in one of the remotest parts that we were likely to find on this rally and Bill’s Chrysler was consuming fuel at twice the rate of Hero’s consumption but fortuitously he was carrying two jerry cans which he would need to see him through.
The town of Potosi, with a little string of weak blue street lamps announced itself tantalisingly at 2 o’clock in the morning, but such is the way of mountain roads that the next 30minutes, seemingly an eternity, would serve to deny us access as we wound slowly down towards it.
Potosi, a former silver mining town of immense wealth and Spanish Colonial architectural fascination, stands at 13,000ft putting it higher than Lhasa, and like that city its inhabitants wander round the cold cobblestone streets throughout the night keeping their lungs pumping with the aid of that stimulant which Bill and Eileen had found so vital in anaesthetising themselves against the road and their open Chrysler throughout that long night: a wad of coca leaves jammed between jowl and gum and sucked on.
The single-storey terraced hotel, The Liberator, along a cobbled alley looked bleak but received us without fuss or surprise, showing us to a comfortable room up a dry and creaking wooden staircase where we found clean beds and there, despite the thin air we gave up the fight for consciousness and succumbed to our first night in Bolivia – wonderful.
Sleeping at altitude can be difficult and the next morning we met others stumbling about for breakfast describing their conditions varying from having iron tourniquets around their head to having been kicked in the stomach by a wild bull, we for our part had taken the good advice from the Argentineans in JuJuy who had told us to eat little or, better, nothing, but drink water until we were used to the lack of oxygen.
With two empty tanks we refuelled Hero and were aghast at the expense of nearly $5 per US gallon but had to consider that it was high grade fuel that had been specially brought up into the mountains for us, and with little ceremony we soon departed this exotic time-warp Spanish city in the drab early light of a cold morning peppered with the odd shower.
Carrying the anxieties of yesterday we setoff climbing higher on what turned out to be a well kept road with only occasional sections that were unmetalled. The sun soon broke through and the road was as perfect as any travelling motorist could wish for winding its way down through valleys and up through mountain passes which were watched over by Andean Indian women shepherds guarding their flocks of llama. They threatened us with a stoning if we attempted to photograph them, but it was all good-natured and they invariably gave us a smile when we desisted. This was one of our great days. We were in the High Andes, in Bolivia and on our way to La Paz with a healthy car and the prospect of some 6,480miles still to accomplish.
Travelling on top of the world in this under populated, fascinating and wild country, we stopped in a little rough village to buy gear oil for our one-shot lubrication system from an oil shop which, though small, was crammed with every type of oil. None had a recognisable brand, so we bought a gallon of kingfisher blue 90-grade rear axle oil, which was drawn from a 50-gallon drum and looked good enough to drink. This was put into a plastic container of good quality, and charged at $10 US. The little Bolivian shops, a bread shop, a coffee shop, a pots and pans shop, made up these ramshackle villages and had a charm which befitted our mood and provided us with an interesting break on the long journeys.
Our arrival in La Paz, which stands at12,000ft above sea level, making it the world’s highest capital, was impressive and thankfully we had arrived well before darkness despite our dawdling and shopping. The skyscape over a great plain, the Alto Plano, to our left was being pounded in the middle distance by a heavy storm occasionally blotting out the distant vista of mountains which ran up from the south and round to the west meeting the twinkling snow capped Cordillera Real which reached up 21,000ft into the clear blue Andean sky. This created an amphitheatre-like setting to an already lofty capital. In spectacular fashion the city is built up onto these mountainsides with houses terraced in a bewildering variety of styles, sizes and colours.
We were met just before the entrance to the city by members of the local car club driving a Nissan Patrol who beckoned us to stay close to them whereupon they raced off with headlights and flashers blazing into the busy maelstrom of lorries and 4-wheel drive vehicles which seem to charge around the city for no good reason; we clung as tightly as possible to their rear. This was an excellent service as the geography and topography of La Paz requires tenacious driving which inhabitants of San Francisco and Hong Kong Island can only begin to imagine.
Safely parked outside the hotel in a cordoned off street we were reminded of the failed coup which Bolivia had just undergone. The army was everywhere and it is remarkable how those little soldiers can manage to carry such heavy American-made machine guns which look so incongruous on men of small stature.
The following morning whilst attempting to clean up Hero, a pleasant young man with impeccable English volunteered his home as a place where we could carry out a service. We had the oil and filter but felt very worried about spilling the old black oil as we removed the filter bowl – always a difficult job on an Sl. He quietly assured us that he had all the facilities, and presently we were arriving in a leafy expensive quarter of La Paz whereafter throwing open big rusty sheet steel gates he beckoned me to drive into what was the bottom of a rear garden. The facilities promised were indeed available with a pit and a ramp and a willing, smartly turned out servant. After meeting his grandfather, father and mother we were invited to lunch after the work was completed.
Fernando’s grandfather had been the importer for British Leyland vehicles and his father was the Consulate General for Honduras while Fernando was an American Embassy official. They could trace their family tree directly back to the Inca chiefs, prior to the Spanish invasion. We all had one thing in common: a love of old motor cars and particularly Bentleys. They were great admirers of the marque and had never seen a Bentley Continental in Bolivia, the British Ambassador’s Daimler being the nearest to a car of tradition and elegance. Hero having had a good service, a wash and a thorough vacuum cleaning was escorted back to the hotel in the early afternoon after we had had a super and entertaining lunch. Fernando’s father, in shaking hands goodbye, was to warn me of the perilous road between Puno and Arequipa, Peru, but first we would have to get to Puno which would involve crossing Lake Titicaca.
Departure from La Paz to Peru involved leaving the city along specially cordoned off streets with waving crowds and thousands of armed soldiers spread out over the route at each junction. We had mounted our Union Jack for the occasion and the Bolivians shouted and waved creating a carnival atmosphere; we were really sad to be departing this wonderful city so quickly.
Lake Titicaca, at 12,500ft and covering 3,200sq miles is another one of those essential wonders for the travelling motorist. Here we boarded brightly painted, rather ramshackle looking, though no doubt efficient, two car capacity ferryboats, and chugged unceremoniously and rather lazily across crystal clear water to the other side where we would start our Special Stage. The Stage was on drumming uneven cobbles which soon gave way to a well-rolled tarmac following the shoreline of the lake to our hotel which was very nearly Paradise and we three, Sue, I and Hero, could easily have rested for a few days as tomorrow would be another 350 miles of the hardest driving we would experience on this rally. The Peruvians had made us very welcome, allowing us to waft through the frontier unchecked and with no ceremony. The completion of paperwork would take place at our hotel the following morning; very civilised.
‘The road we are using is the only practicable way across the Andes and a lot of it is not good’ – so started our Road Book for day 14. The road to Arequipa involved crossing the High Andes on a dirt, rock strewn road whilst traversing the highest desert known to man: The Gonzalos. We were, as usual, among the last cars to set out on this perilous journey, but this time unbeknown to us, we were also followed by Hector and Natalie driving their Porsche 914 behind whom came Ian and Dick straggling in their BMW 2000ti with completely wrecked rear suspension. If there was going to be a bad day this was going to be it the trial of strength between machine and mountain, between man and his mind. ‘Todays stage is quite incredible. After 11miles of real desert at 13,125ft the stage narrows and climbs, sometimes quite bumpily, to the finish at 14,764ft. It has to be the highest stage ever run! If you have a problem do take great care! The air really is very thin here – TAKE YOUR TIME! Road conditions can change overnight so only the worst bumps we found are shown – for sure there will be others’. The Road Book again.
The rutted road started very badly and very soon we had a rear puncture, almost unheard of from our big reliable Michelin tyres, and realising that I had set the pressures too low at 18lbs front and rear, I soon brought these up to a creditable 30psi. It was my habit to have softer tyres for rougher roads, though 35 front and 40 rear is preferable on good fast roads. Sometime later with the Chrysler ahead and out of sight, a clunking came from the front right wheel: it was simply the bolt holding the additional oil reservoirs to each front shock absorber had come loose and was becoming trapped between the wheel and suspension arms. I soon removed it and after taping up the pipe to stop sand getting into the unit, continued the journey.
A real anxiety overrode our feelings for this wild and beautiful landscape which, in a way, added to our stress since part of the reason for these motoring journeys is to be able to stop and stare at the landscape which in this case has not changed since the Spanish colonised it from the Inca Indians over three and a half centuries ago. For 220 miles the long, rough road, which either climbed or descended abruptly, gave us glimpses of a large remote world untroubled by man. This road is best described as a track and was obviously designed for hooves and feet and had not changed since those early days, consequently we constantly expected to hear a catastrophic crash from underneath the car at any time which I imagined, if and when it came, would be a broken axle or a completely collapsed front suspension unit. The high desert section had such fine sand that we really expected to belly-out and be stuck there awaiting, maybe for days, the arrival of a large lorry and we began to talk about how infrequently the road must be used as we never passed another vehicle in either direction. It is fair to say that if we have ever been frightened that something would really go wrong with Hero, it would have been up there.
With the harsher ride from the harder tyres jarring every sinew and loosening every nut and bolt, we triumphed over that high desert and by late afternoon were descending with the sun in our eyes, avoiding boulders as best we could though seeming to hit more than we missed yet having to stay on the road at all costs, and frantically worrying about the suspension movements which we were sure could take no more of this pounding.
Mercifully by nightfall we were relieved to be off the mountains and filling up at a petrol station where we found the Landcrab with its suspension bottomed out; the Aussies, Les and Gordon with a broken front spring, the Mexicans with a knocking engine and failed electrics and further up the road Alberto’s Mustang parked in a lay-by with the army boys Escort. We pulled up alongside Alberto to ask what was going on and he imperiously advised us that he was helping the army boys damaged Escort despite the fact that we had caught him napping on our arrival whilst it was his mechanic, Gordon, who was the one helping somewhere under the engine of that Escort! Alberto, the perfect cad, must have given Terry Thomas coaching for his part in ‘Monte Carlo or bust’.
We now had to accomplish the last part of that days journey over 150 miles of seemingly superbly paved Peruvian toll-road into Arequipa. The worst of the journey was now over, but a vile sandstorm made even this part tiring and dangerous. We had triumphed over the Andes. Nothing would ever be that bad again, except, in very small doses, and with that reassuring feeling we devoured a steak and a few beers before sleeping the sleep of the just, the triumphal and the exhausted. Tomorrow would bring us to the Pacific and blissful Corniche driving that brought a song from our Hero’s tyres.
The departure from Arequipa was fairly early, at 6 o’clock, and therefore we had to do some mileage without a spare tyre and it also meant going back for 60 miles along the same road we had come in on the previous night and then forking off south and then west for a headlong dash across Sahara-like terrain to the Pacific. The forked junction had a lot of garages and two shanty tyre repairers. I extricated the owner from the more salubrious looking shed who indicated he would be happy to repair a tyre so long as it was ‘piccolo’. When he saw the Bentley he exclaimed the wheels to be those of a ‘camion’, but the rally stickers and sleek lines of Hero soon won him over from his early morning stupor. He wanted to be part of the ‘Carrera’ and was soon separating the tyre from the rim with a blunt pickaxe and water. This crude and primitive system to break the seal was very effective and his sure aim never hit the rim or damaged the tyre bead, moreover it caused no damage to the painted surface of the wheel, nor to his bare toes which he used to tread the bead down into the well after each pick axe blow. Then with our gaiter he repaired the split and after fitting our spare inner tube we were able to set off doing about 85mph down to the coast on excellent road which was just as well since our goal was Lima,and 630 miles before dark.
Our arrangements for lunch with Alberto, of the lime green Mustang, and John Smallwood in the Alfa Romeo, went awry as we decided to paddle in the first sandy cove of the Pacific. It was a great feeling to have traversed South America coast to coast, and a picnic on the clean sand would have soothed away all tensions of yesterday. But the nagging journey ahead soon had us driving along one of the most well finished roads with the best coastal scenery we have ever seen in all of our travels. This was a majestic rocky cliff-face coastline with unspoiled sandy beaches, palm trees running down to the sea sparsely populated with little fishing villages all free from that ugly curse we are all guilty of: tourism.
Somewhere short of 300 miles before Lima we caught up with Bill and Eileen in the Chrysler and were very surprised how far ahead they had gone despite the high speed we had been doing on these excellent roads. This shows how even a short stop, let alone paddling and changing tyres, can reduce your average speed dramatically: tortoise and hare.
Having overtaken Bill with a hoot and a wave, we noted that he was clocking along exceeding 70mph, which must be remarkable for a 1929 side-valve. Sometime later, a new and powerful looking Jeep pulled in front of us as we were about to leave a little congested town and through the heavy smoked glass windows, which are so popular with the Latins, we could just make out some gesticulations coming from the driver. This looked menacing so we dropped back following him at a distance until we came to a long uphill climb where he seemed to overtake leisurely a lorry and we did the same but realised that with an oncoming bus we had to get a move-on, thereby creating a triple overtaking as we also overtook the Jeep who was still trying to overtake the lorry. The driver of the Jeep wound down his window giving me abroad smile and a massive thumbs-up. He was flat out and could go no faster, he was an enthusiast, not a belligerent. We were going over 75mph as we crossed the ridge of the hill with the Jeep trailing, but he was soon onto us after the climb and there now ensued a chase of bravado and admiration as the Bentley leapt along a well made arterial road for the next 100 miles in the upper 90s with the Jeep following. While this was good for our average, and our ego, I was seriously worrying about damaging the car as we were still only half way to our destination, Acapulco, and probably only a third of the way to our final destination, Missouri.
As the light began to fail and the 100th mile of the bravado race clicked round, I decided to slow down whereupon the Jeep came along the inside asking with the aid of shouting and the use of his fingers “how many zylinders – 16?” “How many litros?” and then “eez zat car a Bentley?” All of this at 80mph with his pretty girlfriend leaning over him to take a photograph, which I sincerely hope came out – wonderful stuff – and typical of the sort of response we received throughout our entire journey. We now settled back to a steady 65 to give the Bentley a rest, and after refuelling were soon embroiled in the heavy rush-hour traffic around Lima.
There were 6 Special Stages at Lima the next day. The first stage accounted for a lot of damage to many cars, and once again the Hall’s Volvo, a sort of uncontrollable missile which they had fittingly christened ‘Bronco Billy’, had bounced out of a crater hurtling itself into a rock-face chopping off the passenger door-handle and fracturing, though not breaking, a front wishbone. The second Special Stage brought the end of the Healey as it sucked pounds of sand into its carburettor intakes, the result of an earlier fire which had incinerated its filters, and the end of the Lima Special Stages as a girl had been injured on the beach section, strolling into the path of a Canadian driven Datsun 510.The driver was held by the police, and was effectively out of the rally. The Healey was following in the footsteps of the Rover 2000, which had done much the same thing earlier with a sand-damaged engine. This malady also got the better of Hector and Natalie’s Porsche, which finished its rally on the way to Lima. The worst news at Lima was that Bill and Eileen’s1929 Chrysler 77, though going superbly when we had passed them on the way in, had developed a slipping clutch as the rear main bearing oil seal failed.
Departure from Lima to Piura was early and it was sad leaving Bill and Eileen who were obviously stranded. We had been travelling together and had done the worst of the journey, and would miss them from now on. This was a day for drivers and we would have to do more than 621 miles but it was all on superb tarmac, the Panamerican Highway at its best. The going was mostly flat and straight allowing us to cruise comfortably in the 80s. The Aussies, Les and Gordon, scorched passed us with a metallic crackling from the twin exhausts of their fastback Boss Mustang soon to disappear over the boundless horizon. This was amazing, as we had written them off twice already on account of their problems with the Mustang’s suspension.
Piura has a lovely old Colonial style of Spanish architecture developed for coolness in those early days before air conditioning. The hotel rooms had high ceilings from which were suspended large slow moving fans, the courtyard had an elegant tastefully designed swimming pool with a little island supporting tropical trees and flowers. Around the pool and under verandas dinner and breakfast would be served. Our cars were guarded in the local army barracks under the surveillance of very heavy purposeful looking machine guns nested at the entrance. This was the Peru we had imagined, not that desert wasteland of the south but the sub-tropical jungle scenery with the picturesque little terracotta villages tucked in valleys. Tomorrow we would be in Ecuador and crossing the troubled border where skirmishes had taken place recently.
Ecuador was another of those countries which, by its name, we had assumed would be a lush tropical jungle paradise with Victorian overtones. It probably was but now there was little left which would bear testimony to that arboreal splendour. The roads were rather good though such presumably good quality roads and attendant infrastructure have to be paid for with the natural resources the country is endowed with. Our road running up from the southern border to Cuenca and then on to Quito the capital, was mainly high up in the mountains, though when travelling through the valleys we felt as though we were driving through the foothills on the French side of the Pyrenees; strange that we were now almost bang-on the Equator and there seemed no sense whatsoever of an Equatorial lifestyle.
The departure from Quito to Cali in Columbia was early with the first car going out at 6.01am and the Special Stage was a winding cobbled road finished like an old Roman road would have been. It was bumpy and overgrown and looked very narrow as it wound its way up and down the mountainsides and would last for just short of 15 miles. The acute hairpin bends had been put in without cobbles and were effectively soft sand pits which I am sure was a deliberate technique to slow the traffic down as, believe it or not this was once the main road, the Ecuadorian Pan American Highway, up until 1970 carrying two way-traffic!
With branches scraping both sides of Hero we carefully picked our way along what was the most beautiful road we had seen in Ecuador and as we were about the last, we took our time greatly admiring the scenery when suddenly a polite hoot announced the arrival of the Russians in their Moscovitch. Pulling over as best we could they rocketed past on the 1 in 3 downhill descent dislodging some granite cobbles and swaying dramatically. Sometime later at the Colombian border they came in to line up behind us with a smashed windscreen and the panelling along the entire left side of the car severely damaged. Apparently, after overtaking us they had hit one of those sandpits on the apex of a hairpin and being unable to slow down – their brake pads had been completely worn out 2,000 miles back in the High Andes – they had no option but to yank the steering wheel and hope for the best, which turned out to be not so good. We must have passed their wreckage hidden in the undergrowth and come to think of it, I do remember some broken saplings near a bend; they were pulled out later with the aid of the Officials’ 4-wheel drive. They were extremely tough but despite their toughness they were to disappear without trace within the next couple of days.
A school teachers Union protest detained us for two hours on the border which was an irritation after we had rushed from the Special Stage stopping only briefly to take photographs and admire the mountain scenery as we passed the Equator, which sadly was unsigned as was not the Tropic of Cancer later. We passed through all the border congestion at about 2.30 in the afternoon and foolishly accepted Alberto’s offer to take lunch at a Trusthouse Forte Travelodge immediately on the Colombian side. I say foolishly because night falls swiftly and early on the Equator and we had still another 300 miles to cover before our destination of Cali.
Lunch was splendid but Gordon was very sick and besides a heavy perspiration he was finding it difficult to remain conscious between his frequent departures from the table. Sue and I thought it prudent to have bottled water and a vegetable dish of spaghetti with tomato sauce and meanwhile Alberto, a gynaecologist by profession, had gone to a strong box of drugs he kept in the Mustang telling me that as there was no need for a navigator and hopefully none for a mechanic, he would be able to sedate Gordon into a totally unconscious for the rest of the journey.
It was about 4.30 when we left in broad afternoon sunlight and, having little petro,l we cautiously drove to the first fuel station and there, were jocularly berated by Alberto for my steady style of driving; “You will not get anywhere in Columbia if you creep about in that Bentley. You have to drive Peter, you have to take some risks and you have to learn to overtake the big lorries”. I explained that we had been ‘creeping’ on account of our soft tyres, (I always let the pressures down on rough roads and particularly on Special Stages which were always rough), our shortage of fuel and that we certainly would get weaving once these two matters had been put right.
The late lunchers being the Bentley, the Mustang and the Alfa Romeo pulled out of the garage and onto the busy Panamerican Highway that would lead us through the most scenic mountain toll roads, equatorial jungles and humid swamplands of Columbia. Gordon meanwhile, was unconscious and strapped in the open Mustang he was oblivious of what was now going to take place – a race. And sitting beside him, looking like the Shah of Iran was the sunburned Alberto with aspirations of Fangio, his countryman, behind whom John Smallwood, the urbane hotelier, and his navigator John Pen Le Farge, intellectual eccentric and historian, both Americans from Sante Fe, they spent their rally listening to loud 60’s English pop music or ruminating on recent arguments I had put forward together with Philip Hooper, the English Australian property tycoon, at our occasional dinners together: claiming that America was totally mercenary during WW2 taking Englands gold and overseas possessions before agreeing to support us in our crusade against the total evil of Hitler. With a full tank and hard tyres, a Bentley loves the open road and was soon way out of sight of the Argentineans and the Americans. “They must be creeping”, I commented to Sue. The road was fabulous and fast and after leaving the border behind for more than 50 miles we found the roads deserted as we wafted effortlessly seeing the needle pass the 100 mark very frequently. The majesty of this road in the evening light made us want to stop and stare or take photographs but we dared not and despite our high speed, it was proving difficult to make a dent on that 300 miles before dark. ‘A watched kettle never boils’ and so it was with the mileometer as I would keep glancing at it not seeing enough of an increment and wanting to go faster. But then all too suddenly the night cloaked the road in darkness and we still had 150 miles to go.
As fatigue sets in and the night encroaches, the invariable ‘sods law’ comes into force: in this case, the road surface not only deteriorated but narrowed. In addition to these horrors, the big American lorries and the buses with their unfocused headlamps now seemed to turn out onto the inky blackness of this tropical night road. It was to become a drive of endurance over fatigue.
Somewhere in this black nightmare, the Bentley’s front wheel found a huge hole and dropped in it while we were doing 50mph or more. There was the heaviest metallic clap that I have ever heard, and we now had some experience of hitting some of those topes at similar speeds, after which Hero’s entire frame shook and seemed to groan and a few more screws dropped from the dashboard onto my feet. My normal reaction was to brake severely but I had learned that this could further damage the tyres and suspension. Instead, a delayed reaction perhaps, I pulled the wheel sharply to the right, and, still dazed by the shock of that impact, found moments later a rock-face looming-up in the headlamps beam and only able to correct for this just in time. Our speed now came down dramatically.
With the oncoming glare from the lorries, the inky blackness of the moonless night, the dark dank foliage creeping to the roads edge, my own fatigue and a bug splattered windscreen, I realised how important a white line is at the margin; a central line would be useless, not that there was one, as the lorries hogged the crown of the road but that line on the roadside would have been invaluable. We were not to get any road markings until the very outskirts of Cali where, with road lamps, they were not really necessary.
There were frequent military road patrols where an inspection for guns and drugs would be made, but as we were members of the London – Mexico Rally they simply peered into the car and waved us on, whereupon, having had several of these, I decided this was too much time wasting and besides we were still racing with Alberto and John Smallwood who were no doubt bounding along in the gloom somewhere close behind. I therefore decided not to stop at one of these road patrols and slithered by with a wave at about 25mph only to be met 100yds up the road by a soldier standing in the middle of the road offering a machine gun towards our window; we stopped. A young officer came up to our open window and seeing we were of the Rally, waved us on wishing us good luck in the race.
We were driving alone by the dark of night in Colombia but apart from stopping to buy petrol in a little village and those obligatory stops by the army, we had no contact with the Colombians. As we sped through the countryside passing the little roadside villages, all illuminated by kerosene lamps or naked tungsten bulbs, we observed a typical jungle way of life and were oblivious of any dangers despite our being alone and our awareness of the bad reputation Colombia had been given. In fact, the only incident came as we were about to cross a bridge over a fast jungle river which was guarded at both ends by armed police units. We stopped and an officer looked in and said “Dollars”. Perhaps I was tired because I asked him to repeat, which he did, and incredulously I grasped the realisation that he was demanding a bribe before he let us cross the bridge. “Dollars?” I said. “Yes. This is Colombia and I am the police. Dollars.” I leaned out of the window and, without thinking, slapped him on the shoulder saying “Now don’t be silly”, whereupon he guffawed and said, “go on”. That was the only incident from the allegedly nasty authorities of South America, which at the time and in hindsight was not really too bad.
Exhausted after one of the worst nights driving of our lives, we pulled into the rambling city of Cali and presently, though not without difficulty, found our hotel, which was also, Rally Headquarters for the night, and there we encountered a full lobby of exhausted rallyists. We were to find out later that we had made the journey between the Travelodge and the hotel 1½ hours ahead of Alberto and John. I will never forget David Hall’s skeletal face with bulging eyes and marbled with veins saying through the froth of a too expensive beer that he had never experienced a drive as dreadful as we had all just been through – quite something for the pilot of Bronco Billy and a Boeing 747 to concede, I thought.
It was only 300 miles, one of our easy days, from Cali to Medellin and the Special Stages were a ‘piece of cake’ with the first one lasting for 10 miles on tarmac and the second for 17miles with a short section of gravel. Afterwards we turned into Columbia’s second city made famous the world over by its notorious Cartel. As we slipped along the roads we could see how all the narcotics of the world could be grown here. The lush vegetation squeaking with insects yielded forth bananas, guavas, mangoes, coconuts and an abundance of tropical flowers although it seemed to be perpetually overcast with slight drizzle running at Turkish bath temperature – tropical jungle at last. Troop manoeuvring and police activity was everywhere while the police were indistinguishable from the soldiers except for their automatic guns being larger.
In the light drizzle we arrived at the outskirts of the city of Medellin and were soon in the rush hour traffic, which I am told lasts all day, and bullied and pushed, hooted and waved our way through to be received by the most enthusiastic crowd so far met on the entire trip. Any fears or doubts we may have had about this city were soon dispelled. The happy and jubilant crowd lionised each of us as if we were Grand Prix winners and thronged the hotel, the road leading to it and the departure from it along which we drove ceremoniously to the car park. Here, a totally recovered Gordon found one of the nagging problems Hero had been suffering from: a loose track rod. This component with 3/16” play had been worrying me on the fast descents over the Andes, but the malady came and went not revealing itself when parked. I had suspected the steering box or the power steering ram or even the wishbone joints, but thankfully Gordon located it as being two loose bolts which fix to the back plate holding the knuckle-end of the track-rod. We had driven all over South America with a loose steering-joint. Medellin fêted us and wandering around the city we found the happiest and most relaxed city people we were to meet throughout the rally.
Another tough day, this time to Cartegena 440 miles. There were two Special Stages which we avoided and therefore got ahead of the pack for a change. The mountain route brought us to over 13,000ft and all was going well until we had to negotiate a landslide, which all but blocked the road. Adding to the problems there was a tailback of the usual huge lorries, Kenilworth, Peterbuilt, Mac, White, et al, and this tailback was to rundown the mountain road for some miles in each direction. To make matters worse, where we had to surmount the slippery mud landslide, a bus had broken down leaving just enough room for the Bentley to nudge through. Several of our rallyists bottomed out and were caught on the slippery clay, but with the help of some of the friendlier lorry drivers, they were pushed and pulled till they were free. These delays of which there were another two added to our anxiety about making it to the Port in time.
We had been given strict instructions not to be late into Cartegena where we were to take the boat to Colon Panama, there being no road between Columbia and Panama. It is shown as a dotted line on the map and marked as the Pan American Highway but does not officially exist! That would be an interesting trip in a lightened 4½ltr Bentley, I imagine. This strict ruling had been brought about because the Panamanians were worrying about our carrying foot and mouth disease into their country, all of which necessitated for each car to be thoroughly washed including the underside, the wheel arches, engine bay, with the inside being vacuum cleaned before we boarded the ferry. I am sure that Hero has never been cleaner since its manufacture. The three gangs who accomplished this with high pressure water hoses, dressed only in loin cloths, were obviously not at all concerned with the niceties of Foot and Mouth disease and climbed around and under the cars as happy as water babies. Afterwards we were asked if we would like a free service. Now that is not an offer one should turn down and nor is it an offer one should accept with a complicated car like a Bentley Continental in a country like Colombia, besides which we had been told to get the car loaded onto the ferry and we were pretty well exhausted too. But the pleading look in the young man’s eyes had us accepting his offer on the strict condition that they simply remove the brake drums and dust out the accumulation of lining material which was now impairing their efficiency. His eyes shone with delight and he beckoned us to follow him to the garage.
In the pitch black we followed a little Fiat to the other side of town and there, pulled into a large empty garage lit by naked tungsten bulbs hanging down from cords in the high tin roof. From the shadows, a crew of 10 mechanics who had been patiently waiting (it was now 8pm with us being the first car to have accepted their kindly offer), leapt into action pit-stop style. The mechanics had Hero jacked-up with its wheels and hubs off blowing pounds of brake-lining material dust out of the drums and shoes. They also changed the front shock absorbers, telescopic type, and checked the rears which were OK. A twelve-year-old girl, the garage owner’s daughter, acted as interpreter giving the mechanics their instructions after taking them from me. We were heading back to the docks within 20minutes, the job done. Luckily for those enthusiastic mechanics, the army crew roared in with their damaged Escort as we were about to leave. They had had a collision with one of those big lorries on a bend, which resulted in their front left wing being ripped off. The welding torches had soon cut the damaged mess away and fitted an old Pajero wing in its stead. There was great enthusiasm and they were wonderful people who warmly thanked us for giving them an opportunity to work on one of the cars in the Carrera. We were soon aboard with a spick and span car and ready for the final leg, Central America, and a two-day rest on what was not only a floating garage but also a floating hotel.
As the bow doors opened we were met with our first taste of the tropical weather which Panama is so good at: high humidity followed by continuous rain. The drive to our hotel and Panama City took us alongside the Canal, along roads which were awash with 6″ of water; the City roads had 18″ or more. Holding a steady speed of about 5mph Hero forded all of these effortlessly though there were several cars stranded including some from our Rally. In this pouring rain when stopped and waiting to cross a torrent, gangs of spivs insisted on cleaning our windows.
After a free day in Panama City where we had an engine oil change, we would head out on a good road to San José in Costa Rica, 525 miles of driving, most of which was extremely pleasant but like all the other days when the mileage was high there was always a bad section at the very end. Before dropping down into San José we had a 12,000ft rain forest mountain pass to climb and had been warned that there would be landslides, thick fog alternating with showers of rain, and huge holes on the roadside which would sweep you down the mountainside if you drove into them. Adding to this frightening report from our Road Book, the Panamanians, who had changed our oil, said that if we arrived on that road by dusk or later it would be better to turn back and find a hotel. Such forewarning and advice accounted for our 100mph cruising in the early part of the day.
Somewhere in the latter stages of Panama and before the border with Costa Rica our wiper-motor off-switch failed and the wiper-blades, having dried out overloaded the motor which burnt out. This meant crossing the foggy mountain road with Sue leaning out of the sunroof and constantly clean the screen. Luckily we got over that terrifying road by 4.30pm and were the first to arrive at the hotel whereupon a local club member took me to an auto-electrician who immediately set about rewinding the wiper-motor armature; spare parts are difficult enough to obtain in Britain and any thoughts about having an armature rewound whilst one waited would be ridiculed -wonderful, unmatchable Third World service. That rain forest mountain road had caused a lot of damage to some of our cars, which broke their springs, wheels and sumps. The army boys had come off in bad visibility and it may have been here that the Russians finally disappeared.
Departure from San José the next morning was early and Costa Rica was to become one of the highlights in our journey along with Bolivia. Driving to the first Special Stage was like driving through a huge version of the Royal Botanical Gardens, an equatorial jungle with picturesque volcanoes, wildflowers and lakes. Stopping for morning tea at a café in the shadow of a volcano waiting for our time on the Special Stage, hummingbirds would dart in and out of jungle flowers climbing up the pillars supporting the roof. Costa Rica, a virtual paradise, is the Switzerland of Spanish America having no army, no nuclear power and an insistence on maintaining their tropical rain forests and thereby keeping in tact the flora and fauna which is so evident in this clean, happy and peaceful country.
The two army boys, Nick and Mick, having badly damaged the Ford Escort which the repair crew at Cartegena had put right for them, were now trailing along, Mick seemingly suffering from dehydration. The Halls were now in trouble again with broken suspension and renewed gearbox trouble. Despite it being their second box, they were also getting through their second supply of tyres having been able also to use the Kane’s supply which had been waiting at La Paz. The Aussies, Les and Gordon, had punched a Macpherson strut through the bodywork damaging the bonnet lid.
The road to Nicaragua bound for Managua was along, hot one of 336 miles and after crossing the border, we were immediately aware of the poorness of this country, the only thriving element seemed to be the heavily armed military which like the police, sported the latest 4-wheel drive Japanese vehicles. Managua stands between two large lakes, which are home to freshwater sharks. In the centre of the largest lake is a very scenic volcano and driving along its coast we found the only colour emanated from the occasional flame trees, a burst of bright orange in an otherwise parched and dusty land. No doubt with so much freshwater this had once been full of lush vegetation before intensive cattle farming had reduced it to its arid state.
The petrol quality in Nicaragua was extremely poor and there was nothing we could do to stop the engine from pinking and running hot. We arrived at the hotel which was splendid and after a swim, in a slightly oily pool, we had an early dinner and collapsed into fresh beds.
Departure on day 27, the 18th May from Managua to El Salvador, meant that we would be in three countries today, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, and our Road Book led us to believe that crossing these borders would be so smooth we would hardly notice them.
We decided to press on and get to El Salvador as early as possible. In so doing found the border crossings were as predicted and we cruised through Honduras which was much better than Nicaragua though not up to the standard of Costa Rica. We then rapidly moved on to the border with El Salvador.
With three border crossings, however smooth, the day seemed long despite there being only 380 miles to do and it was getting hotter as we neared the city of San Salvador. In 38°C we entered a cacophony of noise and pollution to join the fastest moving gridlock we have ever been a part of. The buses on all sides belched black diesel smoke through their 4″ diameter exhaust pipes, short stubby noisy lorries bounded across our path like charging rhino bellowing on their horns which could hardly be heard above the noise of their exhausts. Somewhere in this maelstrom of turgid metal we realised that we were irrevocably lost so that we would have to resort to the good old standby of hiring a taxi and following it.
Some 40 minutes later after the most harrowing city driving, we came into a more prosperous quarter of the city and there found our hotel nestling under a massive mosaic of San Salvador himself. We paid the taxi driver $5 US and could have kissed him on every cheek he possessed especially as we thought we were the first to arrive, but there in the car park was the transport of that crafty Spanish speaking cad, the lime green Mustang Convertible. Alberto had beaten us again and was relaxing by the limpid blue pool drinking iced tea.
Despite the 38°C, the hillyness of the city, and the wheel-to-wheel driving, Hero had not boiled-over but come close with 95°C recorded on its temperature gauge. It was now obvious that somewhere in El Salvador we had topped up the radiator with a detergent mix used for cleaning windscreens when we bought petrol. It was now foaming into a mousse pushing out the coolant and making the engine run hotter. The correct thing to do would have been to drain the radiator and engine block and wash it out, but hose pipes are a rare commodity in these countries so I resorted to topping up the radiator each time we stopped, hoping that the mousse would blow out of the over-flow pipe and the detergent would finally be diluted so as to be ineffective. Additionally, we had been topping up the rear axle oil level each night and could find no indication as to where the oil was going. There was never a pool of oil under the axle and nor was it leaking into the brake drums. Quite a mystery. The oil loss from the power steering box was still with us and worsening. There was a considerable dent behind the front left wheel on the sill, the result of hitting that huge hole on the road to Cali in Colombia. Otherwise, Hero was behaving as well as she had at the start of the event, and with only three more days to the end of the Rally we took to our beds in the super hotel The Presidente having noted the last sentence in our Road Book ‘tomorrow is a long hard day – turn in early tonight’.
Departing from San Salvador we heard that the Russians were officially declared missing. We were bound for Tuxtla, Mexico which would mean crossing Guatemala giving us another three-country day, but this time it would also be a lot harder as not only would we have to drive 531 miles but we would have to do one of the Special Stages. When we came to it we realised that we would have to do the second Stage as well as it really was part of the route. Both of these were completed without trauma though we were held up by a town fête which jammed up the town square and slowed our progress. We were soon up to the Guatemala border which was crossed easily – lovely driving, the most memorable of which was along by the river through a huge gorge which finally led up to the Mexican border. This border crossing was also memorable, as the Mexicans seemed to have borrowed a system from the Argentineans. They had two sheds, one on each side of the road, and the papers had to pass between them three times! This was done individually for each of our vehicles in the scolding heat of the afternoon through the enthusiastic agency of a little lad who would run off with our passports together with a Mexican document, returning with them 20 minutes later. Our nerves were jangling as we waited for our carnet and finally our visa. It was most exasperating and some tempers were stretched, but finally in the early dusk we got our paperwork back and set off for Tuxtla. We were in Mexico. We had made it, London to Mexico, but the feeling of elation was soon to evaporate as the road deteriorated and would stay bad for almost the entire160 miles to Tuxtla where we arrived finally after a dangerous mountain crossing on gravel roads at the Camino Real Hotel by 9.30pm. It had been a hard day with a finish that left everybody thoroughly exhausted.
Just before departing Tuxtla we had the car washed and topped up the radiator again. The radiator problem seemed to be getting worse and when we stopped after a long hard drive, bright green foam would issue out of the radiator over-flow pipe leaving a similarly coloured foam-snake trailing behind us which little boys would stamp out into the dust. I was getting more worried about this condition and asked one of the AA men whether he thought it was the result of detergent being introduced or some other malady such as a leaking head gasket. He peered into the radiator filler staring at the mixture of green anti-freeze and detergent mousse and said it was either detergent or the Bentley was suffering from a severe case of rabies. I now pumped up the tyres again, 35 front 37 rear, having let them down to 20lbs front and rear at the Mexican border. We had nearly lost the car the previous evening when, attempting to overtake, we were forced to brake hard on tarmac and Hero skidded almost out of control as she wallowed on those soft pudgy tyre – frightening.
The drive to Huatulco saw us embroiled in the drama of another protest. The inhabitants of a local town blocked a bridge forcing us to either wait or take a detour round the back of their little town, some 5 miles in duration. The back of this Mexican town demonstrated the squalor equally as bad as any poverty-stricken area of Africa. In the high heat of noon, Alberto’s radiator was running at 135°C whilst, perversely, Hero’s ran at a cool 87°C despite the detergent additive. During that little 5 mile detour, Alberto’s Mustang consumed 2 gallons of oil and the army boys, having rushed the ford, sucked water into their engine bending their number three conrod leaving them with only three cylinders. It had been a memorable protest for some even though nobody knew what it had been about. We were very surprised that it had occurred as we thought that Latin American countries did not tolerate such liberal processes. That afternoon after arriving at the truly fabulous Pacific Sheraton coastal hotel in Huatulco, I flushed the radiator with the aid of the kitchen hose and never suffered any further threat from overheating.
The final day was upon us and with the first car out at 6.01am it was cool and breezy by the sea as we departed. We only had 326 miles between us and Acapulco. Hero, having had its rear axle and its steering reservoir topped-up yet again, was ready for the last day and felt as responsive and ready as ever. Sue and I were sad that the Rally was coming to a close but were not suffering the gloom of others as we were to drive on and up the Pacific coast road of Mexico to the USA.
The last 330 miles were largely uneventful, and on excellent road we were soon to arrive at Acapulco where, causing inconvenience to the local traffic, our slightly depleted line of cars, from 59 down to 45. filed ceremoniously under an arch to have our photographs taken and be presented with a fine trophy as a Finisher. But that was not all, for at the awards ceremony during the evening gala dinner, we received the esteemed honour of being presented with the Flying Tortoise Award given to the most unlikely car to enter and finish. Mikkola had won, and we, in our way, had also won.
We now had time to reflective, the first such opportunity for over 30 days, and consider what we had liked about the rally and which aspects of it we didn’t. Apart from wanting to spend more time at certain places such as driving through Bolivia, staying in La Paz, enjoying the tropical splendours in Colombia or luxuriating in Costa Rica, we could find nothing to regret save for the myriad of beautiful, colourful butterflies whose gay lives we had unavoidably extinguished in our relentless quest to see the exotic vistas of their habitat. It was the best organised rally through the most interesting countries and one in which we would gladly take part again. Hopefully next time the organisers may consider more time for us to enjoy a most wonderful Continent that has not been spoiled.
Some four days later, Sue and I set out alone from Acapulco driving leisurely up the Mexican Pacific coast and 10 days later crossed into the USA at Nogales. After visiting the Grand Canyon, we drove eastward through Texas to Missouri where we left Hero with our good friend and Bentley enthusiast, Jim Moore, until we return in October to point Hero’s proud bonnet south and towards the sun to compete in the Carrera Panamericana. All in all, we finished having travelled 15,466 miles since leaving London, with a minimum of maintenance – a true Continental and a real Bentley motor car.
Post Script for the technically minded.
The following is a list of items of minor irritation which were not mentioned in the text:
At Jim’s we found the nuts loose that support the pinion bearing casing to the differential, obviously the cause of the axle oil leak. The front left tyre was badly damaged on the inside wall, no doubt the result of that pothole in Colombia. The brake linings were nearly worn out, the result of heavy braking in the Andes. The front telescopic shock absorbers were now totally useless, as much caused by the dirt roads as by hitting those potholes and topes. The exhaust hanging bracket fractured causing the exhaust system to produce an irritating rattle which was wired up very effectively and gave no trouble thereafter. The SU petrol pumps both ceased to operate though only required a little lubrication. We also flushed out the cooling system again and reintroduced some new anti-freeze. The power steering leak continues and is as bad or worse than ever. All the dashboard lights had failed, as had a parking bulb on the front left wing. Nuts and bolts had rained down from the dashboard and no doubt from all parts of the chassis, but where they came from we never did find out. It was difficult to keep a true record of the miles per gallon but we certainly averaged more than 15 and our oil consumption, running on Mobil 1 fully synthetic, seemed to be better than 1,000 miles per pint.
Not a bad list, most of which can be put right before we pick up the car for the Carrera.