Fin del Mundo

Nearly at the worlds end. Fin del Mundo.
Yesterday was a rest day at hotel Explora Salta Chico. Without doubt one of the best hotels we have stayed at, mainly due to the breathtaking scenery in every direction. Having lunch beside a waterfall watching Condors is pretty special.

Nothing much to say about a rest day except we needed it. I think most people were quite sad to leave this lovely spot. This has got to be one of the best views out of a hotel bedroom.
But back on the road we must go.
The weather so far on this trip had been very good, for most of the days we had clear blue 
skies. Today was a little different, we set off in a very cold wind and grey drizzly clouds, after about 10 minutes this turned snow and a biting cold wind. We were cold in Molly so it must have been awful for the open top crews.  We had about 50 km of gravel and then 200 odd of lovely Tarmac roads. We stopped at Cafe El Patagon.

Highly recommended for its soup, unfortunately we watched the last bowl pass by eyes,with stomaches rumbling we drive onto another race circuit.

3 timed laps, great fun especially trying to avoid the pot holes. Think Bernie needs to have a word with them before its GP standard. We await the times, I don't think it was one of our better efforts but we will see. There is not a lot of tread left on Molly's tyres :)
We are staying at The Hotel of Dreams Punta Arenas, Chile.  Not quite the same as the last hotel but not bad, and the Internet works.
Everyone seems to be a little sad as our great adventure is drawing to a close. I expect a couple of glasses of wine later tonight will help :)
Tomorrow we have to catch the 6.30am ferry (think its still dark then) and cross the Magellan Strait to arrive in Tierra de Fuego and on to The End Of The World.

Only 24 hours in one day :)

How much can you pack into a normal day ? Take up endurance rallying and find out just how much is possible.
For example yesterday alarm goes at 5.30 ( strangely not Julie's although she's positive she set it !!!)
Load the car, eat some sort of breakfast, check out. Drive out of town, arrive at the first time trial and by 7.15 you are on the start line of a cinder race track about to have the time of your life. The object is one flying lap, fast as you can. Just for fun the organisers have chucked in a few chicanes. We love it Molly comes an amazing 9th. Which we are over the moon with.
Now nearly 8.00! Off we go for about 100 Km to another flat out time trial. This time over some very rough ground, we have to cross an old river bed. We don't like this one much, Molly is too low. We come in 2 minutes late. Still not bad. Now its about 9.00. Another 70 km drive on mixed roads to the Chilean border. After all our worries about the Chilean border staff being on strike/go slow we sail through, thanks to the skill of the organisers.
We now drive to the hotel Explora Salto Chico in Torres del Paine. This is along a dirt road only about 25 km but takes as we have just entered a National Park which without doubt offers some of the most stunning scenery anywhere in the world. Every corner we turn is another Wow and photo stop.
We arrive at the hotel, still only midday!
This has got to be one of the best hotels we have ever stayed in. I wish the photos would load but the Internet is rubbish. I am writing this looking out of the room window, across a clear blue glacier lake, majestic mountains all around and a huge Condor circling over the rocks by the waterfall. 
Quick bite to eat and at 3 o'clock we are off on a 'short' hike. We should have realised it was not that short or easy when we were given a survival lecture and accompanied by 3 highly qualified guides. We walk up for about 1.5 hours to the top of a rock called Condor Point. The wind up here is so strong that its nearly impossible to walk. It is possible to hold your coat out like a wing and lean at 45 degrees into the wind. Looks really cool. Not quite so cool when the wind slows and you fall base over apex into the sharp thorned bushes.
Back down the hill, back to the hotel. Cup of tea. Attend a lecture about the area and all the hikes we can go on tomorrow. It's now 7.00. Drink in the bar. Dinner time. 
Julie and I are new to this rally world, but we thought we had got the hang of it.
During dinner we observe a rallying tradition we were unaware of. It seems that you have to drink a glass of wine or 2 and then the gentlemen on the table have to swop clothes!! Shirts and trousers!! Luckily no one had gone commando and even more luckily I can't load the pictures.
It's now about 9.30, time for Andy and the Headgaskets to entertain us (that's what Andy says) 
Julie and I retire hurt at about 10.30.
It's now 8 in the morning and I think the music has stopped.
So that's a fairly typical endurance rally day. I feel another quote coming on about rallying
'come'n have a go if you think your tough enough'
It's just bloody amazing ( ok Mum I know 'no need to swear David' )

All the crews are still together and apart from the early car failures all the cars are making it and having a ball.
Someone pointed out there are only 3 more days driving, where did all that time go.

Titanic moment !

Today we have pretty much recovered from the long hard dusty drives. We are nearly talking to each other and the sun is out.
One of the reasons for coming on this amazing adventure was to visit the Perito Merino Glacier.
This is about a 70 Km drive along Lake Argentino. After the last couple of days this distance doesn't even count as a warm up. Off we go, Molly creaking and groaning (bit like her owners) we arrive at the entrance to the nature park, pay our £10 entrance fee and drive for another 27 km.
Along the way Molly has a bit of a fright, two massive Condors fly over her, they are bigger than her and they seem to think the tyre on the roof may be road kill. (It's quite amazing what Molly thinks)
Anyway we reassure her that everything is ok and continue the drive along beside the blue, blue lake and suddenly we do our first Titanic quote. 'ICEBERG, ICEBERG!!'
We then drive round the corner and the second quote comes instantly to our lips ' 
'bloody hell it's bigger than we thought'
We have come face to face with The Perito Merino Glacier.
It absolutely takes your breathe away. We spend the next 3 hours walking some 4 Km just starring at this majestic sight. It's not just the sight but the incredible sounds it makes. Just think big thunder claps and then there is the sight of huge chunks of ice falling off and causing small tidal waves. 
We are so pleased we were able to see this on a clear blue day.
We arrive back at the hotel and find that the rest of the crews have arrived all safe and sound.
Good to have a full pack again.
We give Molly another thorough check over, yep all four wheels are in the right place, we can see out of the windscreen and just for good measure we check the oil. Molly is still pinking which is slowing us down a bit. We will have a look tomorrow with the help of the expert mechanics!!
We hear that the border guard strike may now just be a go slow, so the good news is that we will continue on into Chile and hopefully the end of the earth:)
What a journey this has been.
PS
I am not a film buff and the Titanic quotes may not be 100% accurate :)
PPS sorry for the lack of photos but the Internet connection is so sloooow, they will not load

Desert to ski resort in one day

Very quick post, it's 5.30 in the morning and we are just about to leave on a long drive around some volcanoes.:)
Yesterday was a very long but exciting day. On previous tests we have raced flat out around race tracks, and  amazing roads but today Molly was in her elimiment. Two flat out forest stages. She absolutely flew, beat the first set time, and the got stuck behind a logging lorry on the second but was still only just out of time.
Only one small scream from Julie but we were at 90 degrees to the way were supposed to be going and about 60 mph. Now hooked on forest stage driving :)
A lot of cars are in a bad way. One crew even rolled theirs. Gives you an idea of how hard we are all trying. I think by last night they were all sort of back together, lets hope so.
We are currently staying in a Chile type ski result. Very nice but not quite up to Meribel :)
Off now, will try and post some pictures and gossip later today.
Main thing all is well in Molly world and loving it :)
Sorry for the lack of photos but the Internet connection is not so hot.

Day 5 from Argentina to Chile

Well we have arrived in Chile, and boy what a road to arrive by.

We left the low grounds of Mendoza and half an hour into the journey you could see this enormous rock wall covered in snow, our first sighting of the Andes. 

                                      

' Wow, look at that snow, that must be incredibly high' I say. 
'You're about to find out' says a slightly nervous Julie.
We start climbing and climbing. The driving is totally different to the long flat roads of 
previous days. These are like lovely Alpine roads with no traffic and views to take your breath away.
It's not possible to put in words the sheer scale of the area we are driving through, absolutely awesome!

We have a couple of interesting moments with lorries (must get some better distance specs)




 and eventually get to the top of the road.
We have a Garmin in Molly, it's not too great at directions but it does have an altimeter.

The altimeter showed 10???? This is almost as high as the highest peaks in the Alps and Ben Nevis is 4409 feet. Molly has driven all the way up without missing a beat. However the driver and navigator were puffing and wheezing something alarming, and that's not because of the fifty shades of rallying :)

Thanks to some excellent organisation we pass through the border from Argentina to Chile without a hitch.
The Chilean customs officer was quite insistent that he looked in the boot and was quite alarmed to find an engine, laughs all round and through we go.

500 metres from the border the first challenging road of the rally.

This is Chile's equivalent of the Stelvio, but it's being resurfaced and the safety barriers are random cones, all good fun, an amazing drive.
We pass through some great scenery to the only test of the day.
Having 'cleared' the test the day before we were quite confident of doing the same this time.
However the organisers had a different idea. The start consisted of a very steep climb, which was  1st and 2nd  gear for Molly, after about 1st Km out of 9 and still going up, it was obvious we wouldn't make our time. When we did get to the top Molly breathed a sigh of relief and then off we went down the other side, maybe we could make the time up. Halfway down the brakes called enough and we had to ease up, but we did have a really good go and ended up 'only' 3 minutes over time. Making us the 11th fastest, which we are highly delighted with, well done Molly.

We are camped out in a ramshackle place called The Grand Hyatt, Santiago. This rallying can really take a heavy toll on your waistline. 
We are having great fun and getting to know more of the other crews and their amazing cars.  Great bunch of people from all walks of life and interesting stories from rallies around the world.
Tomorrow is the first day of the gravel road sections. This should prove interesting, it will all depends on what version of 'gravel' we get.
Tonight we are off to a cocktail party hosted by the Team America in the Presidential Suite, where else :) I've always wanted to act like a rock star, now's my chance.
Hopefully it won't get too messy and I'll be able to drive tomorrow.

Day 3 a wow and phew day :)

Day 3 a wow and whew day.
Today was a long day. We had to drive from Cordoba to Mendoza  just over 600 km.
It was also the first day of the the real road tests. 
In the last (and only rally) we had done road sections as average speed trials. This means you drive from point A to B trying to maintain an average speed and arrive on the time the organisers have set for the course. Not fast and sometimes a bit boring because the time allowed was a bit slow but technical and puts all sized, aged cars on a level playing field.
We now know that's not the case for this rally.

You have a set time to start and a set time to finish but you go as fast as you can in between. If you arrive outside your given arrival time you get penalties and if you arrive inside your time you get a big pat on the back and no penalties.
Having bored you with the technical stuff we move on to the first test. A hill climb, we start driving quite sensibly ;) thinking it would not be hard. we have to do 6 km in 8 minutes. After a while Julie points out we now have 5 km to do in 4 minutes, oops, next comment is you have 2 km to do in 40 sec. In front is a learner driver group of young motorcyclists and another competitor. The bikers have now learnt some new hand signals and the other competitor should be talking to us by the end of the rally. We get a 2 minute penalty. Could have been a lot worse.

The 2nd test is an easy drive over to test 3, no drama no penalties. 
Test 3 we are told is know as a ' blat' meaning drive as fast as you can on a public, but deserted road, and have some fun. I am not used to driving over the national speed limit ;) 
but on this occasion we have a real good go.
It's an amazing piece of road all sweeping bends and only two short straight bits in 8 km. We do manage to keep Molly on the grey stuff and do what is know as ' clear' this section. Very very happy with that, not every crew manage it. 
Memo to self don't punch the air in hard topped car.
So that was part of the wow, but the real part of the wow is that this was all at about 4000 feet in the most stunning scenery. We carry on driving up till we reach 7300 feet. This is Condor land or sky, really looking forward to seeing one of these huge birds of prey. We have seen lots of Buzzards :)
We come down from the mountains and then have a very long very, very hot section through desert like terrain for about 400 km, this is the phew bit. It was about 39 degrees and mile after mile of flat empty countryside on arrow straight roads.

To make the journey more exciting Julie and I decided to count Goats, we got up to 2,397,578 and then would you believe it we lost count and had to go back and start again!
All the cars finished this real long, tiring, fun day. The mountains we climbed today are fractionally more than half the height of the ones to come ( that's about 13,000 feet).
The rally is now in full swing and great fun, especially today which is a rest day and seems to involve wine tasting against the clock :) Julie has been in strict training for this and is hopeful of a good result. Her carry home crew is on stand by :)
Tomorrow is Mendoza to Santiago 369 km.
One last thing we wondered why the insurance was so high for this event. Yesterday we started to understand. 3 mega crashes around us ( and other competitors) one involving a car and a lone lamp post, another a dust cart crushing a car it had not seen, and another where a driver seemed to be taking photos of an old car and drove straight into the back of the car in front.
Touch wood all the rally cars are scratch free and long may that be the case.
Off to the wine tasting :)




David Harrison
01732 750449

Molly Porsche is back in safe hands

Yesterday we collected our cars. They were in a large secure compound about an hour out of town. It was great to see Molly again.

All in one piece, just a little dusty and ready to go, or would have been if we had had some petrol :( think it must have evaporated ;) anyway managed to get to the nearest garage and fill her up and off we go onto the South America motorway system. Actually pretty good, the lanes all have different speed limits and a slowest speed limit. Every 5 or 6 miles there are speed traps.

We have all got our cars back to the hotel. Bit of drama in the underground car park with two cars needing some fairly major surgery and worse than that I lost my glasses. Found my glasses but one of the cars was still being worked on when we went to bed. Hope they can fix it.

Today we have to drive back out of the city to a car museum. We will leave the cars overnight and

start the rally from there tomorrow. Good idea as it means we should get out onto the open roads quite quickly.

We had our rally briefing last night. This rally is a lot more competitive than our previous one. There are 16 timed sections, quite a few around race circuits, think they could be quite fun :)

We were given our map books and times for each day. One section has an average speed of 40 Km 

per hour. Cor that's a bit easy you foolishly say to yourself. One look at the map book and it shows the road is coming down from a ski resort! This gives  you the idea that 40 will be quite fast enough. Thank you.

Sunday is a long day we need to drive for 11 hours covering some 630 Km on not particularly good roads. However it's not the longest day, that's towards the end of the rally.

We were also told that a LOT of the roads are gravel, not the smooth Tarmac roads I had viewed on Google. Some of the cars do not seem to have sump guards so that could prove interesting.

We have got great back up with mechanics, Dr and back office team dealing with the huge amount of paper work for border crossings etc. looks like we are in safe hands. We will do our best this time to try and not find out how good they are :)

The rally office has updated its website, there is now a results page, blog and photos. I can't see the photos on an Apple :(

The link is

http://www.endurorally.com/pages/vintage-cape-horn-2013-reports

Rally starts tomorrow. We are worse than a 10 year old on Christmas Eve :)

Cheers

David Harrison

01732 750449

The Cape Horn Rally 2013

Last year Julie and I took our 1958 Porsche 356A, known as Molly, on the Tiger Rally all around Malaysia, Thailand, Loas, Cambodia and back into Thailand, some 6500 kms in 21 days.
We had such fun that we became hooked on Endurance Rallying. In about 3 weeks time (9 November) we are off again.

This time with the Endurance Rally Association. We are taking part in the Cape Horn Rally.
Down through South America zig sagging across the Andes. 6000 kms in 20 days.
We are driving Molly again. She has been back to Gantspeed Engineering for a fairly major check over (thank you Robert and the team), and is ready to go again.
Molly Porsche is being shipped by CARS UK to Buenos Aires, we are being lazy and flying over.

Molly Porsche's home for 6 weeks.

We learnt a lot from the Tiger Rally, mainly to take your own pit crew. I have been doing a lot of in-depth research into this and came up with the perfect team. Julie does not seem so impressed. Girls just don't understand car things.