To
The End Of The World
Part 3: Near Disaster
in Amazonas ~ by Charles Ragsdale
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year, during a seven-month period, the author drove nearly 25,000 miles
in a 1988 Toyota 4Runner from Connecticut all the way to the southernmost
city in the world – Usuhaia, Argentina, passing through some of the world’s
most beautiful scenery on some of the world’s worst maintained and most
dangerous roads. He ended his twelve country odyssey in Paraguay, where
he sold his car and flew home to the USA, forever changed by his life on
the road during what was a truly remarkable undertaking. While a full recounting
of his journey would require many volumes, the author has agreed to provide
us with glimpses and insight into what he experienced. This is the third
in a series of five articles.
To begin, the
term Transamazon Highway is misleading. While highway BR 262 does indeed
pass through the heart of the Amazon and was part of a series of roads
cut through that jungle by Brazil's military government in the 1970s, it
is in no way, shape or form a highway. This “highway,” which extends south
from Manaus to Porto Velho, a distance of about 1000km, has been closed
to public transport for the last twelve years. It appears that the Brazilian
government stopped maintaining the highway long before then. Currently,
no special permission is required to go on the road, save a lack
of common sense. How to describe the road? Route? Trail? Jungle clearing?
The last term
is closest. At one time the road was a two-lane paved highway, and at some
stretches remnants of pavement are still visible. For the most part, though,
the road is an uneven dirt surface only a few feet wide, since the jungle
has swallowed up the rest of it. The surface is either awfully uneven and
potholed (Transamazon potholes can be massive four foot sinkholes and must
be avoided because of the serious damage they can inflict on a car) or
mud. |
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Crossing
the Amazon River
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The mud was
not to be believed – often consisting of whole fields that stretched on
for forty or fifty yards and were both very deep and filled with water.
The most frightening part though, was the bridges. They were all made out
of wood, with poorly fitted and very weathered planks jutting out at odd
angles. They were of course only wide enough for one car to pass at a time,
and groaned in protest with our weight. Sometimes I found myself looking
over their sides at ravines and rivers and expecting to be dumped into
either in a crash of breaking and splintering wood. Also, at five
of the river crossings, there was no permanent bridge whatsoever. Enterprising
villagers, for a fee, helped the occasional vehicle make these crossings.
At two of these crossings, we drove on to rusty barges which were either
towed or pulled across using ropes on the opposite bank. At the other three,
rickety pontoon bridges, which had clearly been constructed by the fee-charging
villagers themselves and inspired decidedly little confidence, were the
order of the day.
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The
road begins straight and dry
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As
you read this, you may have wondered whether narrow bridges and one-lane
roads pose a danger because of oncoming traffic. Well, the answer would
be yes … if there was any oncoming traffic. If you were to stop at any
given point on the highway and wait, perhaps three or four trucks would
pass by in a week. There were stretches of hundreds of kilometers without
any sign of human habitation whatsoever - forget about gas stations or
restaurants, if you want to drive or eat you must carry your own
gas and food.
Well that's
what the Transamazon is like. What follows is my experience on the road.
After stocking up on food, gas, and water the day before, Ben (a longtime
friend who flew into Venezuela and joined me on the Caracas - to - Rio
de Janeiro portion of the trip) and I awoke at dawn in Manaus, the largest
city in Northwestern Brazil. We took a barge across the Amazon River at
around sunrise, and anticipated making it sometime late at night or the
next day to Porto Velho, a major Brazilian city at the end of BR 262, near
the Bolivian border. The drive started off well enough. |
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On the south
side of the Amazon River we hit fifty kilometers of fresh pavement, and
I remember feeling cheated after having prepared myself for a hellish drive.
I was not to be disappointed though. Abruptly the pavement ended, and progress
slowed to a crawl. I spent the rest of the day crashing over bumps
and potholes, sliding through mud fields, and saying silent prayers as
I inched over rickety old bridges. At one point while Ben was driving we
hit a massive pot hole that was hidden behind a rise, and everything in
the car was thrown loose. The worst part though, was that the jolt cracked
one of my spare gas tanks, and most of the gas leaked out and covered all
of our stuff. At first I was annoyed by the gasoline smell, but as the
day wore on, fuel consumption became an overwhelming preoccupation.
There was nothing
I could do though, other than to take certain fuel conservation measures
- keep the a/c off, keep the engine at around 2700 rpm, and use 4x4
only when necessary. We kept looking for a shack or farm or anywhere it
might be possible to buy gas, but there was nothing at all. Finally, around
nightfall, we ran into a large, very sturdy commercial truck carrying a
half dozen people that had stopped for the night by the side of the road.
It was one of the four cars we saw on the entire 1000km crossing. We stopped
to talk to the people, and from the looks they gave us once they understood
who we were and where we had come from, we might as well have been aliens.
They were friendly though, and after some negotiation, we traded
them food, water, and cigarettes for about six liters of gas - all they
could spare from the gasoline-powered motorcycle that was their emergency
transportation in case of a breakdown in their diesel truck. It still wasn’t
enough, but it was something, and would at least reduce the distance we
would have to hike in the event we ran out of gas.
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we took off into the night buoyed by our slight improvement in fuel and
the novel experience of bartering for gasoline with dry goods in the middle
of the jungle. Our joy was short lived though. About 20 km down the road,
I came upon a mud patch - it was only about twenty-five yards across, far
shorter than some of the ones we had plowed across earlier in the day,
and did not seem too hazardous, so I drove right into it, and quickly found
myself sinking into what was the deepest mud patch of the trip. I
attempted to shift into 4x4 and get at least two of the wheels on what
appeared to be a patch of solid earth, but the mud was too deep and the
patch of solid earth was actually muddy clay. The wheels spun and the car
shuddered, and we became well and truly stuck. The mud was so deep that
the front tires were off the ground as the middle of the car sunk all the
way up to the undercarriage. It was dark, there was no one else for over
a hundred kilometers as far as we knew, and we grew increasingly worried.
We tried for an hour or two to free ourselves and then decided to wait
until morning and try again.
Morning arrived,
and we awoke drenched in sweat from the ninety-degree overnight heat to
the lovely buzzing sound of the bloodthirsty insects that had not tired
of their overnight attempts to get through our mosquito net.
With renewed
vigor we set about clearing away water and mud from the area around the
tires. We used rocks to drive blocks of wood underneath the tires, and
then packed dry dirt around the surface for added traction. Nothing helped.
The weight of the car prevented us from getting the wood blocks directly
underneath the tires, and the slippery conditions made jacking the car
up far too dangerous. |
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The front
wheels, which weren’t even touching the ground anymore, spun uselessly,
and the rear wheels were locked in place. At this point the car had settled
so deeply in the mud that the center of the car was supported by an island
of clay, and the skid pad, a solid steel plate which protects the engine
belts from stray debris, had been bent inward by the crushing weight of
the vehicle. After several hours of exhausting effort, all we had accomplished
was to cover ourselves completely from head to toe in mud; not even a spot
of paint was visible on the 4Runner. By noontime we realized we were not
going to be able to extract the car ourselves. We decided to make an inventory
of our remaining food and water: we had enough for three days with a light
diet, maybe seven with starvation rations. We resolved to wait until the
next day for another car, and then if no one came, to hike out, although
we were undecided about whether we should both go or whether it would be
better for one of us to set off with the lion’s share of our supplies while
the other waited it out in the car. We spent the day in the sweltering
heat trying to stay optimistic, even though it seemed likely that the next
day we would be starting a three hundred kilometer hike on unfamiliar ground
with a few cans of tuna, some crackers, four energy bars, and a half bottle
of water purification tablets. Future plans, such as an upcoming trip to
Spain to reunite with my princesa andaluza, Ana Belen, seemed distant and
far fetched.
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Then
at around five o’clock a peasant farmer man and his wife rode by on a bicycle,
the woman clutching a rifle as she sat sideways behind her husband. The
man hopped off the bicycle, and we negotiated with him for help. He had
a machete as well as a sickle like spade tool, and with these in hand he
began to dig. After clearing areas around each of the tires, he found chunks
of pavement and put them near the wheels. He then cut down a tree about
fifteen feet long and eight inches in diameter. His ingenious plan, which
succeeded where we had failed, was to use the tree as a massive lever.
We positioned one end of the tree underneath the hub of a wheel, and with
the combined efforts of all three of us pushing down on the other end,
raised the car off the ground, and held it up long enough for the peasant
man’s wife to place chunks of pavement underneath the wheel. We then
repeated the same procedure on each of the other wheels. This was all going
well until about halfway through the process I was walking around barefoot
(the mud made shoes useless) when I heard a loud thunk and looked down
to see the man's machete, which he had carelessly left on the ground,
impaled in my big toe. I screamed in pain, and my friend ran over with
the first aid kit as a puddle of blood covered my foot and the ground.
I bandaged myself up as best I could, using a couple of butterfly closures
and gauze strips to staunch the bleeding, and spent the rest of the time
in the car, wondering what sort of exotic and incurable infection the mud
might harbor. |
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Finally the
pavement was in place under the wheels, and I put the car in gear and gently
rocked the car back and forth, shifting from forward to reverse.
At first the wheels spun uselessly. We then repositioned the pavement to
provide better traction. I started working the car in forward and reverse
again. Again, the wheels spun, although this time the car shuddered, and
struggled to pull itself over the mound of mud and clay which supported
much of its weight. The cost of failure would be huge and I was as nervous
as I was excited. Finally, we realized that it was now or never. I revved
the engine and redlined it before throwing it into gear and giving it all
she had. The tries spun and screeched in protest and began to burn, filling
the air with acrid smoke. Finally, in a truly climatic moment, the
car lurched back a foot, and I immediately threw it into first again, floored
it, and shot out of the mud pit. Thrilled, I honked the horn wildly
while Ben cheered and our Brazilian helpers grinned. Inspecting the damage
done, I saw that my expensive English off-road tires, which were supposed
to have lasted at least one hundred thousand miles, were now completely
stripped of their tread. My friend and I thanked the peasant farmer profusely
and paid him double what we had agreed before moving on.
We drove for
a couple of hours before deciding to sleep a second night in the car and
continue at dawn. The next day was all about fuel, as there was nowhere
to get gas and the map showed us clearly out of range of the nearest city,
Humaita.
Finally, at
around noon, a most curious sight greeted my eyes. A well-ordered homestead
and farm emerged from the jungle on the right side of the road. I coasted
into the driveway, constantly expecting the engine to cut out, the fuel
warning light having been on for over forty kilometers. To my shock, two
rambunctious children with bleach blonde hair and piercing blue eyes came
running from the house to greet us. We were unable to communicate effectively
with the children using our book-learned Portuguese. They switched to German,
only confusing us further.
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their father showed up, having been summoned from a project he was overseeing
in one of their fields. I watched this fair-skinned, barrel-chested blonde
man wearing overalls approach me, and I was somewhat in awe. Here was a
man who gave new meaning to the phrase “pater familius.” Clearly,
whatever needed to be fixed or made, any difficulty or crisis that arose
(and there must have been many in this lonely corner of the globe) rested
entirely on his ingenuity and determination for a solution. Fortunately
he was kind and gregarious rather than stoic and taciturn, and I learned
a bit of his story during the course of some polite conversation (he was
able to understand my formal and somewhat stilted Portuguese) and a quick
tour of his farm. A native Brazilian, whose grandfather had come to Brazil
from Germany five decades earlier, he moved to this wild and untamed corner
of Brazil seeking new opportunity and cheap land twenty years ago. He had
built much of his house and the outlying buildings by himself, and simultaneously
filled the roles of father, husband, manager, mechanic, veterinarian, and
agriculturist. When it was time for us to leave, he sold me some
gasoline he had stored in a fifty-gallon drum, using a hose to siphon it
into my tank. He explained that occasionally government work crews would
be doing bridge maintenance and have need of gasoline or peasants would
buy the gasoline and use it as an accelerant in the fires they set to clear
land. |
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We said our
goodbyes to the affable German. The day was bright and clear, our gas supply
was more than adequate for the last stretch, and we could once again use
the fuel-consuming luxuries of air conditioning and four wheel drive. From
that point it was more or less smooth sailing and after another 100km the
road became almost passable. Conditions improved steadily until there were
such amenities as pavement, dividing lines, road signs, and lo and behold
.... CIVILIZATION!!!!
To contact
Charles Click Here
The articles
below are Part I and Part II of To The End Of The World by Charles
Ragsdale:
 Part
I: Traveling The Americas From
Connecticut To Usuhaia
Part
II: To The End Of The World Crossing
A Closed Border
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