A handful of hardy Junketeers taking part in the first ever Mototaxi Junket have arrived in the finish city of Asuncion, Paraguay, victorious after a long and ruddy hard pioneers adventure.
They have taken on the Andes mountains, the Bolivian jungle and most recently crossed the Grand Chaco in northern Paraguay; each time thundering over terrain never before tackled by a humble three wheeled mototaxi.
We left off in Puno after the teams had achieved what so many said was totally impossible - driven over the Andes in a mototaxi. There were many non believers but the teams traversed the tiny roads with little margin for error between their three wheels and the edge of the mountain roads that plunged into massive valleys. They drove through thunderstorms, lightning, torrential rain and even hail.
At the bottom of the valleys jungle like conditions brought on mozzy bites and sweaty temperatures, followed by seriously cold stuff at the top of the passes of more than 4000m in places.
Unfortunately a paperworky bordery nightmore awaited the teams in Puno. The customs officials decided they didn't want to make life easy for the Junket and forced organisers to arrange a laborious and time heavy temporary export of all the vehicles. With no notice of their confusing decision the mountain of documents and stamps were summoned up but the border frustratingly shut for the weekend.
After the delay at the launch when the original vehicle supplier cancelled the contract at the very last minute, many teams were then forced to leave their three wheelers in Puno and travel on without them, to make sure they could still get their flights. Many an optimistic team had booked non amendable flights with no room for border problems like this one and for some it was a sad end but a cracking adventure through the mountains of Peru.
Team Mayan's a Pint of Harp wrote in their blog:
"Nobody said it was going to be easy, nobody said it was going to be so hard.
Despite all the crazy, crazy roads, being constantly tired, smelling of petrol all the time, staying in some really dodgy areas, having 3 crashes, having the brakes fail twice for different reasons, being cut and bruised all over, having my arm in a sling for a day, having 4.30 starts, having really long days, and not being allowed to finish because of paperwork, desipte all this, this adventure has been absoultly amazing and i would do it again in a second.
The people we´ve met, the friends we made, the awesome views we´ve seen and the waves and confused expressions we get from everyone we pass looking at the crazy gringos sail by in our mototaxi, all of this has made it a awesome experience, and i can´t wait untill the next one, anyone fancy driving across india in a tuc tuc? (Rickshaw Run 2010)"
Team Mayan the Force be With You wrote a similar closing update:
"And so there we have it - we made it to Asuncion overland, and while we all felt a pang of sadness at not driving the Mototaxis over the finish line, there have been enough trials and tribulations along the way to make us feel that we deserved our celebratory beer that evening.
It has been an excellent three weeks, with many many highs and lows"
The teams that carried on had more adventure in spades awaiting them. Very soon we will bring you more updates from the brave Junketeers - the ones that made it to Asuncion by bus, train, truck and plane, and the ones that have arrived in their mototaxi.
There's also still teams going and heading for the finish - check out the Junket Live! page to follow their progress.