Niamh Hooper travels to Bolivia for a thrilling but frightening foretaste of the Land Rover G4 Challenge, an endurance race in which individuals from 18 countries will compete in running, kayaking, biking, abseiling, off-road driving and navigation
The dense, billowing dust cloud makes it impossible to see ahead, but sudden movements, such as slamming on the brakes, are not a good idea. I breathe in and gently tease the Land Rover Defender into a lower gear, fuelling the rising dust cloud as I come to a halt inches from a sharp bend, complete with a heart-stopping drop to the left. Bolivia's roads, if you can call them that, are cut into the steep mountainside, and there are sharp fall-aways at every turn.
If I'm lucky enough to survive - many haven't - it will become a good pub story. There seems to be little tolerance of caution. The few seconds it takes me to compose myself is, by local standards, too long, and a ramshackle bus rattles past me at high speed, leaving me in another cloud on this narrow, steep hairpin bend.
Later, on a less treacherous stretch, I'm chuffed to overtake him and head into nightfall, which holds its own "delights". Drivers here tend not to use either indicators or headlights. Often the only lights picked up are the staring eyes of bulls, goats and donkeys ambling across roads. Bolivia, for all its charm and unspoilt beauty, is not for the faint-hearted. An engineer with our convoy puts it succinctly: three days' driving here - on and off road -will be as tough on the vehicles as a lifetime of city driving at home.
Which is probably why Bolivia has been included as a host nation for the Land Rover G4 Challenge 2006. If you have not yet heard of the G4 Challenge, you probably will. It's not being called the "ultimate global challenge" for nothing. Competitors from 18 countries - from Taiwan to Costa Rica, and including Ireland - will push body, mind and soul to the limit. The tasks will include mountain biking, kayaking, abseiling and 4x4 driving, for four long weeks. I have joined the reconnaissance team on a final inspection of the activity sites, route and time trials in Bolivia.
The competition, which has attracted more than 10,000 applications from around the world, is open to men and women. Participants need to be over 21, have a full driving licence and speak English. In the inaugural event in 2003, Ireland was represented by Paul McCarthy from Dingle. A stonemason, carpenter and surfer, the then 29-year-old finished in a very respectable sixth position.
His advice for Ireland's representative in the 2006 challenge is simple. "Get fit and get up to speed on your navigation/GPS skills. That's where the super fit people fell down. If you can't get to where you need to be, it doesn't matter how fast you are at the activities," says McCarthy, who is one of the support team in Bolivia for this year's event. Ireland's representative this time is Gary Robertson, a 34-year-old paramedic from Fivemiletown, Co Tyrone. In the final selection he undertook tasks included rafting a Land Rover across an icy lake, speeding through a slippery forest on a mountain bike and zip-wiring off castle battlements, beating off stiff competition from 500 entrants.
Robertson, an experienced contestant in Eco-Challenges, Primal Quests and other endurance rces, works for the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service. He has been training since November, "pretty much every day, except when it's a rest day". Training periods range from 90 minutes to three hours daily and include fitness work in the gym, outdoor sports, learning technical skills in mountain biking, rock climbing and off-road driving, as well as making himself familiar with the allimportant GPS system.
"What I'm looking forward to the most is travelling in a convoy of about 50 vehicles right through Laos and Thailand, and of course, seeing the salt plains of Bolivia . . . and pretty much everything about the event - there's nothing like it in the world. It's unique, with the off-road driving, and it's totally expedition-style. I can't wait," he says.
For the global adventure, Land Rover has made134 kitted-out expedition vehicles. All will be painted in the event's "Tangiers Orange" livery, and will have a mountain bike and kayak tied to the roof. A crew of nine engineers will be looking after the vehicles, which will get quite a battering on a daily basis, while a team of four doctors, one of them a dentist and facial surgeon, will be on hand to tend to the competitors.
In contrast to every other country's representative, I have not been training for months. Not that that really registers though until it's too late. With days to go, I am alarmed by photos on the Land Rover website of someone abseiling into nothing. I should have paid more heed to that bit in the e-mail that said they needed to know my blood type before travelling "just in case".
But I try to adopt an optimistic approach, pack the suggested thermals, fleeces and snug socks, and get going. Because of a hurricane and a 22-hour stop in the US, I arrive, without my luggage, in sunny Santa Cruz in a pair of children's pink Barbie flip-flops; the only pair I could find in the supermarket in Miami. Not exactly hard-core adventure gear.
Picked up at Viru Viru airport by Dev Fogg, a 28-year-old South African member of the recce team, I climb into an orange Land Rover - one of four that will traverse the Bolivian countryside for the next few days.
Bouncing along cinnamon-coloured dirt tracks, cutting through lush vegetation, playing catch-up with the others vehicles, Dev suddenly brakes as he realises we've taken a wrong turn. In true adventurer style the clue is simple: no tyre tracks on the road. This is the sort of clue we have to follow as maps in Bolivia often don't bear much resemblance to reality.
Before the day is out, I get behind the wheel of a 4x4 for the first time and drive off-road, through a river in full flow and on main roads. Each day holds its adventures. Day two begins with a white-knuckle ride up what feels like a gravity-defying incline, butterflies fluttering by and turkey vultures hovering overhead. I can safely say I've never been so scared in a vehicle. But, without a hitch, our three-ton vehicle effortlessly navigates the 45-degree incline of red rock with loose stones and sheer drops on either side. Climbing ever higher on windy roads, our convoy encounters a swooping condor, and the lead vehicle survives being charged by an irate bull. In the evening sun we roll into Le Higuera, where Che Guevara was captured and executed in October 1967. The village has no electricity, and does not receive post.
Rounding off the day, I face a personal fear. The first and only other time I went mountain biking, I fell down a mountain in Switzerland and almost died. Every part of me shaking and overwhelmed by nausea, I reckon no matter when I get back on a bike again, it's going to be the same, so it may as well be now.
The bike taken off the roof of the Land Rover for me has a little Irish flag on it - it was the bike used by Paul McCarthy in the 2003 event. Helmet on, saddle lowered, I set off with my American colleague Sue and Pablo from Argentina. I spend half an hour alternately holding the brakes for dear life and giving in to gravity as I bounce along the steep, rock-strewn trail. Afterwards, I'm wired, proud of having got back on a bike. The section I have cycled is a mere fraction of the 1,000m downhill route that the competitors will complete. It puts the challenge into perspective for me.
That night is so hot and humid - the bag of thermals was wrongly prescribed - I sleep under the stars of the southern sky in the sandy riverbed of the Rio Grande, until the noise of wild animals sends me back to the tents.
In the morning, I make the most of the view and throw myself off the massive 100ft-high Santa Rosa suspension bridge and abseil into free air, the large boulders of the dry river bed of the Rio Grande below glinting in the sunshine. As always, the risk is worth the reward.
From here, lining our route to the white colonial city of Sucre - Bolivia's official capital, perched at 2,300m - donkeys carry logs in saddlebags, bulls are tethered by pieces of string that look as effective as dental floss, and stray dogs look for scraps from passing truck drivers.
As we enter Sucre, we encounter streetlights for the first time in three days. And we see more of the signs we saw everywhere we went, emblazoned with the solitary word: Peligro! It was no great surprise to discover that translated it means "Danger!"
FANCY A CHALLENGE?
Starting in front of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand with an urban competition on April 23rd, the Land Rover G4 contestants will then take on the hot and humid jungles, paddy fields and rivers of Laos in stage two.
Stage three begins with a Brazilian-style urban adventure amid Rio de Janeiro's magnificent sandy beaches and grubby skyscrapers, favelas and stunning views, before competitors head to the remote and diverse Bolivian countryside. The significant altitude challenges, at heights of over 4,000m, take place during the final two stages.
The final stage begins on Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni, the highest and largest salt lake on earth, which is twice the size of the Great Salt Lake in the US.
Throughout, driving conditions will be extreme, and temperatures will fluctuate from a scorching plus-40 degrees to minus-20.
"The Land Rover G4 Challenge is a unique event; it's about adventure and new experiences. To be successful, competitors need an exceptional combination of fitness, strategic thinking, adventure skills and an unflappable nature - brains often triumph over brawn," says Niki Davies, the event director.
Rickard Beckman, competitions manager and leader of the recce team responsible for developing the challenge, says it's not likely to be a case of the-best-athlete-wins.
"You need to be a good athlete," says Beckman who was a three-times competitor in an earlier challenge called the Camel Trophy, "but it's also important to take the initiative, be strategic and creative, as well as remaining grounded enough to keep a cool head in stressful situations."
The G4 Global Challenge begins on April 23rd in Bangkok, Thailand and, following events in Laos and Brazil, ends in Bolivia on May 20th. See also: www.landroverg4challenge.com