The biggest hazard to life and limb encountered by our group of drivers in the high Argentinean Andes went by the name ‘Evelyn’. I was thinking of changing the name to protect the guilty, but there it is. Evelyn. She is neither an Argentinean hurricane nor a supernatural phenomenon, just a shortish, middle-aged woman from New York whose motor skills existed solely in her mouth.She, me, a dozen other writers and about as many babysitters from Land Rover travelled to Argentina for a relatively quick expedition. The purpose of the trip, to show off Land Rover’s LR3 to several jaded automobile journalists.
What Am I Doing Here?
It’s tough to market cars, and Land Rover has a particular problem in that they don’t release a new model every year so they’re not generating a lot of “news” for car writers. But every now and then they use Land Rover’s expedition teams (www.landroverexperience.com) to put together a driving trip that will get everybody’s attention: mine, for example, and we hope yours too, gentle reader. They look for a route somewhere in the world that will put their babies (they really do love these vehicles) through their paces. They treat us like princesses, and they make sure the whole thing is lubricated with enough camaraderie and wine that we have a good feeling about it all and that the vehicle has nothing but happy associations.
Hey, don’t get cynical about it. If the vehicle was crap, I’d say so and I certainly would not be trusting my life to it on hairpin turns in the high Andes. But the LR3 is not a crap car, it’s a lovely vehicle: smart controls, an amazing depth of technology, a range of settings to get across unfriendly terrain, and very, very easy to drive. Unless your name is Evelyn.
Where Are We?
Salta is a province and a city in northwestern Argentina, a three-hour plane trip from Buenos Aires. It’s really rough, not rich, and quite high up in the Andes. Our route was from Cafayate to the city of Salta which apparently you can drive in two and a half hours. Our trip took us three days of really great driving.
The specialty of the Land Rover crew was nearly-dry river beds and routes used for centuries to move herds of sheep, goats and alpaca. We climbed rock surfaces that would make a pack horse balk, waded into rivers that would be mighty torrents in a few months and kicked up enough dust to create another range of mountains if it ever settled in one place.
I had met the LR3 previously and was very impressed by the Hill Descent Control that controls the brakes on a steep descent to provide maximum steering control. Its sensitivity can be adjusted with the volume controls on the steering wheel. Terrain Response Control sets the drive train differently for snow, ice, mud, sand, grass etc. Ask a true Land Rover believer “what’s the diff?” and you get an enthusiastic response having to do with the appropriate torque for maximum traction and the point at which gears should shift to retain maximum cohesion with whatever surface you’re on.
Crash Bang
The advance crew had found a track through gnarled granite that had about 4 inches of clearance on each side of the vehicle. To make it interesting there were 45-degree inclines and 90-degree corners. Picking through this course required a little presence of mind from the driver but a lot of concentration from the person out front giving hand signals to guide the driver through the course. (The skill of directing is taught at the Land Rover Schools but in this case they were taking no chances, it was all LR crew giving directions.)
My first seriously bad Evelyn moment came when I was edging my way through this obstacle course, calmly depending on the precise hand signals I was getting from the guy standing in front of me. My vehicle was in a narrow gap, on about a 40-degree downward incline and then – smash. Maybe the mountain had collapsed on me. The back of the LR3 shifted sideways, the sound was as if the rear end of my lovely new LR3 was being compacted for recycling – with me inside. In the slow-motion time that everyone says happens in a car crash, I realized early on that I would live through whatever was happening, but I felt sure my vehicle would not.
Pedal to the Metal
It turns out that Evelyn, in the vehicle following me, had stepped on the gas pedal when she had been instructed by the guy giving her directions to hit the brake. Brake vs. gas pedal. Hmmm, probably important to know the difference between these two. According to witnesses, the Land Rover guy, Jim, was standing well in front of Evelyn’s vehicle with his back to a granite wall. Had he not been so quick on his feet, his legs and his body could have come home in separate cars.
The damage to the vehicles, surprise of surprises, was minimal. Even discounting the fact that as a writer I basically exaggerate for a living, the noise of the impact truly was extreme – I imagined an accordionized rear end on my LR3. All that happened were some scratches, a repairable dent and a cracked tail light. Not the sort of demonstration of strength that Land Rover had planned, but impressive.
The Demon of the Andes
Gentle reader, how would you feel if it was you who had mistaken the gas pedal for the brake, crashed some cars and just about severed the legs of quite a nice guy who was trying to help you? Would you never show your face in public again? Would you hide out for the duration of the trip? At the very, very least you’d be a bit sheepish and apologetic, don’t you think? Evelyn immediately resolved that none of it was her fault and that she just needed more practice.
The idea of this verbose, incompetent driver using the precipitous mountain roads of the remote Andes to get practice in distinguishing the gas pedal from the brake is a reasonably terrifying image. Life is finite; I don’t mind dying sometime. However, spending my final moment in a car with Evelyn, who no doubt would still be talking, and hurtling off the road into the thin blue air of the Andes before falling onto the rocks far, far below, was not part of my plan for the day.
Warning, pun ahead
The high point of the trip was the Abra del Acay pass. At 16,000 feet above sea level it’s billed as the highest driveable pass in the Americas. That height is serious business. I’ve had altitude sickness. It sucks. It’s about five times as bad as the flu, and totally consuming. You feel that you want to die but suicide would be too positive a gesture.
Part of our convoy was a fully decked out ambulance (also an LR3 of course) and a doctor. The doctor had suave Latin manners and the good looks of a lounge singer. He became known among the female participants as Dr. McHottie, but his primary mandate had to do with altitude sickness.
A few in our party did get sick, mostly severe nausea treated by rest, oxygen and some hand holding by Dr. McHottie. Nothing against the good doctor, but, luckily, I was not a candidate for his services, any of them. I got a headache, which was a small price to pay for the experience of being there. Evelyn, of course, was completely unaffected, as she was by most things.
Coming Down
The city of Salta is considered to be fairly remote, but, as the end of our drive, it was the re-entry to normal civilization. No more vistas of mountains arching their backs to the sky; farewell to alpacas grazing by the side of the road; adios to dusty hairpin curves and dry riverbeds that beckon you off-road. Moving onto the pavement was a sad moment for the entire expedition.
We had a nice time in Salta, saw the sights, ate some truly wonderful Argentinian beef (individual servings were big enough for four people) and went out afterwards to drink everything we could find. Research, of course.
Parting Shot
At the end of the trip there was another three-hour flight back to Buenos Aires. We had a few hours to look around the city before the overnight flight home. Milling about the airport, I was contemplating the trip, rerunning its high and low points in my mind, and wondering whether Evelyn was as much of a hazard as I had thought at the time. In the middle of that meditation, and out of nowhere, Evelyn ran into me with her luggage cart.
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