Asphalt hunger

It's getting busy on the road between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego. Two books have been translated into Dutch at the same time about adventures on the PanAmerican Highway, the imaginary road between the northern and southern points of the Americas. 'Asfalthonger' is the story of two tough North American car enthusiasts who want to improve the world record on this largely unpaved route. In 'Van Alaska tot Vuurland' it's good German boys who have dragged their Volkswagen bus across the Atlantic Ocean to complete that journey.

Who would drive a car through a continent that is not designed for that and that can be traveled perfectly by beautiful railways and a fine-meshed bus network? South of the United States there is no highway anymore, eighty percent of the journey is less than a B-road and then also largely unpaved. Moreover, there is a hole in that road between Panama and Colombia, a hole of a few hundred kilometers of impenetrable jungle.

That can produce beautiful stories, but then you have to have something to say and be able to look around you. Those two macho men from 'Asfalthonger' limit themselves to boastful stories about bulletproof vests in the car, an encounter with a pickpocket is already a heroic story. It takes 140 pages of tough bragging before they finally get started.

The rest is boring: asphalt and potholes. They don't dare eat local food, what they report about the area, they get from a folder with newspaper clippings that they have in the car. Indian stories about violence and other crime, when you travel through the continent at such a speed (Terra del Fuego-Alaska in 24 days) you can't do much more than write down generalities.

The two Germans in their Volkswagen van are a lot more naive. They only find out in Panama that there is no road between Central and South America and that makes for quite a chapter.

Because at the end of the dead-end road, a whole herd of desperate world travelers slowly gathers, struggling with the dilemma of abandoning their beloved gaze or paying a hefty sum for shipping.

Finally, with nineteen cars and fifty-three passengers, they charter a rusting freighter, in which they drift at sea for days, until another ship appears and the captain can ask via a ship's caller which way it is to the harbor. After which the book continues with the chapter 'Venezuelan Impressions'.

Another warning: From Alaska to Tierra del Fuego is not a reliable guide to the arduous journey of private car travel in Latin America.

At the very end of the book, when the authors Hans und Ulf casually mention that Evita Peron has just been thrown into the dungeon, it turns out that this miraculous journey was made almost twenty years ago. The world is also changing rapidly in Latin America.