T A B L E_T A L K Have you lived abroad? Would you do it again? Share tips and tales on the expat way of life in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y The truth about guidebooks By Dawn MacKeen That 1998 guide has all the latest information, right? Wrong. (08/17/98) Salon Exclusive: Everest debate, Round Two By Weston DeWalt The co-author of "The Climb" counters Jon Krakauer's claims and questions the role of media in high-risk, extreme sports (08/14/98) Salon Exclusive By Jon Krakauer Everest controversy continues: Jon Krakauer rebuts Weston DeWalt's response (08/07/98) Salon Exclusive By Weston DeWalt Everest controversy continues: Weston DeWalt responds to Jon Krakauer (08/07/98) Over Africa By Maryalicia Post An open-cockpit ride in a reproduction 1935 plane (08/06/98) Browse the Wanderlust Postmark archives		_______T H E mother __________________O F_.A L L_.R O A D_.T R I P S ___________- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _______U.S. TEAM MEMBERS BOUNCE, SKI, CLIMB _______AND KAYAK THROUGH SOUTH AMERICA _______ON A BID TO WIN THE CAMEL TROPHY. BY MELANIE D. GOLDMAN Santiago, Chile; Aug. 5: Before sunrise this morning, 40 yellow Land Rovers were driven into the city from the Sheraton San Cristobal Tower, led by a Chilean police escort with sirens and flashing lights. There were alternating Freelanders and Defender 110s, each pair belonging to one country. The U.S. cars were fifth in sequence, and I sat in the back seat of the Freelander, nose pressed to the window, as our caravan snaked through the dark streets of Santiago. The vehicles -- brand new, recently shipped here from Great Britain and topped with mountain bikes, kayaks, snowboards and skis -- were a comical contrast to the drab winter day, the black taxicabs, the old men with worn faces peddling bicycle carts of produce. Gardeners stopped raking, janitors stopped sweeping the sidewalks, construction workers took off their orange hard hats and they all stared at our parade. The scene from inside the car was Hands Across Santiago, and as a media extravaganza, it was a perfectly calculated opening ceremony for the Camel Trophy, an event dubbed the "last great adventure on earth." Over the last 18 years, the German-born Camel Trophy has evolved from a paramilitary road rally to an event that puts the elements of an expedition into competitive form. For the next three weeks, 20 two-person teams -- each representing a different country -- will compete to reach as many of more than 100 designated checkpoints as they can. Each team has been given the coordinates of the checkpoints and will use GPS -- a satellite navigation system -- to devise its own route. Those with the best strategy and the fewest mistakes will win. Imagine a Goliath-size treasure hunt, where each team combines Land Rovers, skis, snowshoes, snowboards, mountain bikes and inflatable kayaks as transportation modes to reach the treasures. On Aug. 26 all the teams will again come together -- fate willing -- in Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city on the globe. There are six people in the U.S. party: a freelance photographer, a television producer, an automotive writer, the two competitors, Dean Vergillo and Greg Thomas, and me. Dean is a 30-year-old stay-at-home-with-his-toddler dad from Duvall, Wash., who admittedly sometimes acts like he's 4. For him, taking apart and fixing a vehicle or a bike comes as naturally as stacking Legos. Greg, 33, lives in Santa Cruz, Calif., and has competed three times in the Eco-Challenge (an adventure race where competitors are on the go practically 24 hours a day for eight days), as well as in numerous triathlons and marathons. My raison d'être as I travel through the Chilean and Argentinean mountains with the U.S. team is to test the vitality of my laptop in sub-zero temperatures. I also will support the team by helping with off-road driving, snow melting, water filtering and general bonding. Journalists also are expected to fill in for competitors who have been injured and can no longer compete. We arrived at Mapocho Centre, an old train station in the center of the city, and event organizers spent 30 minutes lining up vehicle tires for the festival in the plaza. A rope separated the public from the teams; Chileans on their way to work and school stopped to wiggle their way to the front of the rope. At 8:30, each competing country and its two competitors were announced: Austria, Argentina, Canary Islands, France, Japan ... "Dean Vergillo and Greg Thomas of the U.S." Dean and Greg carried a huge U.S. flag out to our car and posed for pictures. Then came the jugglers and fire breathers and the man on stilts spraying confetti on the spectators. Greg was the first of 40 competitors to start dancing with the natives, one in particular with six-foot feathers coming out of her back and a beaded string bikini. Whistles erupted, passersby hollered, drums beat and dignitaries onstage smiled quietly. The festival continued as cars lined up again and caravaned to Valle Nevado, one of Chile's largest ski resorts about 90 minutes outside Santiago. Greg and Dean sat in the front and I shared the back with a photographer. A rubber duck hung from the ceiling by Velcro. "Ducky won't be right-side-up anymore until we get to Tierra del Fuego in three weeks," Dean said. "We decided when we put him up here that we're keeping all four wheels on the ground." Our duck is a good luck token we found in June while training for the competition on the Colorado River. We were thrown out of a raft in a section of the river called Rodeo, and after all of our orange life jackets bobbed to the surface and we were breathing again, we found the duck sitting on a rock. So here he is with us in Chile, and the idea is that if he is right-side-up in the car, implications are bad for the passengers. I laughed nervously at the image of us rolling the car and watching our mascot bath toy tumble. To reach Valle Nevado, we followed 72 hairpin turns, which ended up looking like a drawing of intestines on the GPS receiver that sits on our dashboard. The satellite navigation system tracks our path, tells us the exact time of sunrise and sunset and, most important, will direct us toward those 100 locations whose coordinates we enter as our Camel Trophy checkpoints. Valle Nevado is all dirt and mud; this is the season when it should be packed with skiers, but it will close next week because the winter has been so warm and dry. But alas, nothing is spared for some Camel Trophy pictures; snow was made last night so competitors could ski with their country's flags, and helicopters blew dust around and captured it all on video. By 4:30, we were headed back down out of the Andes -- finally! The Andes we'd fantasized about for six months, the Andes that were supposed to be snow-covered but weren't, and that you can barely see from Santiago because the pollution is so bad. Back in the city, we were stuck in evening rush hour among yellow Volvo and Mercedes-Benz buses that are "ecologico" -- using natural gas. More honking at our cars, more flashing headlights, more feeling like we were celebrities in the streets of Santiago. And then, the most celebrated moment of all and my first of many reminders that boys will be boys, especially on the mother of all road trips, in a vehicle stocked with all the toys they could possibly want. An hour into the event, away from other teams and local television reporters in leather pants, we recorded the first passing of gas and the first pissing into a bottle by our U.S. competitors. With that, the 1998 Camel Trophy had begun. N E X T+P A G E | Among the animals - - - - - - - - - - - - PHOTO BY MELANIE D. GOLDMAN