Cochin Launch - Rickshaw Run Spring 2011

[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/adventurists/5628470058/ "Rickshaw Run Spring 2011 by The Adventurists, on Flickr") After the previous day's antics of pimping, cricket and partying, the teams rolled into the rickshaw storage area to mount their steeds and make final preparations for the big off. The rickshaws this time were decorated to the max as many teams went far and beyond the usual levels of pimping. Team Tonnarotti added a little Italian styling to their vehicle in the form of a slick paint job, some designer hubcaps and seats, and even filled their beast with oil imported from their homeland... pimped inside and out. A slightly less classy but certainly just as impressive effort was made by the Garie Gang from Australia, who used new heights of technology (huge bits of plywood, some material and gallons of white paint) to transform their beautiful rickshaw into a dove-of-peace. Let

Willow describes her Mototaxi reccy from Paraguay to Peru...

Ahead of the Mototaxi Junket, launching from Asuncion on January 1st, Junket Wrangler on the ground Willow set off on a monster of a reccy to test the border crossings and do her best to try and reduce the border waiting time from weeks to days for the teams about to take on the South American beast of an adventure!

Here is a splendid blog about her journey - a classic Adventurists Reccy by the sounds of it...

*Written by Willow Murton, Mototaxi Junket Wrangle, in Asuncion, Paraguay *

Mission accomplished, I sit with papers in hand and a mototaxi in a garage in Cusco…

Two weeks in the air, on the road, on the back seat and the front seat of mototaxis, buses and trucks and at the mercy of that plucky yet comically pathetic 125cc engine of the mighty Mototaxi. My job has been to make sure that all the the teams have their very own collection of stamped papers and important looking documents for their border crossings on their way to improbable adventures and encounters. 

What a journey from their start line in Asuncion, Paraguay, all the way to Cuzco in Peru… The sun beat down on dusty lengths of the Paraguayan Chaco as the miles (along with our brakes, sunglasses and other crucial supplies) disappeared under our wonky wheels and the potholed tarmac . I was accompanied by Oscar across the border, dodging sand ditches and blocked roads as we tried to find the Bolivian immigration office by the light of a torch.  

He had to leave me to tend to the mototaxi fleet back in Asuncion alongside the final arrangements for the launch of the Mototaxi Junket itself. So onwards my mototaxi and I went. I sat alongside Bernan, toothless, half deaf and half blind in his big red truck with the mototaxi on board to the wheezing heights of La Paz.

Aside from the limited sight and hearing, the most worrying part was when he asked me for directions. We followed the signs till La Paz choked us with a welcome of traffic and chaos. I have never seen cars being stopped by traffic wardens dressed as zebras (to help brave people cross the road) and donkeys (to reprimand those that dont obey the alleged but inapparent traffic laws).

Bernan just kept on trucking. I think when you own a lorry that size you get to make up the rules. When you drive a mototaxi, you just dodge everything because you are the smallest vehicle in sight – and you hope that the burly men and their lorries can indeed see you beyond their tassled steering wheels and swinging strings of crosses, Virgin Marys and llama trinkets. If you take on the Mototaxi Junket you may discover prayer and you will definitely learn a few coarse Spanish swearwords.

After a few days clinging to my seat and watching the road nervously and maybe just a little cursing under my breath at lorries hurtling towards us, it was time to say good bye to Bernan.  Most of the meaning was lost in the gaps in his teeth and hearing – I think he told me that next time I was looking for a truck in Bolivia he was my man. I made a note for that next time. You just never know…

And then I waited some more. This time for a mechanic for my brakeless but fearless three-wheeled beast.  As the rain fell in the Bolivian capital, Israel arrived and we continued… onto Peru, over the border and across the altiplano, by the banks of Lake Titicaca.

We arrived, joyful in Peru to be met with a solid line of bureaucratic defense to which we needed another bit of paper to wave. It being Saturday we would have to wait until the customs office opened… And so we waited… a full two days at the Peruvian border, hanging out with officials and then some more with Bolivian truck drivers in the customs reception.

We are lucky, one of my new friend tells me, flicking through an archive’s worth of stamped and signed papers. It usually takes a week for his big lorry to get through. Once our little mototaxi has been weighed and checked to make sure that we weren’t in fact part of a mototaxi drug smuggling mafia, we clutched our latest paper offering, parting with a few dollars for the pleasure of the open road and an exit stamp.

We have been laughed at, stared at and snarled at. We have occasionally overtaken donkeys and always been overtaken by pretty much everything else. The wind has cruelly blown us back to speeds just above zero and then flung us backwards with the force of passing buses. We saw the fading dusk set in over the highlands days out on our imaginary timetable.

We watched the morning sun over Lake Titicaca – not exactly planned but it was a puncture repair with a view. Everything is possible with the right bits of paper, a few tools and a heavy dose of patience. With every single piece of that little mototaxi wheezing its way home along the altiplano, we had made dizzy with altitude and success. The borders await the Mototaxi Junketeers!

**---- End of post ----**

Willow will be sending regular updates as she and the chaps on the ground in South America steer the glorious mayhem that is the Mototaxi Junket Winter 2011.

The Mototaxi Junket Winter 2011: [Live updates from the teams ](http://mototaxijunket11w.theadventurists.com/index.php?mode=tracking&sub=diary "Follow the Mototaxi Junket Winter 2011 teams")

Follow The Adventurists on [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/mongolrally "facebook") and [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/theadventurists "Twitter")

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Willow sets off on a massive mototaxi reccy

*Written by Willow Murton, Mototaxi Junket Wrangler, in Asuncion, Paraguay *

It has to be said that two weeks ago, I didn’t think that I would be sat here in Lima, bruised, dusty, even a little sunburnt,  with mototaxi fumes in my hair. There are a bunch of lucky adventurists heading for the dusty roads, muddy tracks, steep slopes, the Andes mountains, and Bolivian salt flats. They’re signed up for the [Mototaxi Junket](http://mototaxijunket.theadventurists.com "The Mototaxi Junket") launching on January 1st from Asuncion in Paraguay and finishing in San Jeronimo, Peru. You may well laugh at their plan; amused because they have no idea what lies ahead, but that’s the genius of the Junket - the almost impossibly difficult terrain combined with the comic unsuitability of the vehicle itself. The mototaxi boasts total unpredictability lurking in every impending breakdown and unexpected turn of its three wheeled lump of inadvisable engineering. I am here to run the Mototaxi Junket, possibly the most ridiculous adventure ever to come out of Adventurists HQ, but before arranging the launch shenanigans in Paraguay, the borders are calling.

My job is to meet the good folk of the frontiers who are probably going to be a touch bemused at the implausible nature of the adventure about to wobble up to their gates. Crossing borders always demands a smile and impeccable manners, and often an impressive collection of paperwork with lots of stamps on. As guardians of their country’s dotted lines the Border authorities demand our respect, and when 50 people from all over the world are about to rock up in Mototaxis, a little familiarity won’t hurt. Don’t worry though, there’s no chance of this jaunt of mine taking the fun out of the Junket for the teams. The nature of this adventure means that nothing is ever guaranteed. I will not lie to you – I love this part of the world. I first came to Peru over three years ago and since then, I have come back every year one way or another.  A mototaxi was not the planned mode of travel this time but that’s adventure for you.

Who would have thought that I would be spending my Sunday driving about a housing block in the middle of Lima in an odd vehicle with three wheels and a dog in the back, learning that there is no such thing as reverse and that when OAPs, children and skateboarders appear on a crossing, it is best to cut the engine because it will probably stop the bike faster than the brakes?

Confused onlookers watched my stalling lesson in the subtleties of clutch control, balance and gear change. Guided by Oscar and Alfonso, of The Adventurists’ South American branch, I navigated at a speed just above walking past the clapped out cars and the Sunday family scenes. Meanwhile, I am reminding myself of the virtue of patience when it comes not just to mototaxi gear changes but to bureaucratic processes as well. I’m hoping that things go as smoothly as impossibly dreamed once we head out in the mototaxi. A weekend outing to the Paraguay/Bolivia border is not in any of the guidebooks that the teams will probably be leaving behind… but I’ll be sure not to leave the manners or the trusty smile behind. Sometimes it’s as useful as many an official stamp. Armed with this and the spirit of adventurism, I go forth to spread the word of the imminent arrival of a troupe of junketeers, bound for Peru and many an unknown destination along the bumpy journey. The lucky, lucky junketeers...

**---- End of post ----**

Willow will be sending regular updates as she and the chaps on the ground in South America steer the glorious mayhem that is the Mototaxi Junket Winter 2011.

The Mototaxi Junket Winter 2011: [Live updates from the teams ](http://mototaxijunket11w.theadventurists.com/index.php?mode=tracking&sub=diary "Follow the Mototaxi Junket Winter 2011 teams")

Follow The Adventurists on [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/mongolrally "facebook") and [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/theadventurists "Twitter")

Sign up to [The Adventurists Newsletter](http://www.theadventurists.com/index.php?page=mailinglist "Sign up to The Adventurists Newsletter")

The Adventurists enter the blogosphere

Much of the time we feel like we were born in the wrong century - a lot of the new-fangled technological developments of our time just seem to take all the fun out of adventure.

How can you walk off the edge of the map if a bleeping monstrosity of a device can instantly tell you where you are? What is the point of planning the arse out of a trip and knowing exactly what will happen before you get there?

However the fight to make the world less boring must go on, and we hear that Harris Tweed is making a resurgent comeback in the UK so that's something to cheer about. 

To successfully continue the ongoing battle against the tyranny of boredom, we must enlist adventurists from far and wide. Telegrams still have their place, and one day we're convinced one will arrive direct from the Queen of England inviting us for tea. Faxes, stamps and well heeled public notaries are still our bread and butter when undertaking the international wrangling activities that go on behind the scenes at The Adventurists. 

But we have now conceded that it's time to join in all this interweb malarkey and publish our news and updates in a web log. As we are something along the lines of 20 years behind the times in this regard we have some catching up to do. Over the next few weeks and months we shall be employing the often malevolent force of technology and chucking it's cleverness behind [The Adventurists](http://www.theadventurists.com "The Adventurists"). 

The teams who already have their own customisable websites and blogs complete with tracking systems (not for them of course but for you their loyal supporters) will be able to plug themselves into the world wide web and stretch their gangly tentacles even further. And we at HQ will be putting our prejudices for technology to one side and conquering boredom with the full force of the interweb.

In fact, it has already begun. You can follow The Adventurists in all sorts of places: 

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[](http://www.facebook.com/MongolRally "The Adventurists Facebook Page") [](http://www.twitter.com/theadventurists "The Adventurists on Twitter")  [](http://www.youtube.com/theadventurists "The Adventurists on You Tube")

Hopefully one day soon you will also be able to press some buttons and you'll get an update every time we've added some more web logs. One step at a time though eh, we've got 20 years to catch up on...