Along the Pacific Coast Highway

Of all the places I’ve seen, of all the mountains I’ve climbed or rivers I’ve crossed in rafters, there’s still one place that I would like to be gunning along when the sun is up and the sky is all bright but not hot, sunny but not scorching. Nope, not exactly on the beach, but somewhere along the stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. Yep. I’d rather feel the wind on my skin while driving down this expanse of concrete than find myself sipping mai tais on some island shore. I’d just bore myself to death at the face of all that sand and in just under a minute. I was never one to take to stillness, anyway. I like to move around a lot, like to live from one place to another, soaking up the culture, the attitudes, the people. That’s half the fun of being a travel writer, I believe. It’s like living the existence of a modern-day gypsy. But unlike my counterparts in the past, I do my traveling with a car.

There’s just a lot to be said for traveling. The diverse places I get to see, the exotic food I get to subsist on. Though it’s not always likely that a trip is going to go smooth or without problems—since trips always come along with unexpected surprises—the hodge-podge element of the experience is something I’ve been used to.

It is this aspect that I like about the Pacific Coast Highway. Offering a means through which one can reach parts of Washington, Oregon and California, especially those areas that were inaccessible before the highway was built, the PCH is one long dream to cruise. The towns and villages as well as the glorious land and seascapes add a distinct charm to the prospect of traveling on the PCH. From mountains to cliffs, anyone who wants an exciting ride to recall for the rest of their lives won’t be disappointed with the PCH. It’s an exhilarating driving experience.

Driving Then and Now

There was a time when owning a car was a relatively new practice, when people routinely took their cars out for a leisurely turn around the park, going here and there simply for the sheer fun of the experience—riding along the streets and highways, cruising along slowly to take in the sights. These were the Sunday drivers whose automobiles were termed “pleasure cars.” For them, the point of the trips was not to reach any sort of place in particular but simply to take joy in the ride itself. During their time, being enticed into side trips and detours were common, even normal ways to pass the time, with the car braking to a stop in order to allow driver and passengers alike to admire the sight of dramatic cliffs or spectacular mountains.

Nowadays, you won’t find drivers like these any more. With the advent of technology, with society advancing forward in every conceivable field there is, people are turning more and more into urban creatures. Living in apartments furnished with glossy ergonomic furniture, hurrying along the sidewalks to their offices carrying their tumblers of caffeine to get them through the day, coming into the office to confront a deskful of work and stress and then rushing back to their apartments by end of shift just to repeat the same process all over again.

For people with this kind of lifestyle, the only thing driving will be good for is if it brings them from one place to another. Pleasure driving is now a mere memory. And whenever people take a trip, they remain oblivious to the wonderful sights, asking instead the question every traveler born of this generation now knows by heart “Are we there yet?”

Today, driving is no longer a pleasure—it has become a means to an end. A shame, to be certain.

Which must be why I'm still here, telling stories on how fun it is to be on the road.

Welcome to the New Year, everyone.

Impreza radiator takes heat for 2006 King of the Mountain

Gauteng-based driver Dawie Olivier, hanging tough and finding luck in the unlikeliest of places, scored a magnificent come-from-behind victory in the recently concluded King of the Mountain tour. Olivier found himself early in the race running hot on the heels of race-leader and 2003 King of the Mountain winner Stuart Kidgell. He pushed the Subaru until it found enough elbow room to make a push and beat Kidgell's highly touted Ultima GTR.

Surviving a blasted radiator and the scorching heat of the Prince Alfred's Hamlet, Olivier conquered the inhospitable Gydo Pass and the 40 other entrants to this highly competitive race.

The brand-new Subaru Impreza RA, owned by Mike Beseling, lord it over uber-cars in the 2500cc division, clocking in 2 minutes and 24 seconds. This giant killer averaged a speed of 152 kilometer per hour on a twisty mountain road where the longest straight is less than 500m.

Gydo Pass, with its 27 nasty turns and sheer drops on one side and unyielding rock face on the other, was the first really hard trail that tested the shit out of the Subaru Impreza. Its only previous run is comprised of 1.5 shakedown laps at the Gosforth Park circuit in Johannesburg, and both driver and crew were on a steep learning curve.

The heavily turbocharged "Scooby," as Kidgell's Ultima GTR was fondly called, ran up to 1.6 bar of boost. This purpose-built racing car was the fifth chassis built by Lee Noble at Ultima in Hinckley, Leicestershire, before he left to found Noble Cars. It was powered by a 3.4-litre, twin turbo, Alfa Romeo V6 engine and blessed with phenomenal brakes and road-holding.

Kidgell's tough hold on the lead came to a head when, poised to finish a quick second run after zooming on a speed trap at 187 kilometer per hour, the Ultima's left steering arm broke. Hugging a tight left-hander just after the commentary position, Kidgell and the Ultima very nearly crashed into the Armco. Kidgell completed the run, but it damaged the GTR in a fashion that left Olivier breezing through to the lead.

Run after run of matching the Ultima's lead, it was then Olivier's turn to land on a bad luck when the Subaru Impreza blew a radiator hose on the start line for its second run. Anton Cronje, at the tail of the pack, immediately offered a replacement off his similar Subaru. Cronje's Subaru had run its bearings on his first run, and the crew frantically got busy in an attempt to get the RA running in time for the third and final round.

Subaru stands heat of Gydo Pass race, beats Ultima for King of the Mountain crown

At 10 in the morning, Saturday, the Gydo Pass was closed for traffic. Grownups started to swarm the Prince Alfred Hamlet for the 2006 King of the Mountain tilt. There weren't any boys or girls in the crowd. The grownups had apparently taken without a grain of salt the organizer's claim that Gydo Pass would be inhospitable both to drivers and spectators.

In the first run of the uphill climb, 2003 King of the Mountain champ Stuart Kidgell clocked in a respectable and race-leading 2 minutes and 31 seconds. Aboard his Ultima GTR, Kidgell negotiated the deadly curves of the 6.5-km tar road and kept his shit together as he sped by one sheer drop after another. It was enough to keep him ahead of Dawie Olivier (2 minutes and 33 seconds), but off the mark of the record 2 minutes and 14 ticks he had set in 2003.

Kidgell on the second run seemed dead-set to improve on his time, going through the speed trap at 187 kilometers per hour, when the Ultima's left steering arm broke down. Hugging a tight left-hander just after the commentary position, Kidgell very nearly launched the Ultima into the Armco.

Kidgell survived the car to the finish, steering only on the right front wheel and the left wobbling along dangerously. He managed a creditable time of 2 minutes 42 seconds, but he was eliminated going into the third round and the car looked every inch like it needed a major surgery.

With the defending King of the Mountain winner out in the race, Olivier found the rest of the pack hot on his heels. His heavily turbocharged Subaru “Scooby” blew a radiator hose in fighting off the heat of the race. Anton Cronje immediately offered a replacement off his own Subaru, which had run its bearings on his first run, and the crew started in a frenzy to get the RA running in time for the third and final round.

Olivier and his crew got the Subaru ready just in time to make the final run of the day, standing up to the harsh-condition Gydo Pass. He matched Kidgell's best of 2 minutes 31 seconds, giving the title of King of the Mountain to Olivier and his giant-killing Subaru.

40 of the fastest, bravest car racers take on inhospitable Gydo Pass

Once a vast inland sea at the heart of Africa, the Karoo town of Prince Alfred's Hamlet is a 400,000 sqm of tightly packed rough road and earth where only reptiles and amphibians prosper. Its only fertile and hospitable portion comes after a stretch of more and more dirt roads. Known as Little Karoo, this oasis south of Karoo served as pit stop for the more than 40 insanely brave entrants to the recently concluded King of the Mountain.

From Gydo Pass--the start of the trail--there was no turning back for these veritable Kings of the Mountain. A 6.5-km drive under the scorching sun, the Gydo Pass is even made more deadlier by the camber-changing corners. It has sheer drops on one side and unyielding rock face on the other, as do all mountain passes. If you understand what it means to be caught between a rock and a hard place, Gydo Pass leaves little to your imagination.

This piece of land gets human traffic only but once a year. With its vaunted harsh conditions, the Gydo Pass has been a perennial venue for the prestigious King of the Mountain tour. Feting more than 40 of the fastest and bravest car racers in Africa this year, the King of the Mountain tour pushes both car and driver to rise over the difficulties of the mountain passes and dirt roads.

Brave souls

Among these brave souls were rally driver Enzo Kuun in a Porsche Carrera S, Ian George's Noble M400, Rob Beaumont in a Ferrari 360 Modena, "gymkhana" specialist Herman Mahnke's banshee-like BMW M3, Nick Vernon's 300kW, supercharged 1972 Chev Camaro SS, and Natalian Des Gutzeit, father of motocrosser Jade, in a Chevy Lumina Ute with a supercharged 7.5-litre engine churning out in excess of 550kW, entitled simply "The Hammer."

Also slated was the motorcycle division that featured Danie Maritz on the Seesa GSX-R1000, with which he recently won the Western Province Regional title; Wynand Basson aboard a Yamaha R1; Jacques Geldenhuys, Suzuki GSX-R1000; Gerhard Gerber's Aprilia RSV Factory and Coert Steynberg on a Honda VTX1800 cruiser.

Hemingway tour

Last I heard, biologists are on the brink of cloning a human being. For sure, the fullness of that project will usher in an exciting new world. Just think of a time when every one and every thing is the alpha something. The strong shall inherit the earth! How orderly and peaceful that ought to be. And the weak, what will happen to the weak, I imagine, is that they will be pursued and go underground.

And, just like in the damn movies, we who have the unaltered chromosomes will triumph. We should. If we leave the world to these supposed superior human beings, all art will be put in the dust bin of history. And even in the movies the underdogs can't win. Ok, that may be more of a writerly wishful thinking rather than a logical assumption.

In an effort to spare art from trash, many tour groups offer trips on sites and places that have been, at one time or another, patronized by prominent artists. The tourism industry, just like that of advertising, may be full of hacks and spin doctors. But, what the hell. If you know your history, then maybe you know what to think of a place and can shun tour groups.

Earlier in the year there was a tour of Spain conducted by a Latin America-based travel agency. Dubbed Ernest Hemingway Travel Destinations, the tour promised to make participants experience the sites and settings that the author so wonderfully captured in the book "The Sun Also Rises." From Madrid to Bilbao and Pamplona, I imagine the tour to be a drinking caravan. Every Hemingway tour ought to be one.

Deep breath before the plunge

Painted into posterity by not a few "Lost Generation" writers, the Franco-Spanish frontier is some sight that has chilled these boldest of men. It inspired the setting of many fiction books. Among them is the book by Ernest Hemingway called "The Sun Also Rises."

Spain figures in many Hemingway books. In the Sun Also Rises, he exhausted three chapters to describe that Franco-Spanish frontier trail. There is little chance that there's anyone who can offer anything new about it. On an excursion to Pamplona for the fiesta and the bullfights, a group of expats boarded a trail-rated automibile and Jacob Barnes, the protagonist in the book, stayed up all throughout the trip.

He was the eye of the author. He was tall and thin, brown-faced and had sun-streaked hair. That must be the image Hemingway had in mind of a well-traveled man. After the drive, his collar and hair was thick with dust. And so was their car. It was not mentioned in that part of the story but it must be some hell for the vehicle.

Sitting cheek by jowl between two progressive capitals of two great countries, the frontier has been for a long time now a hideaway for city metrosexuals. It makes sense that after long nights of hard drinking in France, there is the mountains of Spain to detoxify a body. It did for the chaps in Hemingway's book.

After hiking and fishing trouts in a mountain stream, they went to Pamplona for the bulfights and the fiesta, as I have said. More hard drinking. That's one thing you can't help but love about being an expat in Europe. At least in France anyway.

It was different, the story claims, to be in the mountains than it was in the city. In the mountains, one is at risk (or at an advantage) of forgetting about time, both past and future. That trick may have done it for the Lost Generation.

Reading the trail

It isn't for nothing that the word "travel" used to mean "to toil, labor" circa 1300. If you're on my side of the fence, you will perhaps agree that it still is a laborious undertaking. With the supossed luxury of chartered flights and cruises aside, which shows itself to me only in travel magazines if you want to know, covering tracks of land via the great unwashed route is the real way to do it.

Imagine getting on a Sahara Desert train that is usually reserved for smokestack products. Insanely difficult, but poetic. All great travel writers fancy about lighting out for the territory ahead ala Huckleberry Finn. They once dreamed of being in a traveling circus I suspect. Mark Twain, for example. And, let me see, that guy who had a habit of strutting around with a cane. And that other guy. I don't remember.

A bright night sky is poetry. Or the stirring dust on account of the dew lifting up one late morning. But, at the flip side of these images, the bright night sky you see from the deck of a ship is also a herald of a storm. And the stirring dust, of losing your breakfast one very late morning. The trail ceases to be poetry, but a book that you ought to read for a guide.

A lot of bad professions has been made illustrious by good advertising. Being a travel writer is one of them. Tim Lefell, book author and editor of PerceptiveTravel.com, wrote about the myths of being a travel writer.

It is, as you might say, the unvarnished truth of the profession. I wish I had read it before it came to me to be one. If I had known that I would someday take to traveling stoop-headed from some witty observations, I should have opted to be a village idiot instead and not worry about details.

'Travel is only glamorous in retrospect'

Travel, so they say, has no real end. It marks a man and changes him forever. That may be true only in a very select number of cases, but it is supposed that that happens. Like bends on a river, however, there will come a time when the charms of a particular journey is going to shift shape and suit the traveler’s memory, when it renders itself more fascinating and glamorous to him in retrospect. One’s recollections of a journey is likely to stay with him thus without really leaving itself indistinguishable from his initial encounter with it.

This weblog is aimed at preventing such “stretchers.” Before reason loses its crown and let on that one man’s side of the world is the best there is (proving it by way of an awe-struck recollection of the place’s purported beauty, only to overlook a crucial detail that he hasn’t been to other sides of the world), citizens of the world ought to have access to some repository of travel stories where any one can really see the countries up close and standing in relation to one another.

A disclaimer, though: Those who will attempt to look for information here and ask about them in their local tourism office are bound to get arrested. This blog is by someone whose roots trace itself in a wonderful lineage of traveling clowns. And those who are looking for a “message” in his travel stories are advised to go to their post office website instead.