Sowerby flashes back to treacherous African drive

The burly German's English was perfect.

"You're planning what?"

"We'll be driving all the way up to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska," I pointed to the map on the front door of my then-new 1988 GMC Sierra pickup. "It will take about three weeks to cover the 15,000-mile route."

"But that's crazy! You won't see anything."

I've heard this line many times, but before I could respond, the uptight tourist launched into a diatribe of how he and his wife would discover so much of Tierra del Fuego, an island at the southern tip of South America, during their three-week vacation.

"Well," I responded. "I guess we might not get to sleep in, visit tourist sites or take bus tours."

I found it hard to imagine anyone could think we would not see anything on a 21-day drive through 14 countries experiencing five seasons between the north and southern extremities of the Western Hemisphere. I envisioned the legions of contacts my co-driver, Tim Cahill, and I had made through South and Central America in the previous three months.

Flying into Tegucigalpa, Honduras, for a quick round of meetings with ambassadors and security experts. Checking out border formalities and shortcuts before flying off to Managua, Nicaragua, to analyze the state of the Sandinista revolution.

I recalled one of the three reconnaissance trips my previous partner, Ken Langley, and I had made to Africa when planning our assault on the speed record from the southern tip of Africa to the northern tip of Europe in 1984.

We had been in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi working on routing through East Africa. Our next stop would be Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A few days before our flight, we realized a shorter route might be to keep west (pull out your atlas!) of Lake Victoria and drive from western Tanzania into Burundi, then north through Rwanda and Uganda and follow the White Nile through the Sudan to Khartoum.

Our maps indicated trails into southern Burundi that, if passable, would save hundreds of miles. The Canadian High Commission in Nairobi knew a Belgian contractor who ran a construction company in Burundi, so while Ken finished up in Nairobi, I made plans to fly Burundi's capital city, Bujumbura.

Two days later, Guy Collette met me at Bujumbura International Airport. The friendly engineer advised the area I was interested in was remote, dangerous and impassable in the rainy season. He confessed he was not an expert on the region and had arranged a meeting with local smugglers who could advise on shortcuts through the unstable central African republics.

We headed south through the capital. A few miles beyond the city limits, he pulled a blindfold out of the glove compartment.

"I hate to ask, but you'll have to wear this for the rest of the trip."

For the next hour and a half I sat in blackness, rocking in the front seat of Guy's diesel Peugeot 504 as we maneuvered over rough roads. Horns blared. Sometimes I detected the laughter of children. Shadows flickered by. I dozed off a couple of times.

We finally stopped. It was still and quiet, except for strange bird chatter that sounded like it was coming through the radio speakers. The heat was stifling.

"You can take off the blindfold now."

We were deep in the jungle in front of a massive white cement house. Parked in front was a late model BMW, a Mercedes with blacked-out windows and a Chevy Blazer that looked like it had been recently side-swiped. Inside, the only furniture in the living room was a long boardroom-style table and four armchairs. Automatic weapons leaned against the wall. Two pistols lay on the table.

A Spaniard, an Afrikaner, an Asian and a frail Pakistani welcomed me as if I were a visiting relative. Over tea, I explained my proposed mission ... world-record drive, Guinness Book of Records, a test for a new American diesel engine.

It didn't take long for them to convince me to stick to the traditional east African route through Tanzania and Kenya. Keep to the main roads, stay out of the jungle and off the contraband trail where ivory and diamond smugglers would see our new GMC as a "gift" from America.

When I left, I tied the blindfold back on for the long drive back to Bujumbura.

And then, four years later, an obnoxious tourist tells me I won't see anything on a drive from the bottom to the top of the the Americas. Funny.

After the German tourist boarded a bus, Tim and I spent the afternoon going over last-minute plans. I checked in at the local telex office hoping for a response from the captain of a container ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. We would attempt to rendezvous with him in Cartagena, Colombia, to take us around the Darian Gap, a 250-mile stretch of impassable jungle between South and Central America.

Coming out of the telex office, I spotted the German getting off the tour bus with his wife and offered a hello. A gaggle of brightly dressed American tourists laughed and joked with him.

"We had a spectacular view of Cape Horn!" he boasted. "Tomorrow we will visit a factory that produces most of the TVs in Argentina. See how much we are seeing?"

I flashed back to my blindfolded trip through the jungles of southern Burundi.

"Have a pleasant vacation," I chuckled.

Garry Sowerby, author of "Sowerby's Road: Adventures of a Driven Mind," is a four-time Guinness World Record holder for long-distance driving. His exploits, good, bad and just plain harrowing, are the subject of World Odyssey, produced in conjunction with Wheelbase Communications. Wheelbase is a worldwide provider of automotive news and features stories.