James Stephenson

Not going to lie. Not going to keep it secret any longer. Not going to be unbeknown to the world (does that sentence make sense). I AM THE STIG.

Day one is done. Only a short drive down the road of 550km’s. Compared to the London to Cape Town rally from 12 months ago it is only a sunday drive. You could almost touch the excitement in the air this morning as everyone was eager to get going and escape the city hussle and bussle of Rio. Even as a Queenslander I am going to say that today was HOT, and HUMID. Let alone for a pommie fella! I was so disgustingly sweaty and rank today. “ladies, please, not today, it’s for your own good.”

We pulled out of Rio, turned left and pretty much kept our left arm to the sea and spent most of the day like this. It was a great drive. Even with 70k’s or so of regularity competition. That is where we are given a distance to drive and have to do it in in the correct time given an average speed. Me and dad smashed out the primary school maths that we needed; good ol’ speed is distance over time triangle and all that hoo-harr. And did really well, only about 9 seconds behind over the 70k’s. We will have to wait until results are put up to see how we faired in the group.

Penny is the BOSS! Hauling ass like she should. And guess what!? We overtook a Bentley today! Bentley owners are probably grimacing at the fact that we trooped past them. =) hahaha

Brazilians roads and road users are – to me – probably the best roads to drive on. They understand lane markings, use them more often than not when in straight lines, but when anything else is happening you just drive where you want, weave when you want, overtake either side you want. My kind of driving!! 😀 A great mix between erratic Egyptians and conservative auzzies.

Word on the street is that a few cars are having some heating issues, running hot etc. and we barely even climbed an ant-hill today. You might even find a bigger hill in

England…. Lets hope they will all be able to climb the Andes……. 4 times…..

I am growing my beard! Why you may ask? You might not ask as well. Well, why not? I have somewhat of a desire while I am at home to look more or less good some of the time but while I’m traveling I can let it get staunch! Me and dad were both going to grow them, but he has given up and shaved all ready and we are only 1 day down in the rally!

Cool beans! Imma go get a feed of something Brazilian in nature 😛

I’ll try and throw something up most evenings and get as many pictures as I can cram down rural Brazilian bandwidth.

James

Today is D-Day. Now is the time. hundreds and hundreds of hours of work, planning, anticipation and excitement has surmounted to this very morning. We are about to pull out of the hotel carpark by a checkered flag to be on our way for an almighty adventure taking us across the far reaches of South America.

The last few days have seen some tense times for a few cars as well. With 4 of the american cars only arriving in the middle of the night last night. leaving mere hours to put stickers on their cars, pack them, fuel them, make sure they have everything. Whereas the rest of the rally has been faffing over last minute preparations for days!

The rally mechanics have not only been busy with scrutineering but also underneath with Mark and Charles’ mustang replacing an alternator yesterday afternoon. Word

on the street is that there is another funny noise which is likely to be a blown head gasket. Which may explain the loss of radiator fluid, they said :

Dinner last night: buffet number 1 of 37. It was certainly tasty i will admit.

All other essentials done. rally briefings done. navigators briefing done (not my field of work so merely inconsequential even). route books and medical documents done.

“Gentleman, start your engggiiiinnneeessss”. There will be a large mix of ‘blub blub blub blub’ of the ancient cars to the ‘vraaaaaaaaahhhmmmm’ of the Camaro and BMW’s. All beautiful sounds

good luck to the rest of the field.

good riddance to sitting around at the hotel twiddling thumbs.

good driving ahead.

James

So all carnaval festivities have finished =( Last night was the last night of the carnaval in Rio. So I won’t be dribbling on any more about my escapades after the sunhas well and truly gone down.
In other news: We shifted hotels today and Penny is here!!!! Albeit a bit dusty and flat batteries! She is here. A huge weight off our shoulders just to see her again and running like she should. Today marked the beginning of our next chapter. The beginning of 43 odd days with the 28 other teams on the rally. Farewell to the relaxed-carefree-holiday-mode-James and hello to James-the-Driver.

Today will be a drivers briefing and scrutineering and tomorrow we have a 45km trial run and then Saturday we finally pull out of Rio and head for the wilderness that they call Brazil!

It looks like I am the youngest on this rally by at least 2 score and 10. I don’t even know what that means but I think it is a lot of years =P That’s ok, I’ll bring a bit of youth to the table, show them how things are done.

Lets get ready to rummmmbbbllleeeee.

James

I know a few Brazilians would look down upon me for saying this, but I think I am almost all samba’d out. Carnaval here in Rio has been hectic awesome fun, but I am allllmost had my fill of samba.

Righto, lets back up a few days first. We slogged through a 6 hour layover in Santiago by heading into the city and having a quick peak around: pretty cool city, very tired, didn’t see much, back to airport.

Trundled over to Buenos Aires for only 2 short nights. Well, one short night and a very long second night for me. Our first full day we did the classic hop on hop off bus tour around the city; always good value. And saw the worlds largest necropolis/crypt things in one spot. All the stonework and decorations/statues were just cool.

Thursday night Buenos Aires: For dinner I met up with Mim (Ola Mim!) whom I went to school with and new lives in BA. We had great catch ups and a great meal, very handy that she speaks spanish. When I found out that only a few blocks away there was a Pub Crawl, I had to do it. I had an outrageously awesome night meeting all sorts of tourists from around the world on the organised pub crawl. That was the long one, I didn’t quite see the sunrise so I suppose I returned back to our hotel at a respectable time. (I would like to think my jet-lag somewhat assisted in powering through, but I think it was just how much fun it was meeting people)

RIIIIOOOOOO

DE JANEIRO was the next day. I was excited. I was not let down. Rio rocks. Had the best weekend before a change of style that the rally beginning will bring. Christ the Redeemer was epic. Pretty surreal that they built the giant 38meter statue in 1931 overlooking the monstrous city of Rio. Most of our Rio weekend was a pre-organised tour package thing which made it easy. Morgan (Sup Morgan!) spent her birthday in Rio and after we got chatting a bit more I learnt she was from Perth (other side of the country to Brisbane) and has more or less a heap of mutual friends as me from Cottesloe and Mosman Park. Small world! A shout out to Max and Dan and the perth girls is in order in that case, “Hiooo guys!”

Sambadromo is where the actual competition parade of the samba schools go through and it started at 9pm, still didnt get back to sleep till 5:35 this morning and it wouldn’t have finished at 6:30am anyway, I piked early! I can only describe the sambadromo in single words; EPIC, samba, MONSTROUS, awesome, samba,people, samba, people, floats, dancing, colours, flamboyant, extravagant production, samba, FUN! I will never forget how great it was, meeting brazilians speaking little english.

;

85,000 spectators is all I can really say as well.

p.s. beers were $2 in the stadium and vodka smirnoff mixers were $3, and staff wandered the stands selling them from eskies (chilly bins/coolers for non-aussies). Just thought I would rub that in to my mates at home paying 3-4 times that price.

Penny has been confirmed to by in Rio! Good news. Wednesday we re-locate to rally hotel and will progress from there. T-minus 2 more sleeps now.
Much love amigos!!!

Talk soon

James

p.p.s Sorry mum, I think I got a little sunburnt, Not as burnt as everyone else though. And the spongebob (bobbysponge in portuges) makes it look worse =)