This is the true, and uncensored, story of the announced traffic jam of a group of unconscious people who decided to accompany Lluís and Manolo on a crazy adventure through the south of Tunisia.
And every self-respecting story must begin with its protagonists:
CAR 1 (HDJ80 silver): Lluís “Zorrillo del Desierto” and Carol
CAR 2(HDJ80 tire): Manolo, aka SUPER RATON
CAR 3 (white Toyota old): Jordi Torres and Joan Rus, alias “the Speaker”
CAR 4 (Nissan Patrol GR): Ripoll “El Terrible or Ripolleitor” and María
CAR 5 (Toyota KDJ120 or more because of the number of things it carries): David Sanglas “El centralitas” and Jordi
CAR 6 (Defender white “disassembled”): Joaquín and Marco
CAR 7 (Terracan camouflaged HDJ100): Josep Sutherland and Pili Suñer
CAR 8 (red Toyota Landcru): Joan and Xavi
CAR 9 (green Mitsu DID): Josep “the loner” (not to be confused with the bank robber)
CAR 10 (Nissan Patrol Culé): Joan “Lupintan Boixos Nois” and Joan “Culé” jr.
CAR 11 (HDJ80 budweiser): Miguel Mora, alias “el Birras”
CAR 12 (HDJ 100 “towed”): Isa “the reporter” and Marc
CAR 13 (HDJ100 green): Quim, aka “the Sulfuric” and Alex
CAR 14 (KDJ “Ollero”): Martí and Maite
CAR 15 (Nissan Navara disassembled): “Quiñonero” Brothers (the equivalent of the old Dalton Brothers
CAR 16 (Navara “Crestas”): Toni and “suffering” co-driver
CAR 17 (KDJ diesel color): Jordi “Alimaña”
CAR 18 (KDJ KXR KAKAS): Marisa and Luis “Alimañas”
CAR 19 (Toyota Landcru McGyver): Blanqui and Toni “Vermin”
CAR 20 (Discovery “doesn’t even recognize the mother who gave birth to him”): Pepe “Vermin”
CAR 21 (Toyota Hilux Burnt Winch): Mar “ballast” and Fran “Vermin”
Since our colleague Isa has already made a detailed chronicle of the trip, with a lot of talent by the way, this diary only intends to collect moments that either the decorum of our colleague, or censorship, have prevented her from incorporating into hers.
DAY 1 before the Sorrows: nothing special to note. Travel from Madrid to Marseille and arrival at the hotel provided by the Organization. It is nowhere to be found and we are told that neither Manolo nor Lluís are going to sleep there. We are off to a bad start: what will they have to hide? To make matters worse, the one we are told is from the Organization, a certain Jordi Torres, carries a ramshackle clunker from World War I and a most strange co-pilot. Where have we gone?
Meanwhile, a commando from HDJoteros appears with some machines that next to them our cars look like scalextric. Moment of panic: “Guys, we still have time to leave for Los Mandriles.” But they turn out to be nice and we make the first contact with some companions who will surely accompany us on more adventures: “the Commando Petaca”. Joaquín and Marco’s Defender peazo and Joan and Xavi’s Toyota also appeared later.
DAY 2 before the sorrows: we arrive at the port of Marseille and a very strange guy dressed in a tight blue jumpsuit, with red underpants on the outside, engraved on his chest the letters SR, and with a chulapo cap, welcomes us: but we had been told that everyone on the trip was Catalan…! “That’s it,” we thought, “it’s the typical marketing action to make the people of Madrid feel at home! To top it all off, he asks us if we know how to play mus…! New moment of panic: definitely, where have we gone! (even the most colorful knows that no Catalan knows how to play mus…)
There is another guy nearby, shorter, with a bad face, who the colleagues tell us is Lluís and that we are very careful to stay in the dunes because the colleague turns green and it is as if he put a tricorne on his head: he gets a bad temper…!! Lost scars that we are already…
I don’t know why I have called this day “before the sorrows”, because the journey on the boat is not to be missed. I’m going to waste little time in it because there’s little you can say when you’ve spent 18 of the 22 hours of the cruise inside the cabin, with the same feeling as if you’d had six glasses of a jug. But of the rest I only remember guys vomiting, doing that all over the place and a phantom briefing meeting to which only a few brave people attended, who ended up paying with their health…
DAY 3 before the sorrows: arrival in Tunisia and border crossing as expected, a pain! But we are already there and emotions are running high. The “Vermin Commando” is already beginning to stand out and show signs of all its potential, which it will demonstrate throughout all these days: we pass the border last, we arrive last at Jem, we refuel last, at the last gas station and miraculously and we arrive last at the hotel in Matmata, of course late at night…
After a sumptuous dinner we meet all the travellers in the hotel bar (how strange!) and there begins to take shape the cordial atmosphere that will permeate the group of adventurers in the following days: a radical faction of boixos nois rebuking the Madrid group and shouting for the heads of all the madridistas present there, howling at the top of their lungs the glorious Barça anthem and shouting slogans such as: “You are not capable of winning even in training, long live Barça and cheer for Catalonia”.
The most worrying subject was a mature person, not older, with gray hair and father of an “innocent creature”, present there, who with the veins of his neck swollen and with an F.C. Barcelona flag around his neck uttered heartbreaking screams and threatening gestures that caused us great anxiety and no less stress. Someone told us that it was the famous “Lupintan” and that it was totally harmless, although that did not relieve us too much.
To make matters worse, the short gentleman goes and tells us that, if we don’t want to be lynched by the rest of the group and burned at the stake at night, we have to make all the dunes in long ones: but we don’t even know how to put them on; If these cars come standard with the reduction gears and we have never removed them…!
In short, between the group of radicals with the famous Quiñonero and Lupintan at the head and the long ones, we didn’t sleep all night and we had the same feeling as the previous days: but where the hell did we get the most out of the day? We have gotten into it and who are these strange people?
DAY 4 before the pains, but a premonition of them: we are summoned at 4 in the morning (that will be a constant throughout every day) in the hotel parking lot to see some troglodyte houses and a Star Wars bar: Fuck, but no one is going to take them anywhere…! Why so early? But it seems that it was the idea of the short gentleman in bad temper and it is better not to provoke him. So we obey and, for once in our lives, we arrive on time for the appointment.
Then we all left together for an oasis called Ksar Guilane. The caravan is more distributed than the El Niño lottery, so everyone arrives as and when they can. Of course, on the radio station we are hearing that if he has already stayed in the sand, that if the man with the chulapo cap has found mud and cannot access through the main entrance: but if the Madrileños are still on the road and the rest of the group has already made a few dunes, a couple of trials and a muddy section….
A brief moment of rest, the first photos of landscapes and we are on our way to the dunes. The “Alimañas”, which is how we decided to call ourselves the group of Madrileños because we think it is the only animal capable of scaring the famous “Comando Escorpión”, occupy a discreet place within the caravan. I will tell the story of the Scorpion Command at another time because it is interesting, although I will say that the old men of the place had told us that it was a formidable group and feared for its nocturnal escapades and brave deeds, and then they turned out to be a mixture of Blessed Ursuline and baby, incapable of tearing off the wings of a paralytic fly. But, anyway, that’s what legends have…
I don’t remember that first day well, only that the Vermin set ourselves the order to put the gears on and only take them off if the man with the chulapa cap and the short guy with bad milk pulled our nipples with incandescent tongs…
And night came, and with it the icy cold and the most extreme torment to which a human being can be subjected…: a camp fire with Territori…!!
These camp fires inevitably begin like this: the old warriors, already with a thousand battles in their bodies with the “Secta Territori”, take up positions around the fire. As the novices arrive, they join the circle, but further and further away from the fire. So, when all the participants have arrived, there is a row of veterans near the fire, and groups of linnets, even in the fourth row!, on the other side of the fire. The strange thing about that first night is that the short, ill-tempered gentleman occupied the fourth row and, therefore, the fire did not even warm his eyelashes. The Vermin thought that this was an initiation rite of the Territori sect and that he was being tortured to prove his manhood, Orzowei style. Later he would gain ground by throwing one of the rookies into the fire and then devouring his entrails…
DAY 5 already of pain: just as we had been threatened, despite the fact that in the night camp fire there were several attempts at bribery, all of them unsuccessful, even at night we were all up with colder bodies than when you receive a notification from the Treasury. But it’s going to be the first full day of dunes and the excitement and tension act as anesthetizing inhibitors. According to the organization’s booklet, today we have to do 150 kms. That’s sucking!
The guy with the cap, who in a moment of weakness, just like Superman had, has discovered his true identity and we all know that it is the famous SUPER MOUSE, starts the march quite punctually followed by the group of veterans of the sect: the “harmless” Lupintan with his son, the red Toyotita with Joan and Xavi at the controls, the Mitsu of “El Solitario”, the Defender of Joaquín and Marco, Martí and Maite (in search of new pots to explore) and David “El Centralitas” and Jordi, although the latter are also infiltrators of the Comando Petaca.
Then the Quiñonero Brothers and Toni’s Navara come out and it is easy to follow their trail as you find the following: the Navara on the first ridge of all and Toni’s poor co-pilot running from one side to the other with a sling in his hand, the shackles in the other, the forwarding pulley embedded in … (At this moment I have to suspend this explanation because censorship is the first time he acts: the short man tells me that his children can read this and that he has not yet had the first talk with them on the subject of sexuality and that it would be very embarrassing for him to have to explain about the little seed and the fruit that grows…). Anyway, we pulled Toni, took him out and followed the trail to Quiñonero. It’s not a difficult trail to follow either: on the first uphill you find two grooves that seem to have been made by an unidentified flying object from the Raticulí and Ganymede Galaxy and a Selex shock absorber as a cairn. In the next one you can already see a piece of differential and the first clutch disc and Quiño shoveling sand and filling in the first letter of claim to Nissan Barcelona. Nothing happens, while several help to shovel and tire the wheel of the Quiño, the others dictate the chassis number and make a detailed sketch of how the breakdown has occurred to attach it to the claim to Nissan…
Well, this information is not entirely true because, normally, the Commando has left before the Navaras and it is not difficult to follow their trail either; just pay attention to the 27-meter radio station (the sulphuric one hasn’t done his homework and doesn’t have the 2-meter one…) and listen to conversations like this: -Fuck, my Australian McKinley Alfa 07 gearbox in combination with the Stifjauer pro 7000 control unit, how big man! You take this photo of me for the peña del foro, they’re going to freak out, man- (Miguel el Birras). “Cool, man. That climb is super technical, but I put my block on it and it gives me a high. You see how the HDJs are doing and in the forum you will see these machines in action- (Isa the reporter). Then there is an exchange of partners and, suddenly, Isa drives Miguel el Birras’ car, Quim is snorting in the sulfuric boat, while Alex has taken Marc’s car and one of the forum, who was in Barcelona, has come to test Quim’s new car and check the reliability of the new button that disconnects the air suspension by osmosis… These guys are like that!
Needless to say, the last group is made up of the official broom cars, Jordi Torres and Joan Rus and Ripolleitor and María, Josep Sutherland Suñer’s camouflaged Terracán and the Vermin Command. Well, the truth is that the last of all is the short gentleman in bad temper, but it’s better not to wake him up…
The kilometres follow one another inexorably, but some data begin to make us doubt that we are taking the right pace to complete the planned 150: at the first stop we have time to smoke a cigarette and comment on the dunes overcome; in the second someone already takes out a wineskin and deeper gatherings take place (I was born in a sunny month of March and had a happy childhood…); in the third a group here and there takes out the tables and chairs and someone dusts off a Serrano ham that begins to cut with a salt shaker; in the fourth Miguel el Birras takes out a Play Station and a group is organized with sixteenth finals, eighth, quarterfinals, semifinals and final; but the definitive clue that we were not going very well we had when Jordi Torres, expertly negotiating a cord of dunes, looks in the rear-view mirror and sees how a snail with a canteen and with the turn signal given asks him to pass and overtakes him by tearing off the stickers… Moment of terror! A new consultation of Territori’s book and, according to the planned script, today we should arrive in Kurdistan (a landlocked region located in western Asia, the north of the Middle East and south of Transcaucasia…) and yet, after twelve hours of walking we look back AND WE STILL SEE THE EMBERS STILL WARM FROM THE CAMPFIRE OF THE LAST CAMP…!!
The leaders of the Territori sect, that is to say Super Mouse and the short man with a bad temper, call an urgent meeting and explain to us that they have applied Neperian logarithms to know the density of the sand, they have carried out geological studies and have induced alpha projections on the inclination of the dune ridges and they have come to the conclusion that the sand is very bad and that we are going like the ass… Conclusion, that we retrace our steps and go down to a flatter area to set up camp at 4:30 in the afternoon…
Several scholars have tried to study the Territori phenomenon to unravel the mystery of setting up a camp at 4:30 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. at most, and then getting people up at 4 a.m., when it is still dark and they have not even put up the dunes, but after millions of euros spent and years of research invested, No one has been able to solve the enigma.
In short, we are back to how we were at the beginning: the leaders of the sect around the fire and the linnets, common novices, crowded against each other to combat the coldness a score of meters from the saving heat…
I don’t dare to narrate the things that happen, or that are said, during those camp fires because I think they would go against the UN Treaty, the Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Treaty together. The most I can detail is that Mr. Ripolleitor spends most of his time throwing giant Baobabs and Sequoias into the bonfire and then walks around the circle with a small metal bottle of the decathlon offering a strange liquid to everyone present. The result: those who haven’t tried the bottle go to bed early to rest and the rest stay up until the wee hours of the morning uttering terrifying guttural sounds and laughter that gives you goosebumps and the next day they spend the whole day shoveling sand and fixing untired.
Side note: send scholars and scientists back to study this behavior.
DAY 6 also of sorrows: it has been raining all night and everything foreshadows a busy day. No problem, a new look at the Organization’s book and new hopes are opening up in the Alimaña group: today we are also scheduled to do 150 kilometers. Second time’s the charm…! Today we surely do. According to the book, today we should reach the Cook Islands (in the middle of the Pacific), but if we go to El Callao (Peru) we would be satisfied. It is not in vain that Spanish expeditions centuries ago had achieved this with fewer means…
In short, we get down to work, more or less in the same order described the day before.
But, alas, friends! That Super Mouse passes through the rides and that’s it; the voixos nois pass and that’s okay too; but the third time you pass that sand it already looks like a mud trail from the Llobregat region, non fotis, nano, duck collons!
To make matters worse, it is the day that Martí decides to explore new pots and finds one in which he decides to stay and live there for a couple of days. Two or three winches and three pairs of slings convince him to abandon his idea and rejoin the group. Of course, as a souvenir it decides to leave its rear bumper and part of the exhaust there. If he is sentimental deep down…
The spirits are like people, soaked in water, because it doesn’t stop raining and it’s freezing cold. Mr. Ripoll, who has had to fix some breakdowns, has already had to change his clothes three times and has clear marks on the face of Maria’s roller.
Today is the day of “San Desllanto” because in my life I had seen so many desllantadas together. If the day before was slow in the march, today some members of the Alimaña Command decide to go visit some relatives they have in Totana (Murcia). On the return from the visit, the rest of the group managed to travel 9 KILOMETERS THROUGHOUT THE DAY!!
When Mr. Bajito, who now has more bad temper than ever because he has had to put three drums of 100 liters of oil each in his winch to get all the cars out of the pots, decides to call a new meeting to be able to get out of the dunes before nightfall, It turns out that it is too late and we have to camp to “every man for himself” and “faggot the last” in the middle of the dune range. The result is that as many camps are established as there are Masonic lodges within the group. And the only positive aspect is that there is no camp fire that night: we will be cold as always, but the old warriors of the Territori sect will go through the same as the others…
DAY 7 of extreme pain: No, please! The alarm clock rings again at 4:30 in the morning (or at least it seems that way because of how late it is at night and how cold it is…). Today it doesn’t rain, so it’s a foregone conclusion that TODAY WE DO THE 150 KILOMETERS. I no longer dare to look in the road book to see where we should have arrived today, so as not to get more depressed, but according to my calculations it is in some indeterminate place on the planet where human beings have not yet set foot. Anyway, if we get out of the dune belt in which we are immersed, I am satisfied…
This day is similar to the previous one: with the ground in terrible condition because, when three cars have passed, the hard layer breaks and the dreaded mud appears. I only remember one important detail of that day and that is that I drove with the scarf knotted to my head and the machete between my teeth, Rambo-style, so as not to stay, leading the group of the Vermin, when I find myself in front of two different ruts and, not to vary, I choose the bad ones by falling into a terrifying pot. I chose that path because David Sanglas was there and it seemed to me that this was the way to go. The car is stuck up to the bars and with one wheel at an impossible bridge crossing… I will never forget that terrible moment: David Sanglas approaches me with the parsimony that characterizes him (he was already picking up the winch, the shovel, the slings, the backhoe, the tunnel boring machine of Gallardón and other unblocking material…) and very, very sweetly and softly he tells me: – not to discourage you, but it took me more than two hours to get out of there… – and he walks away so calmly, leaving me with an asshole face, as you can only stay when you have done a championship shit.
There my Mari Mar, who for a moment had stopped sleeping inside the car (I estimate that of the 10 days of travel, Mar has been able to sleep about 193 hours) takes out the shovel and, as if possessed by the devil, she starts digging, and digging, and digging (she must have been about 15 minutes digging non-stop, Like crazy) until I said: “Thank you, darling, but it’s on the other wheels. We have to move forward.- I don’t know how, or why, but I woke up when the rest of the Vermin tried to unshove the shovel from my pylorus. Anyway, if it wasn’t for Toni and his Navara, right now I’d be writing these lines from that same pot, but with the shovel unstuck from my poor body.
With more expertise, after taking several necks from Mr. Ripoll (the poor thing, with infinite patience, tried to introduce into my hard head the necessary techniques to move on the sand without looking like a fucking paralytic), we had a much more fun day and we got to do ALMOST 40 KILOMETERS!!
Almost at night, a new meeting of the leaders of the Territori sect takes us to the lowest area of the dunes to be able to camp before it gets dark for good. Super Mouse and his acolytes did not attend that meeting because they were sightseeing in the highest area of the dune range.
That night will be remembered in Territori 4×4 beyond the years and the routes and will be told in all the camp fires and passed by word of mouth by all the adventurers who fall into the Territori lodge, as “THE REBELLION OF THE NOVICES” and will mark a before and after in the African camp fires.
A group of brave men, all of them from the group of pardillos, captained by the creator of the Syndicate of the Rookies, D. Jordi Alimaña, decide to rebel against the members of the Scorpion Command and, defying death and a terrible revenge, organize two fires apart from the main one. Together with them will be concentrated the group of ragged dunes of the dunes. It was like having on one side the area of the Diagonal and the Ramblas and on the other the Carmel, all sunken and the Gothic Quarter and Sant Pere. In short, there have always been classes…
But this class struggle did not detract from this last night of the camp, in which Friendship and Fraternity among the camps shone at a high level. And I say that it shone at a great height, because the beast from Ripoll dedicated itself to burning everything in its path that had the dimensions of the aircraft carrier Nimitz and the Camp Nou together and there was a moment when we were about to lose several of the cars (some did lose their eyebrows and eyelashes from the heat).
As a sign of generosity and clemency, SR and the man with a bad temper (although he had been taming himself along the way and now, from time to time, a slight smile appeared on his lips) let us get up the next day at 4:45. If deep down they are human…
DAY 8 and last of Dolores: it is already the last day of the 4×4 trip and I refuse to look at the road book. What is the point, if we never fulfill it…! But today we have to get to Matmata at all costs. Mostly because we have not showered or washed for five days and I have a colony of nits and ticks in certain areas of my body that I will not mention out of respect for the children who read this diary.
Unfortunately, the group, which is already resembling the victims who were returning from Vietnam, has to be divided into two subgroups: those who have their car badly damaged, on the one hand, and those who have their car badly damaged and do not know it yet, on the other… The former decide not to pass the last string of dunes and return through the Hamada which, according to the road book, should be 2,780 kilometres from us, but which in reality, with the few kilometres that the desert has allowed us to do, is just a stone’s throw away. Joaquín and Marco’s Defender, Martí’s Toyota, Quiño’s Navara scrapyard and Toni’s Navara (who decides to accompany his teammate Martí), along with what remains of Jordi Torres’ car (it is not known if that car is broken or that it is that standard), abandon the group to its fate and go straight to Matmata. The rest of us head for the last stretch of dunes and put the nose towards Ksar Guilane.
Now I really have to get a little serious because these are the saddest moments of the trip: those when you glimpse the end of the dunes and see the time coming to put the wheel pressures back in the “normal” mode. It is a bittersweet feeling, in which the homesickness of seeing the loved ones you have left at home and the nostalgia of the desert is mixed a little, which always exerts a powerful call that you cannot resist. It is almost like the odyssey of Ulysses, the Greek hero, when he decides to tie himself to the mast of his ship to listen to the song of the sirens (remember that it was an irresistible song for sailors, who were attracted to them to make them shipwrecked). That is how I feel about the desert: it exerts such a call on me that I cannot oppose it.
But to make the farewell to the desert less bitter, Manolo -Super Mouse for friends- gives us a wonderful clue to go from Ksar Guilane to Matmata.
DAY 9 of bitterness and following: I have no strength left, nor desire, to narrate the return to Hammamet and the return on the boat. The real journey ended in Matmata and I want my memories to stay there until I can return to the African continent.
All the effort and time I have invested in narrating my impressions of this trip, always in a humorous key and with the intention that no one feels offended, I dedicate to 37 endearing people and wonderful companions, despite each of us being our father and our mother, even Barça and Madrid.
This is my little tribute to the Great Family of Territori 4×4 and with it flies the desire to meet again on the next trip. A lot of shit for everyone, as we say in my profession!
Fran “Vermin”
Matmata, December 5, 2008
