Daily Report May 11, 2006

We arrived at the Honduran border at 2:30 am, although the reception in Choluteca had been planned for 11 pm of the previous day. We were very grateful to Melina Armijo of the Foreign Chamber of Commerce Honduras, for her late night commitment when she drove our flown-in camera crew to Choluteca from Tegucigalpa where she waited for the record team until the early morning hours.

We really hoped to have a nice event in Honduras since Melina Armijo, the director of the Foreign Chamber of Commerce, considerably contributed to the positive development of the Panamericana2006. We were very disappointed that we arrived too late for the event. We apologize to all who helped stage the event and we deeply regret its cancellation. We can assure that our drivers gave their all to get us there in time.

The pressure began to mount and with it our frustration. It was mostly the contact with the people during our trip and during the media events that has been very important to us from the beginning.

That night, we stopped only briefly in Choluteca before continuing on to Nicaragua.

Nicaragua profited from our delay which by then had been reduced to 5 hours and held a wonderful media event at the lunch hour. Nicaragua which promotes itself as „A Country with A Heart“, welcomed us warmly at the border and helped us forget, for a while, the enormous pressure that the impending air transport caused – we had to make the last passenger flight from Panama to Cartagena, Columbia, on May 12, 7:45 pm, and the cargo plane, at all costs.

But Nicaragua, a land worth seeing, kicked things up a notch. The Goodyear record vehicle was driven within the convoy to the media event by the Minister of Tourism herself; the reception in front of a historic building in the old part of town would have pleased any foreign dignitary as much as it suited our group of tired, unshaven and dishevelled car pilots who felt very self-conscious among the guests mostly dressed in spotless white. Every important media person was present when speeches were delivered first by the Minister of Tourism, Ms. Riva, then myself and Joerg. All drivers gave interviews and answered questions before and after lunch (!) which we ate at a table (!). After more photo opportunities, we said goodbye to our hosts and the two journalists that had joined us in Escuintla and hurried on toward Panama. When our long convoy, which now included an escort from the Nicaragua Tourism Institute, arrived at the border to Costa Rica, we had no idea that our time schedule had already been totally blown apart.

Our estimated time of arrival in San Jose, Costa rica, was 4 pm. We were confident that we would be able to make it when we reached the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border. Everything had been well prepared and our crossing should not have taken longer than 30 minutes if it had not been for a minor detail that surfaced at the last minute. Costa Rica had forgotten to delete the vehicle we used during our scouting/planning trip from their database despite the fact that the car had been lawfully processed. This oversight prompted one border official to deny entry for the entire convoy. This was serious and I was furious. I am extremely grateful to our Nicaraguan escort Gladis for trying to do everything possible to help us in this situation. But no matter what we did or said, the border official remained firm.

I enlisted the help of the German Embassy and Dr. Julia Monar contacted the Foreign Ministry and the Treasury. They were able to confirm only a short time later that the car had indeed been properly exported. Still the border official would not let us pass and instead demanded a written statement. Without going into further detail I will only say that after the receipt of the statement which was faxed from the top of the Foreign Ministry it took another 2 ½ hours until the convoy was able to continue. We had lost an additional 4 hours and were running out of time. It was midnight when we arrived in San Jose where we were awaited by representatives of the German Embassy, the AHK, biodiesel manufacturers, spectators, the media, as well as representatives of Goodyear and two invited journalists.

We enjoyed the nightly reception and support very much although we were now under enormous time constraints. Our trip became a race against the time which passed much too fast. In addition we were plagued by technical problems with the shocks. Fortunately, we were unaware of what was in store for us in Panama.