29 Apr 05
Just ten years ago the village of Terevinto, a sprawling collection of single-storey buildings brightly daubed in every colour of the rainbow, got electricity. Then four years ago, telephone lines gave the 600 inhabitants of this clearing in the Bolivian plains (or chaco) an umbilical cord to the outside world.
"That totally changed our lives," beams Elvio Rivero, a village elder. "It meant we could find out the football results from Bolivia and the rest of the world on the same day!"
Footie fanatic Rivero is mentally totting up the number of men in the four-car convoy of burnt-orange Land Rovers we have driven into the village. Five. Enough for a team in a game of five-a-side football, then...
But not only is it 35°C and 85% humidity in the midday sun, which is a bit too hot for football, but we are also on a mission. Namely, to conclude the second major reconnaissance of the G4 adventure's South American leg. In just five days we must complete the exploration of possible routes and locations along 1300kms of the steamy lowland chaco and up into the mighty Andes. Elvio's offer of a kick-about has to be turned down.
"You know, no one ever comes through here. The roads are too bad!" he shouts after us as we start pulling out of town.
Elvio can be heard but not seen. Thick, red mud coats the whole of our Discovery, including the windows and rear-view mirrors. Just hours ago, as we left Bolivia's second largest city Santa Cruz, it shone with a showroom gleam.
