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| In Romania, a Trabant's 26 hp. engine gets a three-kid-power push outside Dracula's castle. Courtesy of Trabant Trek |
On the road – from Germany to Cambodia – in a communist jalopy
Towed by camels and laughed at by pedestrians, the lowly Trabant is a modern-day Marco Polo for a good cause.
from the April 3, 2008 edition
Page 3 of 3
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Trabant Trek hit the road well prepared. Drury forgot the road maps, but there were full engines and complete gear boxes in the trunks. They'd need them – as well as spare parts scavenged and improvised from junk en route.
On the 13,000 foot passes of Central Asia's Pamir Mountains, they lugged their backpacks, to unburden their vehicles for the uphill crawl.
"In Tajikistan, we broke down every 36 kilometers," Perez says.
At an unmarked border crossing between warring Armenia and Azerbaijan, they stumbled into a noman's land guarded by Armenian soldiers. Amused by their smoke-belching relics, the guards invited the trespassers to tea. Georgian border guards, meanwhile, wanted to turn them back for attempted smuggling – of the 20 gallons of motor oil they carried to mix with the gas in fill ups. In Batumi, on the Black Sea, Lovejoy, and three other Trabanteers went looking for an ATM. "Instead," he recalls, "[we] found a minister's son, his bodyguard, and [the country's] number-one ballroom dancer."
On the steppe, a horse began racing the cars. "It was running alongside a good while, looking at us," Perez says. "That was weird."
In the frozen Gobi Desert, they followed the sun and railroad lines for direction, looking "feral, to say the least," after weeks without showering. Their breath froze on the windshield, and exhaust fumes were pumped into the car by the primitive heater. "When our eyes started burning, we knew it was time to stop," Perez recalls.
When Ziggy came to land nose-first in a sand dune, with leaf springs split over wheels, it was towed to the nearest hamlet by camels.
The group spent Christmas in Laos installing new cylinders flown in from Budapest.
On Feb. 8, Trabant Trek reached Cambodia – three months behind schedule. Though their odd-looking cars were attacked by incensed cows outside Sihanoukville, Team Trabant received a hero's welcome from kids at the M'Lop Tapang day center there and the Mith Samlanh outreach in Phnom Penh.
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Epilogue: The trek has raised $30,000 from Internet donations for the children's centers. But, on the return trip from Bangkok to Sihanoukville, Fez joined Dante in Trabant heaven, expiring just across the Thai border. Drury and Perez left the car on the roadside, driving off in Ziggy.
"I saw a farmer eyeing up [Fez] as we were leaving," Drury says. "Maybe he'll convert it into a plow or tractor."
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