The municipalidad had helped us organise a mini-fiesta in the plaza next to the town hall.
We bough down a couple f mototaxis for the public to see. The Mayor gave all the teams a present & invited the teams onto the stage, and after I set up a slide show of the events so far, which was amusing.
Then the grand finale!
A great firework show in the plaza. First was a "Castle" which was about 12 m high, witch was a mighty fine show & filled the plaza, but they saved the best to the end.
They had built us a Mototaxi out of Bamboo, paper & loaded it with fireworks, a first for them too.
The best bit was they asked me if it was a good idea to "drive" it about the plaza.........Errr OK if your not going to die!
So two brave people picked it up, set fire to it & proceeded to display it rounf the square, with sparks & band right above theor heads.
FANTASTIC to watch but you would not get me doing that!
The Mototaxi Junket was the first event of its type in South America - Simply drive a three wheeled Peruvian Tuk-Tuk 4,000km from Peru to Paraguay - Easy!
The Motortaxi is basically a home-made contraption for ferrying people round the towns in Peru. Invented & built in Peru, & not intended for grand adventures such as this.
As I live in Peru I was called in to help get things going, as things were a bit late due to the original builder, Honda, pulling out at the last min.
So, 63 mototaxis were purchased from all corners of Peru, including Iquitos, the largest City without a road connection. They were got to Huancayo by building a raft & floating them to the nearest road, about 5 days away up the Amazon!
They were re-assembled in Huancayo, the teams had a few training sessions in a school playing field, as nobody had ever driven one before of course.
There was the obligatory party, lots of fireworks, & then they were off to try make their way to Paraguay!
http://mototaxijunket.theadventurists.com
Wandering Bear
