Trans-Amazon
March 4, 2026
Alex KiersteinLeftist guerillas. Bankrupt organizers. Brutal terrain. The Trans-Amazon Rally may be the craziest race.
I was staring at a dusty old Land Rover and I wasn’t equipped to do anything with the information I’d just recieved. We were just there to watch the Netherlands compete in the World Cup, afterall. In his early 60s, the Dutchman had a bushy white beard and glasses, looking like the sort of person who’d enter a then-new SUV in a brutal desert race on what amounted to a whim. Now retired, living in Spain, the man’s Land Rover looked like it had retired a while before him. In retrospect, consider the audacity–a complete amateur, a brand new SUV, and a 6,200-odd-mile odyssey through the desert, in the brief period of time in which the entire rally was basically an amateur scramble. Before Porsche, before the rally raid specials. When a stock Land Rover and a couple of random Dutchmen had a realistic shot.
They didn’t win. But they did finish, something that in and of itself was an achievement. I was thinking about that while watching this documentary on the Trans-Amazon (or was it Trans-South-America? It’s not entirely clear) Rally, which can be thought of like an unhinged, semi-organized, and very dangerous version of the early Dakar rallies.
The semi-deadpan narration actually nails the appropriate level of cynicism. This is no hagiography, it’s a documentary, titled “Racers of a Distant Dream.” The rally organizers go bankrupt just before the start of the race, or possibly they “misappropriated” the $2.5 million in entry fees put forward by the entrants. The detailed guide book is tossed out, for some reason, leaving everyone to rely on tourist maps. Delays cause the first special stage to end in total darkness, leading to a deadly crash on the first night. The route leads through M-19 territory, leftist revolutionaries in an active war with the government, although no one is kidnapped.
The entrants are colorful. There’s a customized Beetle with glassed-in aux lights that keeps breaking down. An affable Floridian with a Harley. A professional French rally driver who complains that the race isn’t fast enough. Two female Japanese thrill-seekers in a two-door Pathfinder.
They later crashed. One was rushed to the hospital, where her heart stopped twice.
After 26 days, it’s all over, although I’m sure that felt like an eternity to the competitors. Eighty vehicles entered; nine cars and four bikes reach the finish line in Buenos Aires.
I’m not sure if those are odds even the mad Dutchman with the Land Rover would’ve taken.
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