Twenty-four countries in two and a half months, three young people from Vigo eager for adventure and a 1984 Seat Trans. This is how the journey of Christian (35), Fátima (25) and Nacho (21) begins to participate in the Mongolia Rally. , whose motto is that “if everything goes right, something has gone wrong.” They are the visible face of Barnacle, the team behind this project.
Beyond hitting the road and reaching the finish line in Kazakhstan on August 24, the crew is preparing to leave on June 10 with an additional objective: to record a documentary and hold a photographic exhibition that reflects the cultural diversity of their path. Likewise, they also collaborate with different charitable associations, such as the Vigo NGO Lápices de Colores, of which they are ambassadors. In this sense, they will focus on building a house for a local family. All this, aboard a vehicle that has forty summers on its wheels.
“I had been wanting to participate for nine years now,” says Christian Nogueira, data engineer, traveler with twenty years of experience and promoter of the initiative, “but I had always postponed it due to lack of resources or the fact of living abroad. However, in February of last year I bought the place with the idea of ??doing it myself.” At least, that’s how it was in principle. “I thought: why don’t I document it? I really like the culture shock and I think that the Mongolian Rally offers us the opportunity to get closer to rarely visited areas,” continues Christian, who posted an ad on Instagram to find cameramen to accompany him. From that moment on, the drone pilot and cameraman, Nacho Trota, and the production and lighting specialist, Fátima Guisande, joined the team. It was then December 2023.
Despite the fact that each one plays their role, they all actively participate in the process. “There is very good synergy between us and my teammates go above and beyond. They do not stick to a single role, but if the car has to be dismantled, we do it between the three of us,” he says. Thus, it must be taken into account that choosing a vehicle in the worst possible condition is one of the basic premises of this Endurance Rally. “Compared to the rest of the competitors, it is a luxury. Even if it is less than a liter of engine, which is one of the conditions to participate, we have a lot of space. There are those who participate in a mini or a 125 motorcycle,” says Christian about the Seat Trans that he bought for €1,200 in Gondomar. And he continues: “of course it is also true that we are going to do something more than the rest. We need to be able to transport cameras, drones and all the necessary material to record.”
In this way, the team has a standard Seat Trans and the collaboration of TDS Motorsport to tune it up and attend to certain aspects of vital importance. “There are only a few weeks left and we have to change the head gasket, disassemble the engine, get familiar with it… Then, we have to camperize the van and work with the temperature gauges,” they explain. “In the case of the head gasket, the one we have is so old that it does not indicate the temperature unless it is already too high. Therefore, we are going to try to install some meters that allow us to know if the engine is overheating. “This way we will know if we should stop and do something in the meantime, such as editing the content we have recorded.”
After evaluating it among themselves, they are clear that they are not going to carry tools that allow them to easily overcome the almost certain incidents that they will have along the way. “It has been difficult for us to disassociate ourselves and say ‘well, we don’t have a mataburras, a winch, or a cow.’ The idea is that, if something goes wrong, we interact with local populations. Not that we have the solution inside the car,” says Christian. However, they do have chargers for the cameras and special dirt wheels to move once they enter the territories of the Eurasian steppe.
The destination is almost the least important thing. A few weeks ago, the current geopolitical situation forced us to move the finish line from Ulan-Ude (Russia), on the border with Mongolia, to more than 3,500 km to the west, to some still undetermined point in Kazakhstan. “In this change of route, they have advised us against going through Russia,” the team points out. “They don’t advise us much to go through Iran either, but we will go anyway. I have references from acquaintances around the world and, beyond the news that reaches us and how stigmatized it is, it is a quite hospitable country.”
Thus, on their journey through the former Soviet regions, they will cross Turkey, Iran and Turkmenistan which, in their words, “despite being a dictatorship and incredibly tedious to manage at a bureaucratic level, it has places like the Circle of Hell (Darvazá Well) , an area that permanently emanates gas and is beautiful.” Afterwards, they will continue through Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and then go up to Kazakhstan. “It may seem like a somewhat kamikaze route, but we trust that, beyond the bureaucracy and uncertainty that the van offers us, we are going to have very good experiences in terms of welcome and treatment,” they point out.
Not all of them have the same experience when traveling. However, Fátima adds that “when they propose something like that, saying no would be a mistake. The risk is there, but we have to move forward.” In this way, the team is working hard to finalize details and has launched crowdfunding, which aims to raise €10,000 to cover the expenses of both the filming and the trip itself. “I am financing the project and I already have a very nice negative, but I trust in what we are doing and the team we form,” says Christian. So far, one of the most complicated aspects has been the bureaucracy and cost of some visas. “Just a visa for five days in Turkmenistan costs €550 each,” he says.
Once the trip is finished, and after the corresponding post-production process, the documentary will be presented to different national and international film competitions, in order to share the experience. “I want the viewer to feel how lost we are, how excited; what a recipe prepared in Uzbekistan sounds like or a blanket on the floor, which is where we will sleep. I want it to be part of our road trip,” Christian finally reflects. The first stop on this journey will take place on July 14 in Prague, where all the participants of the Mongolian Rally will meet to receive the starting signal. From there, the adventure continues.
