Terra de Gigantes/Selva Win South American Adventure Cup
Wladimir Togumi (www.adventuremag.com.br) / 04.05.2016
Costa Rica is not just a country in Central America, but also a city in Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. With 20,000 people, Costa Rica hosted the second edition of Copa América de Corrida de Aventura (Adventure Race America Cup) that received teams of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.
The city impressed everyone. It has a big infrastructure, and is very clean and with big avenues that cross the city.
Three public schools were used as accommodation for the participants. They were worried about the heat of this area of Brazil, but to their surprise all of the classrooms had air conditioning and each team stayed in a different classroom and received brand new mattresses to sleep on. For an adventure race it was a luxury!
The pre-race activities began with the check-in at the National Park Salto do Sucuriú where teams checked with obligatory equipment and received the 1:100.000 maps.
In the afternoon it was time for the environmental project at Parque Ecológico Vilibaldo Rodrigues Barbosa. Each team planted a tree and each had a small name plate with the team and athletes’ names, state or country flag and the logo of CBCA (Confederação Brasileira de Corrida de Aventura) – the Brazilian National Adventure Race Confederation.
The Race
The two race directors – Francisco Perez and Lucas Gerônimo – are known in Brazil for tough and technical races, with a lot of navigation in the middle of thick jungle. And this time it was not any different.
They estimated the first team should complete the 200 Km course in about 24 hours, but it was longer than that. Team Terra de Gigantes/Selva won the race in 32 hours, and the second place, Argentinian Team Ansilta Viento Andino arrived 12 hours later.
Terra de Gigantes made a different route choice on the first trekking section that defined the race.
In this section the obvious choice was going down to the right of the mountain and to follow a 30 year old trial and some rivers inside a canyon. Instead of that, Terra de Gigantes decided to go down using the other side of the mountain – and for that, they used their obligatory 20m rope – saving them some kilometers, a lot of time and getting closer to the checkpoint.
But it was still the middle of the race and although this was the most difficult section there were a lot of challenges ahead, with another tough trekking section.
At night the temperature dropped about 10ºC. It was a cold night for the teams in the middle of the jungle, but when the sun rose, they found the way to the checkpoint and out of the canyon.
In the end, just 3 teams made full course and another 3 were cut-off at different checkpoints.
Final Positions
1 - Terra de Gigantes / Selva (BRA) – R$ 6.000,00
2 - Team Ansilta Viento Andino (ARG) – R$ 4.000,00
3 – Kuntur (ARG) – R$ 2.500,00
4 - Saci AKSA (BRA) – R$ 1.500,00
5 - Gallo Specialized (PRY) – R$ 1.000,00
