Expedicion Guarani

Third Time A Charm For Gracie in Paraguay

Rob Howard / 02.03.2017

The third Expedicion Guarani is about to start in Paraguay, and two time winner Nick Gracie is heading back to see if he can complete the hat-trick of wins.

Gracie rarely misses an opportunity to race in South America and is competing with world ranked #2 team Columbia Vidaraid who must be the favourites.  The team is really a combination with the Godzone Adventure squad as Sarah Fairmaid (NZ) is also joining up with Jon Ander Arambalza and Marco Rossini. (Urtzi Iglesias Mota is the Race Director on this one.)

The race is part of the AR World Series and will comprise a 400km non-stop course (or 200km for the Adventure Category).  Gracie described the terrain as; “Fairly flat, though they do have a few big hills.” He added, “The jungle is pretty, it’s not really dense jungle like we had the World Champs in Brazil, but the navigation can be very tricky on foot as the maps are sketchy. The riding is all on tracks which can be either really fast or really slow, depending on the rainfall. If it’s muddy, especially on the clay it can be a shocker. I think we were moving 1km an hour at one point last year and at others 30km/hour.”

The race does say on their website, “Although the country does not have very actuals maps, we promise to fix them and add all the information needed to be able to trust them.”  It’s definitely adds to the adventure!

Gracie was a bit concerned about his role at team navigator as he’s usually the back-up with the map. “I don’t want to make any howlers,” he said. “I’ve been doing a lot of orienteering lately for practice and have about 5 compasses and several bike computers – I’ve got everything backed up!  I’ll be studying the old course maps on the flight out too.  Luckily Jon speaks Spanish so that will help a bit, though many of the communities there speak a local dialect.”

He knows this time there is stronger competition for his team. The team list includes several experienced international teams, Cyanosis from S. Africa being the most likely to feature at the front, and a strong entry from all around South America. 

I asked him what the attraction of the race and Paraguay was and he said, “You really go off the tourist map to places where few visitors are seen.  The people live a very simple life and are super friendly so I’ve made lots of friends there and I know teams are so well looked after by the race. They provide hot food at transitions and take your bike and laundry to clean afterwards so it’s a bit like an adventure race come holiday.”

Paraguay has cleared worked its charm on Gracie and he’s looking forward to racing there again.

The race website is at http://www.expedicionguarani.com/home and they usually have tracking if you want to follow along, though information is sketchy during the event itself. We’ll bring you what we can find out.