HOW THE OTHER HALF OVERLAND

Kalmar Beyond Adventure restifies middle-aged Porsche 911s and Cayennes into rally clients can enjoy them. The latest was an 11,000-kilometre epic on the best trails and

Words: Olly Sack Pictures: Kalmar Beyond Adventure

raid style overlanders – and organises trip-of-a-lifetime expedition events so its terrain of South America, from Lima in the north to the End of the World in Ushuaia

There’s adventure. And the there’s Beyond Adventure. There’s Porsches. And then there’s beyond Porsches. And even if you’re a strictly 110-Tdi-with-aroof-tent kind of guy when it comes to overlanding, the image of a 911 from a quarter of a century ago crossing deserts and mountains on steel wheels and tall tyres with no tarmac to be seen anywhere is definitely beyond what you might see in the expedition world.

Kalmar Beyond Adventure is a travel company with a difference. It runs a fleet made up of early Cayennes and 993 and 964-era 911s, which have been prepared by sister company Kalmar Automotive for on and off-road adventures; paying customers hire them to take part in its events, which include driving tours in every continent.

Of course, it’s not vehicle-dependent travel in the traditional sense. A convoy of expensively prepped modern classic sports cars on a fully supported and presumably similarly expensive six-week holiday is a million miles from a couple of blokes spannering their way around the world in an oily old wagon while labouring on farms to pay for their diesel. But however you get your kicks, adventure stirs the soul in the same way.

The initial route took them into the Nazca Desert well off the beaten track at best, and breaking out the towing straps to help each other across virgin dunes of deep sand at worst

The Trans-Andes Beyond Adventure rally was a 39-day, 11,000-mile epic starting in Lima, capital of Peru and ending in Ushuaia, at the southern tip of Argentina. In the planning for three years, it brought together teams from Singapore, Germany, the USA, Macau, Hong Kong, Britain, Mexico and the Netherlands for a journey which Kalmar says was ‘nothing we offer to the public but to a group of what we call now friends.’

The teams gathered in Lima in mid-October, where the Porsches were waiting for them after a breathless prep process which saw Kalmar’s tech team working through the night to have them ready for action less than 48 hours after clearing customs. Then, within a couple of days of setting off, they were straight into it as the initial route took them into the Nazca Desert –well off the beaten track at best, and breaking out the towing straps to help each other across virgin dunes of deep sand at worst. ‘Worst’ in this case also meaning best, of course.

It might have been an adventure holiday, and the aforementioned lads in the oily 110 might sneer at is as being rich folk playing at expeditions. But a long day is still a long day, however well supported it is, and the teams were already getting used to spending marathon-level hours on board. ‘Gruelling’ is perhaps not the word, but ‘relaxing’ hardly applies here either.

As the route progressed south towards the border with Bolivia, the convoy took a paused for thought in the city of Arequipa to give a little something back to a good cause – Paz Holandesa, a hospital run by Dutch woman Marjan van Mourik, whose work allows access to healthcare for children whose families would otherwise be unable to afford it. The ugliness of the gap between rich and poor is hard to escape in a situation like this, but the meeting was at least one small opportunity for some of the world’s wealthy to do something for those less fortunate than themselves.

How wealthy is wealthy in this case? Kalmar Beyond Adventure doesn’t quote prices for its events. But 39 fully supported, all-inclusive days in a valuable classic car that’s been shipped around the world for you to jump in and drive is never going to come cheap. And as a rough guide to the sort of lifestyle the company’s customers enjoy, a couple of nights later they were staying at Titilaka, a hotel on the western shore of Lake Titicaca – whose rooms cost upstairs of $1000 a night. There are people who go travelling with less than that in their bank account.

From here, the route crossed into Bolivia. Which can only mean one thing – the Salar de Uyuni. At half the size of Wales, this is the world’s biggest salt flat, and it’s an absolutely A1 destination for overland travellers of every kind. People ship their vehicles to South America just to come here – and if ever there was a place to build an expedition around, this would be it.

There are many unique sights around Uyuni. There’s the cactus-covered islands rising from an endless horizon of salt. There’s the forest of national flags planted by visitors from all around the world. There’s even the ghostly Cementerio de los Trenes, a giant scrapyard in which abandoned trains from as far back as the 19th Century have been parked up and left to rust.

Among all these, however, one of the most iconic images in the whole of the 4x4 world is that of an old 60 or 80-Series Land Cruiser on the Salar. Overlanders flock here, of course, but so do backpackers – for whom there’s a thriving local business in off-road day tours on to the salt. Seeing the brightly coloured Porsches of the Kalmar convoy making fast passes across the smooth, flat ground is definitely not something the locals would be used to – but against such a beguilingly stark background, the cars looked better than ever.

From the silent salt flats of Uyuni, a deceptively short hop takes you into the parched high desert of the Atacama. Here, it’s all rocks and red sand amid a towering landscape of extinct volcanoes. When we say it’s a short hop, of course, it was still a long day, especially with the constant noise and movement as the

Porsches’ suspension worked hard over the rough ground (not to mention crossing the border into Chile). Arriving in San Pedro de Atacama, a desert settlement that feels like a cross between the Wild West and one of those frontier towns in Star Wars, drivers and navigators alike definitely felt like they had worked for their living.

Two weeks had now passed since the convoy was flagged off from Lima, but a look at the map will show you that it had only covered less than a fifth of the distance to Ushuaia. Not to worry, though, they were packing Porsches…

From here, the route included a lot more in the way of tarmac. Not the kind that dulls your mind and breaks your spirit, though. As you travel south through Patagonia, the mountains are transected by wide, sweeping highways full of corners to savour and views to marvel at. Even with their raised suspension and all-purpose tyres, the 911s were still in their element here – though to be fair, even that old 110 would be a blast on roads like these.

Not that it was all plain sailing. As they crossed into Argentina, the border guards told them that the road ahead was flooded and they wouldn’t get through. Instead, they would need to take a detour of several hundred miles to another frontier post.

If this was Britain, of course, the road would be closed and the authorities would tell everyone to stay out of the water because people doing things is automatically bad. But here, society doesn’t have small man syndrome; the guys on the border post dished out their advice, the Kalmar convoy chose not to take it and bish bosh, on we go. ‘We just went right in,’ says the company, ‘and made the impossible possible!’

More gravel roads followed, as well as sand and mud – and, of course, further stretches of joyous tarmac – as the rally progressed south towards its destination.

Ushuaia is known as The End of the World, which is a little alarming, but perhaps The Pinnacle of Achievement would be better, because to drive there really does take some doing. Even when you’re being looked after the way Kalmar looks after its clients, an 11,000-kilometre expedition on road, trail and virgin ground is never going to be a walk in the park.

If that’s the case for those on board, too, it’s doubly so for the vehicles. The 911 wasn’t made to do this kind of thing, so for Kalmar Automotive this rally and others like it prove that its conversions really do work. The company says its focus is on ‘crafting bespoke, reimagined sports cars and special-purpose adventure vehicles… that are optimised for use both on and off-road.’ Its 911-based RS model gains lifted suspension, rally wheels, underbody protection and a roof rack and roll cage, while the Cayenne-based CS is equipped with a winch and snorkel, 18” mud tyres, frontal and underbody protection and a full roof rack. Both models undergo a weight-reduction programme as part of their build, too, and the spec also includes auxiliary LED lighting and a fridge.

You can buy your own Kalmarbuilt Porsche (hint: don’t expect it to be like your everyday foray into the used car market), or if it’s the adventure that appeals you can try booking yourself on to one of its future trips and getting aboard one of the actual vehicles in these pictures. A few days after arriving in Ushuaia, they were being loaded on a transporter en route to Africa, where later this year they’ll be used for another breathtaking expedition, and Kalmar also has events coming up in the Swiss and French Alps and, even more appealingly, the mystical Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan. Sounds alright, doesn’t it? Being able to afford it would be alright, too, but that’s hardly the point. However exclusive these adventure experiences might be, what really matters is the adventure itself. It’s about

When the guards manning the Argentinian border post warned them that the road ahead was badly flooded and it would be impossible to get through, you’d think that a convoy of Porsche sports cars might decide that discretion was the better part of valour. But the people at Kalmar Beyond Adventure are made of sterner stuff than that, and they ploughed straight in, and out the other side – in their own words, ‘making the impossible possible’ the landscapes, the travel and the camaraderie – and whether you’re doing it in grand-a-night hotels or an old truck with a bag of tools on the passenger’s seat, the things that make it magical will always be the same. Beyond adventure? Always.