Rallye de Beaumont, Haiti

In July of 2003 I participated in the Rallye de Beaumont. Dokte Phillipe and a young friend of his accompanied me in my 15 year old Jeep Wrangler. I had heard about the event the previous year when I met some of the motorcyclists of the Haitian Trail Riders moto club. Mostly motorcyclists and 4 wheel ATV's do this run but there are some 4x4's which go as well. We sortie'd to Les Cayes, usually called OKay, where the participants were to rendevous. The entrance fee got us one bed at a hotel next to the American University de OKay. Phillipe and friend stayed with some of his south coast friends a few blocks away. I did not realize when paying the entrance fee that 2500 gourdes was per person rather than per machine.

The courtyard was filled with motorcycles and trucks. A lot of honda XR 400's were there and assorted ATV's. The Yamaha Raptor is popular. A big KTM moto was particularly impressive. Two actual rallye prepped machines were there, a mazda quarte porte turbo diesel and a Ssangyong wagon thing. They had ARB bumpers on them and rallye lights which probably cost half as much as my Jeep. The start of the race was to be as Les Irois, way the heck down the coast from Les Cayes. Many people besides me doubted that we could get there in the three hours alloted in the morning. So, I planned to leave earlier than the 7am scheduled departure time from the hotel. Most others did the same, roaring out of Okay at 6am.

After getting by the bus station and the first few miles of slow going we got into a nice pace, slewing around the corners in clouds of dust. Driving at some speed on bad roads takes some practice to find the proper velocity to slide smoothly from one bump to the next. Some roads do not have a proper frequency so the ride never smoothes out, but we got a good 40 mph rythm going with occasional whumps and whoop de doos. The Occasional whumps, however, broke a bolt holding my radiator on. This radiator I had bought in Miami at Radiators.com. At a warehouse of radiators.com, that is. I then put it into a container at a frieght forwarding service for delivery via ship (along with other baggage procured on that shopping trip) to Port au Prince. I had it installed at a roadside radiator shop, where they still do soldering and cleaning of radiators. Cost me 4 u$d for installation. Only the two top bolts were used to secure the sucker tho. That's all that were in the old radiator. A little more prudence on my part would have revealed that FOUR bolts are intended to secure a radiator up there.
So I got out a sisal rope and strapped the side of the radiator up onto the body work and continued on. En Port Salut we stopped again to ranje the radiator again. Some of these photos were taken in Port Salut, the home town of J. B. Aristide. Port Salut is a pretty little town with block pavers on the main streets. Many of these south coast towns have paved central routes. Once one gets to Port Salut the route between towns isn't too bad, they have been recently graded and there isn't very much traffic to wreck them again. Getting to Port Salut is where the road was bad enough to shake the radiator off.

Past Port Salut is Port a Piman, pepper port. Dokte Phillipe lived there for four years, doing agricultural and veterinary labors and instruction. The view coming around the bend to see the church of Port a Piman makes the trip worthwhile. Just before reaching Port a Piman we crossed a river bed with a pack of laborers dragging a huge dugout canot down to the sea. Bel Bateau! Phillipe cried out; we turned back to get this photo. That resulted in a pack of hard working, sweaty men surrounding us demanding kob for grog. I think we came up with a few gourdes, but the fact that they called it 'grog' rather than 'tafia' or 'kleren' was interesting. They have different words down here on the south coast, probably due to the english occupation during the revolution. One town that we passed through is named Les Anglais, or the english.

Past Port au Piman there was formerly only a burro track. Oh, we stopped in at Port a Piman so that Dok Phillipe could visit with old friends there for a few minutes. Now there is a good road to Tiburon (on the southwest corner of peyi-a) and up to Les Anglais and Les Irois. Les Irois had only burro tracks and boats until quite recently. It is quite a good sized town even with no ground transportation. By the time we reached Les Irois (The start of the race, remember?) the racers had all left two hours before. We were greeted with a large enthusiastic crowd and the officials of the race. They had our route sheet and check in papers still waiting for us. They had been waiting for two hours for the final car to arrive. Arrive at the departure! We were so excited about reaching the start that I forgot to take photos. It was a Nice little town. The route went inland around the town and we were so anxious to get racing that we didn't go to look at the town.
The first stage was from Les Irois to Dame Marie and we made good time, stopping once at an ancient town in a river valley to buy fried pork fat and plantain in centre ville to the amazed stares of crowds of people. They had no traffic at all for a few centuries. Then we raced out of that bourg up a muddy track, bouncing sideways in the ruts at about 50 mph. Fun! The roadway was cut into the rich red earth over steep hills separating towns in small river valleys.
Dame Marie is a good sized town and was formerly the southern end of the road system on that far southwest coast. From Dame Marie the road of long standing goes up to Jeremie, following a lovely river valley, the riviere Grand Anse. This is rough gravel road but fairly flat. We weren't trying to make speed here, one section of semi-racing speed was enough for us and not having found any other racers took the excitement out of going fast. It was nice country for sightseeing.
At the checkpoint in Jeremie we caught the first of the other participants in the rallye. It was Meyer in his Range Rover, however, who was not racing at all. He had a car full of babes drinking cold kola. We passed two country women returning to country from marketing. They laughed at my smoking a pipe. This happens a lot, only country folks, bouki hillbillys smoke a pipe en Hayti. Jeremie has a big steel bridge over the river. It must have been put up during the first occupation by the marines. It is still in good shape and crosses a real river, the Grand Anse. Peyisan build rafts of bamboo and sail them down the river with cargo. They dismantle the rafts and sell the bamboo when marketing is over.

From Jeremie to Beaumont is a truly bad road. It must have been cut by marine engineers 70 or 80 years ago through good bedrock because it remains solid, but no maintenance has been done for many years. Probably half a century since pavement has been laid. Certainly there is not a stitch of pavement now. It more closely resembles a stream bed. Huge rock steps take the place of a road bed. The original cutting was well though out though, as it has not fallen in. One finds no Honda cars here. Only real 4x4's and gros Camion can pass. Land Cruisers, Mitsu Monteros and the like are what all the civilian transport uses. Big USA School busses are the public transport as well as gros camion.
The climb up out of Jeremie to Beaumont was rock climbing. Jeep rocking. On a moto one could put on bursts of some speed, but it would be like enduro work, not racing as on the dirt roads of earlier sections.
http://www.lyalls.net/haiti/rallye.html