Transport: Divo’s Drive

Officials of the Pan-American Union and U. S. Bureau of Public Roads are frankly skeptical that anyone has ever ridden overland from Argentina to the U. S., but they heartily applaud the courage of the few adventurers who have tried it. Among them a Swiss, riding two ancient horses alternately, reached Washington in 1927 from Argentina. Two years later Italy’s Jose Mario Barone, driving a Studebaker arrived in New York from Rio de Janeiro. Three Brazilians in a Ford, two Argentineans on bicycles, also made the trip. But all made some water jumps, for as the U. S. Bureau of Public Roads points out, there is one “impassable obstacle” between North and South America, 300 miles of mountains and festering jungle between the Panama Canal and the Colombia border. Last week this fact did not cause anyone, however, to disdain Miguel Divo.

Thirty-three months ago in Buenos Aires, Divo, a slender, wasp-waisted Argentinean, climbed into his 1926 model-T Ford sedan, and rattled west toward Santiago, Chile. There he pointed his square radiator and wobbling front wheels north, traversed thirteen countries, jolted through 1935, 1936 and most of 1937 before he landed last week at the front door of Manhattan’s Hotel Pennsylvania.

Of his 22,000-mile route, one-third is mountain, desert and jungle. Divo gaily took the first 400 miles from Buenos Aires to the foot of the Andes, crossed the mountains without “incident” although he left behind a companion suffering from “altitude-sickness” and deviated on a pilgrimage to the great bronze frontier statue of the Saviour 13,000 feet above the sea. Running up Chile’s narrow finger north of Santiago, Divo bashed in, his radiator crossing Atacama Desert, and buried a companion picked up en route, who died of thirst. He himself was rescued by a chance caravan. As he hacked his way a yard at a time through jungles of Peru and Ecuador, he and two new partners were nearly eaten alive by myriads of mosquitoes. When they ran out of food Divo shot monkeys. Last week munching a rich spread provided at the Hotel Pennsylvania, Divo declared that monkey meat was “very good—just like human flesh.”

Through the 300 “impenetrable” miles north from Colombia to the Panama Canal, guided only by compass, Divo claims to have hacked, ferried, pontooned. even to have taken his Ford to pieces, transported it by mule-back. In the forests of Darien “under a small cross” a second companion was buried. In Costa Rica’s Colorado River a raft sank and for 15 days his car and equipment were at the bottom of the river. Natives who had never seen an automobile wanted to feed his Ford, tried to tether it at night. In more literate, moneyed centres, Miguel Divo—a magician on the side—raised funds by such stunts as glass eating. He was joined by his wife, Emma, a dancer, in Managua, Nicaragua, and after a comparatively smooth run from Central America Divo rolled into Manhattan with the same six tires with which he started and but one battery change. However, his one-time sedan had been reduced to a topless, paraphernalia-laden touring car.

Although his claim that he traversed more of the intercontinental land route than any of his predecessors still needs official corroboration, the Standard Oil Co. of N. J. which supplied most of his gas and oil, was delighted to tender him a banquet. Obligingly, he unscrewed a light bulb from the chandelier, smashed it to bits, put the glass in his mouth, took a draught of water. Of the hardships suffered by him and his late companions, he said piously, “I knew we would not all die because at the mountain top I laid my hands on the feet of the Christ of the Andes for a blessing.”