Before dawn at the market
Actualitzat: 4 days ago
Maybe you still remember Mater, the rusty old tow truck from the Cars film. The sheer vitality of that battered old pick-up was more reminiscent of a young lad than a vehicle that had spent decades trundling around the desert.
The sheer number of automotive relics still rattling along the streets of Venezuela means that even the most devoted enthusiast eventually becomes accustomed to them and stops paying attention to many of the old cars passing by. And yet, my eyes would invariably follow every pick-up that reminded me of Mater from the film. None of them had been restored; they were working vehicles, repaired and patched up thousands of times over, simply to keep them going and get another day's work done. It was astonishing that some of them were still in one piece.
A friend of mine was rather amused by the way I would stand there open-mouthed, taking photographs whenever I spotted one of these old wrecks. Eventually, he asked me: "Do you really want to see more pick-ups like those?" The answer was easy to guess, so he offered to take me somewhere I could see whole herds of American pick-ups, some of the oldest dating back to the 1940s.
A couple of times a week, my friend would take a trailer-load of parchita to the market. It might not sound particularly glamorous, but parchita, as it is known in Venezuela (or granadilla in Costa Rica), is none other than passion fruit – a delicious tropical fruit that grows on vines and produces crops throughout the year.
We needed to arrive while the pick-ups were busy loading and unloading, so we were already at the market by four in the morning. Once we had delivered the passion fruit to the warehouse, I grabbed my camera and headed out into the open yard where the pick-ups were parked.
There were, of course, more modern vehicles too, but many dated from before the 1980s. Every sort of Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge and more could be found there. Lightning McQueen's best mate would have felt right at home among the dozens of fellow veterans from his era. Running on their last legs and loaded far beyond what would be considered remotely acceptable in most other countries, they kept the Barquisimeto wholesale market supplied with fresh fruit.
Had they been in better condition, you could almost have imagined Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep appearing from around the corner, on their way to one of the Bridges of Madison County. But this wasn't Iowa, nor was it the 1950s. More than half a century had passed, and we were much further south.
The pick-ups weren't gleaming beneath the sunshine, for the sun had yet to rise. Instead, they rattled away one by one, gradually disappearing into the darkness and leaving behind them an almost suffocating cloud of exhaust fumes.
Without a doubt, getting up at such an ungodly hour had been well worth it. I wouldn't trade the sheer authenticity of that experience for all the brightly coloured, modified pick-up trucks at any classic car gathering. I only hope I get the chance to go back one day.
