South American fun race

Today’s Geo Quiz takes us to Latin America. The Fun Race Four is all about mud and gasoline. 500 teams compete in one of South America’s most popular off-road motor races. The mud flies as four-wheelers and off-road motorbikes speed through the countryside, up steep mountainsides, and across water.

They splash across the Aro River, a tributary of the Orinoco. The rough-and-tumble off-road race has taken place for the past ten years… in the country we’d like you to name.

But the race is no more. This country’s Attorney General says the sponsors of the Fun Race are irresponsible. “They organize races which damage the soils, damage the environment, cause irreparable damage because the topsoil deteriorates and recuperation takes up to 200 years”.

And so the government of the country we’re looking for has stopped the Fun Race. Some locals welcome the ban. They won’t have to put up with revving engines, blaring music, and tv helicopters. One resident said that steering four-wheel drive cars with oversize tires through streams and damaging the landscape is not an environmentally friendly hobby. The Fun Race organizers, for their part, say the event does no environmental damage.

Here’s one more clue: this country’s independent TV channel, Globovision, has carried the Fun Race Four. And the country’s president has been a frequent editorial target of Globovision.

Maybe that has something to do with the ban. The President is Hugo Chavez and the country is Venezuela, the answer to our quiz this time.