Epitaph for a Hyundai H100

Elisa Routa is a French journalist and author. For nearly 15 years, she has covered the world of surfing, street, travel and outdoor for Surf Sessions, Surfer's Journal, Swenson, Panthalassa and Vogue magazines. In November 2020, Elisa published her first book Chroniques du Royaume published by Éditions Tellement. It's a day-by-day account of her year, told in funny, melancholy tidbits. In her own words, it's "a real turning point in her career". An old-fashioned photographer (she prefers silver film), she publishes photos (mainly in black and white) that are always a good excuse to tell (again and again) little stories.

We can't resist the pleasure of sharing one with you, a true declaration of love to a converted truck at the end of its life.

I have more photos of my stagecoach than selfies

315,000 kilometers. If you'd seen where we rode it; often narrow roads, muddy trails, steep inclines and one-way streets. You'd have taken those too. I have more photos of my coach than selfies. With its dented pupils, rusty flanks and hanging retro - Van Gogh's ear on a Hyundai H100 - its looks haven't always worked in our favor. We'd never seen so much art and poetry on a body. A thousand mornings, we were afraid of waking up at the pound in our pyjamas.

The van was like a new rich guy from the provinces, walking around in flip-flops made from Ikea bags. Not everyone understood him. In the tight bends, rolls of film rolled down to the hole in the floor; lost forever. I often hoped that a guy living on the edge of a main road had had them developed. I imagined us framed somewhere on a cherry cabinet.

We've punched the map of Europe

We turned notebooks into herbariums, read dozens of books, some good, some bad, punched out the map of Europe, patched up the gingham curtains, repaired the bookshelves, changed the mattress and stuffed the bed with plaids and cardboard.

We've stirred barrels of instant coffee and drunk red wine from steel cups. Hell, stainless steel has a way of turning gold into costume jewelry. We ate noodles and tins of corn, systematically giving our dinners a metallic taste. We listened to soccer matches with our bare feet in the sand and shared the view of the rich without paying the rent.

Showers in 5-litre cans

We pushed the van, forgot the keys inside and, from the roof, watched the sun set over the wheat fields. The round mark of our buttocks crowned the driver's seat, offering a basket to stray cats. We vibrated the dial needle and watched the seats vapourize. We stopped on the hard shoulder to top up the water and cool the engine. We called the van the Gainsbourg of the freeways. Adventure at 90 km/h. We took showers in 5-liter cans and dried out coveralls on the doors. Our vacation smelled of gasoline and badly dried towels. At night, our pumps often slept outside before we put them back on in the humid dawn.

I think sometimes we were as scary as we were pitiful, but we never felt more at home than in this out-of-date can.

I loved loving this van

As someone who knew nothing about cars (isn't the Tesla a Latin American dance?), I loved this van.

Yesterday, we finally stripped off and tore down the white sheet that served as the ceiling. All this time, nine years to be exact, we've been sleeping right underneath a giant eye, scrawled in poor-quality paint on a wooden board. Long, bewitching eyelashes and indecipherable letters that you and Stan had drawn long ago. We didn't know it, but it was a piece of you lulled to sleep every night, and it was him too. If you'd still been around, you'd have known how to mend the Nautilus. Because it was yours, because you were the only one who could turn pumpkins into carriages and put gold back into costume jewelry.

Text and silver photos: Elisa Routa. Color photos: Angèle Debuire