Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Mauritania/Mali – 15/11/09 and 16/11/09 Kiffa to Chutes de Gouina – 200km day 2

Day 2 We started early in order to reach the waterfall in good time, but suffered a setback when the Italians Pentax 2cv jammed in all gears during a river crossing. This was an issue as the nearest spare gearbox was at least a day away and mechanics at least 6 hours. As the car wouldn’t even move into reverse it wasn’t looking good. After about an hour with the gearbox lid off we managed to un-jam all gears bar reverse. This resulted a challenging yet hilarious afternoon for the Pentax 2cv as they couldn’t go backwards. We stopped at Kayes, Mali’s second largest city where we waited 4 hours for car permits to be processed by the local authority who were not in a good mood and wrote out the permits as slow as possible! Whilst we were waiting, we all paired off to fix tyres, collect food etc. We set off for the waterfall at 9pm and drove until 1am where we stopped 8km before the waterfall. At first light we jumped into our cars and made the last steep rocky climb. We all made it to the top and very much enjoyed jumping straight into the river just 200m from the waterfall. We washed ourselves and our clothes and relaxed for the first time in ages. However, as always there was still work to do. The fuel from Mauritania had been mixed with diesel. This caused the oil level to rise and pressure to fall as the unburnt diesel entered the sump. We changed the oil on the sand and checked the car over. At 2.30pm we headed off on a track which featured several severe rock climbs. One climb require around 10 people to push the car over the last lip, but it is amazing to see what these little cars can actually do. The track then turned into an extremely dusty gravel pot holed roads. The thick clouds from the cars in front made it very hard to see, especially in the dark. Eventually we arrived at the camp, which was also a run down bar, restaurant and discotech. An early night was required as we were up again at 6am ready for the 350km drive to the capital Bamako.

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