Front arm change went well and our pockets are not too heavily hit with a parts bill, which we were worried about. The mechanics team were lovely and on hand to help us change the arm (on sand in bush camp!) if needed. Many fellow participants also hung around to give moral support and skills. We finally got to bed around 1 am only to wake at 5am again. Have been impressed with the technical and travel experience within the group. There is a French team which has driven a 2cv on every continent in the world. This is their 12th rally in a 2cv!
Car has since broken a shock absorber at the mount, but other than that has since behaved well and is running as well as can be expected with the dust. We are both pretty well considering the long days, but the same cannot not be said by other teams who have bugs from food eaten in hotel a few days ago. We narrowly escaped the same sickness, but still had stomach cramps and felt ill, fortunately it was short lived.
The past two days we have been heading south out of Morocco. The morning after changing the cars front arm, we headed straight towards the Moroccan coast where we only just made it onto the beach track. It was a race against time as the tide was coming in fast. The beach stretch was 25 km long where we were sandwiched between high sand dunes and fast approaching tide which was threatening to wash us away. Many got stuck in the soft sand and were lucky to not loose their cars to the waves.
We then turned left into a breath taking river canyon where we had to balance keeping ourselves and the car engine dry and getting stuck knee deep in water. That evening we stayed on a hill overlooking a valley canyon with a sunset to die for.
5am start next day. 840km drive down the famous Western Sahara coast road. It was a long road but still wonderful scenes of cliffs, crashing waves and dunes blowing across the road. We arrived that evening to a beach camp where as a group we had 35kg of fresh oysters and celebrated our last day technically in morocco.
Its hard to believe its been 11 days since we left the official start in Belgium. Today we successfully crossed the Mauritanian border in record time. In previous years it has taken all day in baking heat. Today we cleared in a few hours thanks to crew member Brigitte for arriving at 4am to clean papers and passports ahead of our arrival at 8am after 3 hour drive and 5am start! It was so nice to actually rest in camp for the afternoon. For many this was much needed time for repairing broken cars. Many are worried as the next 3 days we will be driving across proper desert sand and down the famous Mauritanian train track which boast the longest train in the world, which we saw today! Tomorrow we camp in the desert while the support truck and catering team take the long road round.
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
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All sounds sooo exciting.Rich has the constitution of an ox, well so Im led to believe!4 hours kip sounds dread, still you are young so should be reasonably ok with that. Dont forget Mrs Thatch survived on that each night.
ReplyDeleteGood Luck driving across the desert, and it sounds like you have an A* crew.Well done and look forward to reading the next blog.
Alimilster
Sounds Great I hope its going well.. Keep going from Fule Monkey xxx
ReplyDeleteLOL I see my name is john, well its not lots of love Fuel Monkey aka hollismotorsport member
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