Category: LONDON TO CAPE TOWN

Dunstan Checks In is the coolest movie made about a chimpanzee. Well, i thought of that when we saw a chimp (it could have been something slightly different but i don’t care) running along the side of the road picking things up and investigating them. Deciding whether he can eat it, hit something with it, or scratch his butt with it.

All i can say about last nights accommodation is that it was interesting, and an experience. In the buffet style dinner they had for us; whole fish heads to chose from (obviously i tried some, you can guess that it is not on the list of things to do again). Cold water shower has been the norm for quite a while so that wasn’t unexpected. There was also a massive thunderstorm that rolled through at about 4 in the morning, woke everyone up with really really close lightning strikes. Well i slept through it.

There was a few crews that actually arrived at this place and decided to drive the next 600k’s to Lusaka (an intercontinental Hotel) to skip out the dodgy night. I reckon these are the times that you remember, to total shotty-ness of it all is great!

The world cup stage today was fantastic!!! Best short stage so far. Only 9km’s but it was on an old farm, amongst some buslands. Very narrow and fairly straight aside from a few bends and kinks now and then. It was only 2 wheel tracks, thick grass either side and a ribbon of thick grass in the middle (lapping at the undercarriages). Just so much fun.

James

The border today from Tanzania into Zambia was total chaos. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people in this little town. The queue of trucks down the road trying to cross the border would have been at least 2k’s long. We cut our way through to the border-propper and all the fun started. Dad had the documents and i stayed at the car, some local guy pointed us where we needed to go and was our personal fixer. The disorganisation and how much of a shambles was incredible. I stayed in the car slowing pushing/making my way through the border (about 500meters) without getting out. And dad walked from immigration to customs to police to immigration again. People could walk from one country to another no problems, just like i drove my way through the whole process and pulled up at a petrol station on the other side and not a single person looked at me or my car or rego. Dad popped out and said “let’s go, all done.”

Today was just a transit day, Mbeya to Mpika, Zambia. A nice tarmac road was very welcomed as we pulled out of the border, albeit it was riddled with trucks. Slow trucks are fine though, easy to recklessly overtake without any bad reproductions. But my god, the buses that come down this road! Big giant Coaches that fit like 60 people or whatever, they recklessly overtake ME! And i’m already doing 110kph. But every now and then we have to stomp on the anchors because a cluster of potholes pops up. I swear to god, if some of the little MG’s or Porsche’s stopped at the bottom of these potholes, and you took a picture you wouldn’t be able to see the wheels. These potholes can eat things, never to surface again.

One thing Zambia is better than any other country so far at: wrecking trucks. I can’t drive more than 50k’s and NOT see at least one tuck on its side. In the middle of a town, on a flat bit of road, with no potholes/speed bumps, there is a truck…. on its side. Sometimes it would just be a trailer on its side. And you can tell how long its been over for by the degree of how much has been stripped off. If the cargo is gone then it has been 1 day. If the wiring, wheels, breaks, and hubs are gone then it has been 2 days. If the only thing that remains is the chassis rails, then probably 4 days…. Maximum

James

Our first mechanic problem –save for driver error (see yesterday hahaha). So there we were, trooping along like we always do, on some much loved tarmac which has been unseen for 350k’s, and our temperature gauge starts going through the roof. What on earth……..???? Turn the engine off immediately and pull over to investigate. Things look dire when i open the radiator cap and its empty, little bits of steam pouring out. No dripping underneath so the radiator wasn’t cracked. Open the oil filler cap and it looks milker white inside – fluid immulsified in oil….. Not good. Looked terminal. And because there aren’t any water ports running through our head gasket (bypass jackets on the outside) it couldn’t have just been a head gasket problem. Only thing at this stage was a cracked head, or split block. Nooooooo, not this again! Not in the middle of the Tanzanian outback. We pull the tappet cover off just to see on what scale it was. By this time Phillip, Martin, Andy, Chris and Ed (Phillip is the big boss/syd stelvio and the others are marshals) had pulled up and gave us encouraging words…. and then started taking pictures. Hahaha. That didn’t bother us. Back to the investigating: pull the top of the engine off and after some poking and prodding we actually find that a welsh plug (gallery plug, core plug, the plug that remains from the sand casting process or something like that) had fallen out. And this plug is a direct link from the water jacket into the rocker gear and cam-train, therefore all of our water had been pumped and just flowed down into the sump. Now the question is, how do we fix it now we aren’t terminal? The brainstrust combined thought of bashing some wood in as a plug(would have worked fine because it isn’t a pressure system), but that idea quickly vanished when we found the old plug amongst the cam followers. We gave it a giant whack on the top of a ball-pene hammer to flang the top, whacked it back into it’s original hole, and splayed the top of the hole with a cold-chisel to make sure it couldn’t pop back out again.

Brilliant! Everything was looking good. Then dad goes to the back and pulls out the green 5liter bottle of stuff to pour into the radiator to replenish lost liquids, I came round from the side in time to yell, “DAD WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” In dad’s stressfull-ness he had started to pour engine oil into the radiator…… hahahaha what a muppet. Only a litre or so made it in >_< We managed to float most of it out in the end. So at the moment our radiator consists of about: 60%water, 37% waterless coolant and about 3% of engine oil. It is a horrible brown milky colour but it seems to be working fine, still conducts heat just as well, and its not boiling.

But anyway, the first 400k’s of today was great, challenging dirt roads, a short and rocky hill climb timed to the second (i i had a flawless run, smooth but swift!!) and more monkeys/baboons.

Tomorrow has no competition and is just a transit to the border of Zambia to the town of Mpika, we have been told not to expect much from the accommodation. I’m sure hilarity will be ensured when we listen to some people complain.

This entry is dedicated to Poopsie, the greatest dog to have ever lived. Loved by all. Sorry to hear about that Mitch.

James

Oh wait, I did! By Odin’s beard today was a rough one. Woke up at 6 and felt very average. By 7 i felt like someone had kicked me in the guts. By 7:15 the vomiting had commenced. I have no idea what it was, i have been more than diligent with hand my alco gel/hygiene, and it was 9 hours since i had dinner, but i every 30 minutes or so i had a sneaky spew. I know it doesn’t sound pleasant but i have to put it this way; I would much rather spend the good part of the day leaning over the side of Penny than having to pull over and go for a quick dash into the forest….

The morning was a short transit to the world cup sections. Well, the final 20k’s of the transit brought us into some thick jungle-like environment. Wet and muddy. And the Chinese (im not sure why) where building/upgrading the main road going through, so the only thoroughfare was the very sub-standard roadworks workers road on the sides. It was a bog-hole! Ridiculously muddy. We ended up driving on the half-constructed new road, avoiding the road blocks to stop exactly what we did, and to the disgust of most of the workers. But there was no other way, they soon saw light in what we were doing, and the awesome-ness of our car and just let us pass.

By the start of 1st (3 sections in total) world cup time trail i was feeling better again, and jumped back into the drivers seat. First section: beautiful run, 6 minutes late over 20km/s (very impressive, i even overtook 2 cars!!!) It was hard dirt base small rock and a bit of sand, climbing up through the forest hills, no potholes or ruts to worry about, only corners and trees. Hahaha. Second section: dropped about 19minutes over 40km run, roads deteriorating a bit, my energy waning, hadn’t eaten since night before. The final section was another 40km and i had to get dad to drive, i was almost spent, didn’t realise how crook i was. Dad caught a SERIOUS case of the red mist, trying desperately to make up loss time, in this red fever of his we hit a few washouts that were –let’s just say – less than ideal. We broke both rear wheels, snapped a bunch of spokes on both sides, no punctures though surprisingly.

So, both our spare wheels are being used, so if we have a puncture (touch wood) the only way we can change a tyre is with 3 key things; muscles, tyre levers, and tyre lube. Well, when i say ‘we’ i really mean ‘dad’ hahahaha 😛 So much for my tortoise and the hare ethos of mine. Hahaha.

Oh, and we also ran out of fuel about 500meters before a fuel station in town, and it cost us about 9dollars US to get 7 locals to push us in, it was hilarious. The rally photographer and video recorder was already at the petrol station and caught the whole thing……. How embarrassing.

News on the animal spotting. Today has been a day of many first’s.

-Spotted a herd of zebra’s! Still don’t know if they are black with white stripes or white with black stripes

-GIRAFFES! They were well in the distance and only just recognisable but i’m still counting it.

– Elephants, as above. Still counts/ -More baboons and other kinds of monkeys.

James