The rally is devided into two groups the last 2 days; the fella’s that want to try and steal 30 seconds off the person in front of them and drive like maniacs, and the people that know there is no way to catch anyone and just drive with the intention of making it. And me? well because we are in our own race, and these Namibian/RSA roads are completly wonderful, i drive the time trail sections just the way i have been doing them, swiftly!
Today was another blinder of a day, we left our hot springs resort in the middle of a canyon and the first section was only 12k’s on smooth gravel with long sweeping corners. Fabulous. Now we are own well made roads we can finally get some speed up and haul our 2.5tonn car along. The results havnt come up yet but it felt like i took a podium place. I’m not really sure if another vuaxhall could have possibly done that section any faster. It wasn’t reckless by any standards, but it was fun! And i was so chuffed that none of the cars caught up to us and we had to let them pass. Top stuff Penny, you did well!
The border from Namibia to RSA was the most fluid out of all of them today, no more then 15 minutes. In and out, and then in and out on the other side. Kudos to them.
There was a few time controls that looped off the main road around lunchtime going up and down the hills to the side (would have been nice drive) on dirt roads, but the map suggested they were really windy going up and down, and it was another STINKING hot day, so we decided to give them a miss. Even plodding at regular driving speed on the main road we were running at 200 degree’s F, let alone if we started to push it to make the average speed’s set for each given section (mind you were set at 95kph, no possible chance of keeping up). And our decision was a good one, we plodded along to do Olifant River time trail late in the afternoon and made it in on our schedule time. Another short section of 11k’s and to clear it we were given 7 minutes, i clocked in at 10minutes 2 seconds. Faster than the americans in a jeep, and an MG. 😀
an easy 350k’s tomorrow with 2 short sections in the sederberg hills just out of cape town, can’t wait! Then festivities all through the night at the Table Mountain hotely/bar thing. And then a sleep in, i’ll be looking forward to having a good nice lie in on monday morning, with nowhere to drive, no times to do anything, just bumm around.
James