Who called the Chunder Bus

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