Taxi to Bamako

Latest update - We are now in Marrakech and have finally found a decent internet cafe so its time to update the blog with some final impressions of the rally. I cant quite find my way around this arabic keyboard so please ignore the lack of punctuation

Some of the people we travelled with are completely unforgettable.
The Indian team were our main partners in crime. Their's was not so much a rally but more a tour of the garages and street mechanics of Morocco. They had terribly bad luck. The 4x4 they bought specially for the trip caught fire and was completely destroyed days before the start. They then went out and bought a Mercedes saloon thinking that at least they could get spares anywhere in Africa. A burst oil chamber, broken axle and countless punctures were the least of their problems. Most dramatic of all was hitting a hole in the side of the road at high speed. They sheared the suspension arm on the nearside and ripped two wheels off. They then careered gracefully down the road on two wheels, in a cloud of sparks. To say they were lucky not to turn over is an understatement. Someone must definitely have been watching over them.
Two Hungarians who incidentally had won Rally for last three years were not so lucky. They rolled their 4x4 in the desert and the driver seriously injured his spine.
Paul, the English guy driving alone in a 1956 volkwagon beetle was someone else with more than his fair share of bad luck. Having already destroyed one engine in Belgium on the way to the start he got stuck in soft sand in the desert. A couple of Skandanavian medical students spent two days towing him and another vehicle out. Completely cut off fromthe rest of the rally and unable to summon help these two Norwegians were absolute saints for their selfless rescue.
We narrowly avoided the same fate as Paul as we had agreed to go the same route. However we were delayed by the Hungarian TV crew who wanted to do yet another interview and film the taxi in the sand dunes near camp. By the time we had finished the others had left without us. By chance we got into conversation with a Bedouin who warned us of 20 kms of very soft sand on that route. He told us in no uncertain terms not to even try.
Paul's rescue was completed by a giant wagon carrying stone. The driver tipped half his load and they made a ramp with it. They then winched the beetle up the ramp and onto the back of the wagon. The guy then drove Paul back to the nearest village. We didn't see Paul again until Agadir, the day after the rally had ended. He was now on his third engine.

Our own exploits in the mountains which won us a silver trophy for endeavour and endurance was the result of another accident. I had missed the 6.00am briefing that morning ( they were mostly in Hungarian and I usually didn't have a clue what was going on anyway). We got the co-ordinates for the next overnight camp and looked at the map. The squiggly line over the mountain looked like a short cut so we decided to give it a try thinking we could always turn back. By the time we wanted to turn back it was impossible. The only way was onward and upward. I walked in front of the cab for long sections directing Trish over boulders and trying to judge just how close we could drive near the edge without falling off. The Hungarian TV crew who came across us thought all their Christmases had come at once. The route was actually the most difficult of the whole rally taking most 4x4's an average of five hours. It took us nearly eleven. We limped into a tiny hamlet at the foot of the mountain with our exhaust and most of the suspension remodelled by the track. It was another 200 kms to Zagora where' completely by chance' we found the best garage in the Sahara. Two hours of hammering and welding later we set off for the final 100 kms to our overnight desert bivouac. We arrived after midnight to a rousing welcome and forced drinks of gin.
All for now - next post in a few days (we're still trying to get to Bamako).