Plymouth to Dakar Challenge : Team Spitting Llamas

Day 17 - Nouakchott(MR) to Zebrabar(SN)

Posted by Aaron on January 19, 2008 11:25 AM

After a relatively good nights slept we were woken at 5am to the noise of Team Speed leaving the hotel enclosure. Given our tent was right beside the car park everyone was woken by it. To Team Speeds credit they were up and on the road very quickly (although rather noisily). They had paid for a guide to take them to the Senegal boarder and help them get across. They were told it was a very slow drive in parts and that the boarder crossing would likely be the worst we would experience due to corruption and briberies to get across. We looked at the option of getting a guide for our team but thought, "how hard can it be" the distance looked quite close on the map and we had Pete with us who had done it all before. So as per Team Dither style we got up at a reasonable hour, and "thought" about getting reading to leave. I went out to check on Rusty, the night before we were using the laptop through the 12/240 volt converter and flattened Rusty's battery. The battery was still flat so got a jump start and were ready to go. A few of the guys needed petrol so we went around the town trying to find a gas station that had any. After the fourth one we got lucky - much to the relieve of the petrol cars. Everyone filled up and again were ready to go, however Pete's & Katie's 4wd decided to blow a hole in the oil pressure line to the oil cooler and there was black diesel oil everywhere. The Latvians were straight in there to help out. They tried 3 attempts at fixing/blocking the hole but in the end it was not going to hold, there was too much oil pressure. I was thinking you could just by-pass the oil cooler but many others thought otherwise so we headed to find a welder. Fortunately one was found with out too much trouble and the little pin hole was brazed up. Finally on the road out of Nouakchott about 11.

All the morning while we were waiting I was thinking what could now go wrong with Rusty. Murphys Law strikes and we were on the road for only about 30 minutes when Rusty's engine started to lose power. We pulled over knowing what the most likely problem was, our fuel tank issues raises its ugly head again !! This time though we had removed the gauze filter from the fuel tank and all the rubbish in the tank had blocked up the entire fuel line to the first filter in the engine bay. So we replaced both filters blew back down the fuel line to the tank and got going again. However, 10 minutes later again we started to lose engine power. This time the first filter had completing blocked up with all the rubbish we have blown back down the fuel line into the tank. So the decision was made to by-pass the fuel tank AGAIN. Fortunately for us the damaged radiator had completely stopped leaking and we no longer needed our extra water tank on the roof. So we emptied out the water form the tank and filled it will diesel, hooked up the fuel lines this time leaving out one of the fuel filters under the bonnet as all 8 over them had been used or blocked up. We still had the main fuel filter on the injector so was happy with that. Again hit the road. And again only got 10-15 minutes along the way and the engine stopped. I thought the temporary fuel hoses may have been getting pinched between the bonnet and the guard so to realize some of my tension that was now building I set to adjusting the guard / bonnet clearance to allow the hoses to fit. When I say adjusting that may be a bit miss leading, it was more like bashing the living crap out of the guard. Given the grief little Rusty was giving me it did feel good to give her love back. So back on the road and 5 minutes later we were losing power yet again, by this stage I was getting very concerned thinking poor old rusty was a dead duck. My next thought was to replace the main filter with the one we had changed before we blew out the fuel line. Sure enough when we took the filter of it was full of rubbish from when we blew down the fuel line. Put it all back together and hit the road with that dread something else was going to happen. To our wonderful excitement all was good, but knowing there were no more clean fuel filters if they were needed. So we were on the road again about 12, only 6 hours behind Team Speed, well I was happy Rusty was running so it didn't worry me at all. The next couple of hours driving was good, no drama's and the road was good.

The scenery was changing a lot too. We starting to see trees now and had began to enter the sub-Saharan zone. Also there was a big different in the colour of the people as we were going further south. At this point we thought every thing was going sweet, only had about 100 miles to the boarder, car was going good, life was good, living the dream as we were saying. Then with Pete's guidance having done this all before we found the dirt road to the boarder crossing. Then things started to change, thankfully the car held together but next 100 miles were very slow going with the road/track conditions being very bad. We had been warned in our road book for the trip to expect "pot holes the size of bath tubs" and I was very skeptical when I read it, however sure enough before long we were navigating our way though massive potholes and very tough dusty roads. At the front of the group of cars it was all most a race to get in front so you didn't have to contend with the dust kicked up by the other cars. I was very concerned for Rusty's radiator as it was literally only held on by string and there was no protection under the car if we "fell" into on off these pot holes. If we hit any thing it would have push the radiator straight into the fan again and completely stopped us in our tracks. Another thing against us was the sun was starting to set right in front of us so we could see hardly at all. I was sitting on the door hanging outside the car as we were driving trying to scan ahead for pot holes. As it turned out we did end up in a nasty sand pit at quite hi speed but the radiator survived. We did need pushing out though, but that was fine. Team Bravo Zero did manage to find one of the "bath tub" sized pot holes and have a great story to tell about it. The managed to get out with the help of the spare tyre with minimal damage to the suspension.

We finally made it to the Mauritania / Senegal boarder just on dark. It was a good feeling to have made it with all the drama's through out the long day. Now came the boarder crossing from hell, mainly because of the corruption that was going on to get across. All the officials at the boarder were their to take their personal cut and we were lambs to the slaughter. When got there the team off Irish boys had just got though and about to hed off. They said it had taken them 3.5 hours to get through the bureaucracy. We all knew it was going to be a long night for us. After going to though all the hoops the "officials" demanded of us paying over 160 Euros each for the privilege (120 Euros more than we should have), we were on the other side ready to head off to the campsite. We have since heard we did better than some others getting across but it is still a sore point to know that the corruption is so rampart. We saw an amazing sight just before we headed off. It was around 11pm and pitch black except for a couple of lights of the huts. The boarder people opened the gates and there would have been 150 camels herded across the boarder all in the canter with riders at the front and rear. It was such a surreal sight and then they disappeared into the darkness of Senegal. If only we could have got through so easily. I have no doubt there was something dodgy going on taking them across the boarder at that time of night. A cool thing we did was smuggle one of the Aussy's across the boarder, he was unaware that a visa was needed for Kiwi's and Aussy's. Aaron and I had got ours in London months previous. With it being dark he just walked across and no one realised. Plus he avoided the 160 Euro cost too!!

On the road again to our camping ground, it was on 40 minutes away and made it in good time as the roads were far better on the Senegalese side. A couple of the cars said they had some bad experiences with the local kids throwing rocks at them but they went through earlier in the day. We got to the zebrabar campground at 11:00pm, had dinner a few drinks put the tent up and bed by 3am. It was a long day !!

More photos of Day 17