We departed our hotel in odoma at 8am for a 60 km transport to the trial start.

We had a flat when we arrived, as we had been racing Lloyd and Treacy, and rachael and Susie along a great dirt road. We made the most of the good dirt surface, and wanted to give the car a good hiding before the comp section. Apart from the noises from the cracking fire wall all was good with the new, longer shocks working well both front and rear, no topping or bottoming out. I sill don’t know the bilstien spec we had been supplied with only that they were longer, and probably not as stiff as we installed in Australia, but harder than standard

I drove the section and really got stuck into it for 60ks of really good rallying road. It was good fun and we think we did well. A bit late in the rally but that’s the way it goes.

We should have had another trial section, and we were given section changes at the start but we got it wrong and stopped for a kitkat in the middle of it wondering why the cars going past were going so hard. Never mind

The road we did ran over the mountains form odoma to mbeya, southern Tanzania, and the road trip all up was 595 Kms. Many with damaged cars or those just wanting to get to the finish took a very long bitumen road to the east. It is about double the distance.

Others the day before at awasa, decided to miss both days and did a longer trip east to the coast then back in , an overnight trip.

We arrived here to find the m5 after they spent 2 days in Nairobi rebuilding their suspicion a the BMW dealer. They were lucky to get parts.

On our comp section one of the leading 4wds had rolled, pretty much blocking the road. The blue bmwx5 had Hooked her up to roll it back, but their was just enough room for us to slip by before they completely blocked the road. No one hurt but a bad rollover and they will have been shaken up. We haven’t heard what has happened to them

Many cars chose to drive around the mountains along a river road, but we reckon it would be slow because of the trucks and all the bloody speed bumps they put on the road every where, as well as roadworks.

After we finished the comp stages we had a fair dirt transport then about 300kms of really good Tarmac, and we Hooked up initially with Lloyd and Tracy, and Rachel and Susie, and the Subaru and another mg. rachael and I must have decided they were traveling too slow, so off we went at considerable speed for about 250km. Of course we weren’t racing but the lead Changed a few times.

The crack in the fire wall seems to have styled down and stopped groaning and cracking abou half way through the. Dirt. Tier sa b fair bi of distortion in the panel, and the fuel filler neck has popped its seal. We are not going to worry about it as we have three long days on hopefully good tarmac,and the a couple of days on fast dirt. We have moved all the weigh into the cabin, and we now have all our essentials in our pockets, passports, money and other bits, just I case we need to get out in a hurry

Sam slept for about 2 hours and woke up and told me I didn’t need to look at the route book as we had more than 100kms to go and promptly went back to sleep, still down when I shut the motor down.

Some may wonder why we are on this trip, their are few unusual personal and mechanical challenges, but what we see on such a fast run is a Great lesson in the changes in the continent as we move along

We have seen the northern deserts, then the flat pains running into the rise for the Ethiopian plateau running up to three thousand meters, then dropping down into the blue Nile valley a 1500 meters, then back up, then done into Kenya at about 1500 meter then back up to Nairobi at over 2000m.
We have then gone up and down substantially , with the vertical movements today From a Thousand meters and back up to 2000m twice. We haven’t seen anything but a few monkeys but we did see a few suspicious rustlings in the bushes as we passed. Hopefully the next few days am improve the animal viewing. A few have seen giraffes in southern Kenya before crossing to Namibia

We’ve been in some great hotels and some bad ones. Tonight we are in a good one, but split from the pack. Apparently the others are in a dump with a few moving up here.

We move to Zambia tomorrow I’m not sure if we get to Victoria falls tomorrow or the next day

We are unable to be photos out. Telephone is g1 and Internet is onl good for plain emails