By no means first, but by no means last – Debra the Zebra has completed the Budapest Bamako 2012 Rally!

On our first night in the country we stayed in Sincem Boce – the village to which we  donated a large majority of our school and medical supplies as well as the undefeated champion of valiant and noble carriages: Debra the Zebra. Debra shall roam the savanah for years to come, carrying construction materials for the building of schools etc for the resident Brazilian/Hungarian missionary (every village should have one).

The village threw us a party, inviting us into a cultural insight into tribal life in Africa. The beef was chewy but the rice was good.

The following day we set off early to Bissau. After crawling through the capital in a police escort, the Zebra Rover was comfortably within one of the first few handfuls of cars to finish, which we proudly celebrated with our fellow English compratriates.

Before we began cooling off with a beer, we made a visit to an SOS community, a charity which places wonderfully kept orphanages across the world – supported by Mark and Greg from Team TC -  where we had chosen to give our final donations. Here we also happened to stumble across a young Hook United, Reading, and England fan, itching to break into the Premier League (thanks again Hook Junior School for their donations).

In the evening we were gifted with a fine meal and a fantastic display of cultural diversity in dance and music, courtsey of the government of Guinea Bissau, and the following day given a locals tour of the city by Harry the bomb disposer – I’m sure you’ll hear more about him one day.

We’ve had an excellent adventure on this rally – each day has thrown us a bizzarely new experience which we will try our best not to forget.

As for Debra – she’s flawlessly moved us across continents, gaining much deserved attention through each country we’ve been through – and we were even offered four thousand Euros for her services here in Bissau. Thoroughly sad to say goodbye to her, but we hope she will feel as home as she looks in Guinea Bissau.

A few quick stats. We covered 6489 miles in a total of 177hrs of driving. Our average speed was 37mph returning around 30mpg. Our maximum speed was 71.

This post confirms we made it past the landmines.

Mauritania was hot, dry and dusty. The fuel was cheap – driving consisted on long, long, straight roads past a whole lot of nothing, and busy, busy cities full of Mercedes and goats. Mauritania also contained a lot of police, military, and guns – Jeff got pulled over and asked to delete photographs, so our photographic records of the place are a little blurred.

We did plenty of desert camping and Debra the Zebra accomplished her finest achievment as of yet, climbing and dismounting a true Saharan dune.

Senegal is a lot greener, a bit wetter, and a lot more smiley. We’ve done plenty of Savanah driving, seen exotic birds, remote villages, and chirpy childeren. Camped by a wise Baobab tree last night, but didn’t make it to the wildlife park tonight, as we had puncture repairing errands to run for out quadbike riding friend from Norway (hence the internet connection in an emergency hotel).

Tomorrow we move on to Guinea Bissau – our final destination – and our main drop off point for our medical and educational donations – thanks again for the contributions, we’ve seen so much already how these minor contributions make a major diference.

Apologies for the lack of updates – one thing we have learnt about Africa is that theres a lot of sand and not a lot of internet. We do however have enough for a quick update. It’d take the rest of the trip to upload some pictures – so you’ll have to use your imagination. Think sand, rocks, camels, more rocks, wind, more sand and Hungarian schnapps.

We’ve pretty much made it through Morocco – currently in the disputed area of Western Sahara, parked up on an Atlantic beach.

Debra had to have a wee tinker upon arrival on the continent – she had a sore bush at the front end (technical term) which we had to have replaced, but aside from that she’s been tearing through the desert.

Yesterday we found our way to a remote village in the mountains with a school of about 30 or so children. We gave them some of our donations, gave them a quick geography lesson (in Paul’s pidgin French), and then the village chief took us out for a hike through the gorge to find a beautiful oasis in the middle of a rather barren landscape.

Rally wise, we are keeping up with the pack – had a few arrivals later than we had planned but we now have a solid team of Team Bermuda, TC, and Josh.

We’ve had snowstorms in the Atlas mountains, sand storms on the fringe of the Sahara, and the suns getting hotter and hotter the further south we go.

Tomorrow we head to Mauritania – a war stricken country full of land mines and Al Quieda. So hopefully we blog again.

Day two of the rally.

The morning of the rally’s start added snow to our ever increasing list of elements we have faced already, but we made it across the flaming start line along with the other 150+ entrants.(rather chilly)

Hungary was soon behind us, and after teaming up with Josh (the sole member of team Duct tape and zip ties, we formed the unbeatle combo of Team L-reg. Between the two 1994 Discos we’ve got pretty much anything covered and zipped out of Hungary, through the rather sunny Slovenia, and into Italia.

That said – we weren’t all to prepared for the thick fog we were going to meet after our dinner break, and as the windscreens began to freeze and the eyes began to drift – we had to make our first nights kip in the Land Rovers.

Jeff swears he didn’t manage a winks sleep, but Louis and Josh managed enough hours to notice the amount of ice that had built up from the drive through the freezing fog the night before. (this was on the front facing side of our aerial)

We had not however, had enough sleep to remember that we had put the jerry can and camping chairs on the roof while we slept, which after our rushed start in the morning to get the heaters blowing – can be found somewhere on a chilly Italian motorway.

After the fog burnt off – it turned out we were in a rather beautiful place in the world for mid-January as we enjoyed surnrise on the mediterranean where the Zebra (sorry Josh) continued to gain deserved attention.

The weather, aswell as the roads, continued to clear and by noon, and we made it to the marvelous Monaco for a little trip around the Gran Prix circuit. The Zebra was more than up to the hairpin bends and steep inclines and looked wonderfully at home in the city slightly more affluent than most we are expected to come across in the next continent.

The hotel we were planned to meet up with the rest of the rally has now apparently been demolished, so we are staying at a roadside hotel somewhere at the junction for Barcelona. We’re all pretty tired and I’ve stayed up far too late uploading pictures to this site. We’ve done a fair few miles in the last two days but I’m far to tired to work it out. Budapest to Barcelona – you do the maths. Goodnight

We’ve made it to Budapest! The first stage of the rally is tomorrow, so we have today to meet and greet, sightsee, and make our final preparations before the real travelling begins.

After a good rest and a feed in Dachau, we made relatively smooth progress out of Deutschland, and all the way through Austria, where we eventually found a place to sit.

The drive was long, and not too exciting, but we made it to the beautiful city of Budapest.

First things first was to offload the donations from the roof to the organistation that will take the lot over in a couple of trucks.

We are hoping the Debra’s camouflage will start to kick in when we’re closer to its namesake’s.

After a quick knot making revision class to get the roof back to a safe state, we checked into the offical B2B guesthouse for the night – which so happens to be the five star Intercontinental Hotel, who’s pool and sauna facilities were used to scrub up for the journey ahead.

We met a load of the other participants, including the two other British teams, and have now had a chance to have a snoop around some of the other motors.

The racing starts tomorrow – next stop Verona.

Day two and we are well in to German territory.

Yesterday’s channel crossing offered equally greying skies on the continent as in England.

We made a fair few miles through France and Belgium, then night fell in Germany leaving us to find our first place to sleep. The car’s too full of supplies to sleep in but we found another over 65s town to rest in. This time the town’s theme seemed to be Vegas, and just along from ‘Jackpot Corner’ we found a friendly Turkish pizza place (the only lights left on in the ghost town) who kindly made us dinner and found us a place to kip – it turns out having a Zebra print 4×4 gains useful attention.

After slightly over sleeping (“I wont bother setting an alarm – I always wake up early”) we had a coffee with Amazon GmbH and made it through the snowy Black Forrest to Dachau to stay with fellow family, brother/uncle Gordon.

The temperature has begun to drop now. Needing the Alpine part of our wardrobes.

An early morning awaits as we’ve set an arrival time in Budapest (‘probably’ 8 hours away) at 2pm. Louis’ gone all out and made the first underwear change, Jeff is pending a descision in the morning.

As we gain distance on Africa, our internet will diminish so we will be sending updates to the rally organisers, where you can see how we are doing on the SMS wall at:
www.budapestbamako.org

Guten nacht.

As epic adventures go, this one is making steady progress.

After a quick stops at Gatwick to collect an iPod, and at Rainham to collect some last minute maps (Rainham by the way officially has a population of 99% over 65s, which increased to 100% after we left), we made it to the white cliffs.

Europe’s arms are open.