Day 50: Christmas Eve progress check
Soutpiel Safari
John & Jenny
Fri 24 Dec 2010 20:33
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Day 50: Friday 24 December 2010. The Sleeping Camel,
Bamako, Mali. N12 37.525 W007 59.278 Distance driven 0 km
This is not a traditional Christmas! Outside it
must be at least 38 - 40 degrees and there are no signs of Christmas
festivities. We have seen Sky News and caught up with the terrible weather
conditions in Europe and feel glad to be here.
Today we went to the Burkina Faso Embassy, had a chat
with the Ambassador who personally welcomed us to his country and a lovely lady
processed our visas in 3 hours! Still, why not for £70
each!
Jenny did a sterling job cleaning out the Land
Rover and we got it washed by the gate guard
here. As Jenny said, it has not been so clean since leaving England. I
have to do some maintenance jobs on it tomorrow and then we'll be good to go
again. One annoying problem is that the diesel tank vent hose that Nene
Overland fitted to the new long-range tank has split at both ends and diesel
spills out if we completely fill the tank. Hopefully we shall be able to find
some replacement hose locally and fix the problem so that we can use the extra
capacity that we had installed.
At Day 50 it is time for a progress
check.
On the basis of our plan to be in Johannesburg by 1
April and a 21 week, 147 day trip, Day 49 was one-third of the way through
the trip. We are modelling our trip on that of another couple who did the
same trip a year ago. They recorded 20,500 km to the Angola/Namibia border
and we reckon it is about 3,000 km to Broederstroom from there - say 24,000 km
all up. So, at one third of the time elapsed we have travelled 9,365 km or well
over one third of the distance. Plotted against our country-by-country
schedule, we entered Mali one day ahead of the master schedule so are
feeling quite pleased with ourselves. We shall probably spend much more
time in Mali than the master schedule allowed so we'll have to make it up by
spending less in Ghana and Nigeria.
We do have internet here at the Sleeping Camel but, for
some reason both our email programmes will receive but not send emails so we
can't send Christmas greetings to our family and and the hundreds
of friends who have sent greetings to us, So, I'd like to take this
opportunity of thanking everyone for following our blogs, sending us messages
and your Christmas Greetings. It is wonderful to hear from so many people
when we are on our own in the centre of Africa! Happy Christmas from John
& Jenny
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