Having covered nearly 4000 miles from home by road, we reached the finish of the Plymouth-Timbuktu challenge at the Centre Regionale d'Energie Solaire in Bamako late on the evening of 13th. It was pretty hard to find CRES (no directions in the roadbook, and the locals don't know the place) and it took us an hour of touring Bamako to locate. There wasn't much of a welcoming committee, but we were glad to arrive!
We then complicated matters further by trying to find the other five or six teams who'd made it and were staying in Hotel les Colibris round the corner - we had a map, but it wasn't much use! Another hour of pulling u-turns and diving down side streets, and we eventually found the hotel after Ana fortuitously saw a broken sign on the ground pointing to the place. It had cold beer and beef brochettes, Noel had found some vodka and Nelson had broken out his cognac store, so all was good.
Although the rally officially ends in Bamako, some teams are pressing on to Timbuktu. Sadly we won't be able to - we burnt our spare days earlier in the trip by crossing offroad from Mauritania, which was a lot of fun but took longer than we expected. Apparently there's not a lot to see in Tim' anyway - we're off to Segou, Mopti and Djenné for a few days R&R before flying back to the UK via Casablanca.
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3 comments:
Congratulations! Looks like an amazing trip... Hoping to hear more about it back in London town (if its not washed away by then!)
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CONGRATULATIONS!
See you soon!
Alastair..have just got back from NZ this evening. Had a great time in Waikikamoocow (!). Congratulations on making the distance. When do you get home?
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