The Caspian Sea and Beyond

After a nice chilled out weekend in our hotel and the local bars of Baku, it was back to work on Monday. We still needed to sort out our Visas for Turkmenistan as at the time we only had 'letters of invitation.' What that meant exactly we did not know.

We found the address of the embassy on the Internet and headed over by taxi at around 1pm. When we arrived there were about 15 other ralliers queuing outside with their documents to hand, all complaining about the inefficiency of the process. After queuing for about half an hour, someone informed us that before we could physically get our hands on the visa, we needed to obtain a special slip to pay an $85 fee at the bank nearby. However, in order to do this we needed to be seen by someone inside the building.

The guard outside shook his head and seemed to suggest that we would not be seen until Friday! This would mean staying a total of one  week in Baku, incidentally the most expensive city on our route. Luckily for us, the guard soon clocked off and another, much nicer guard took his place. He was able to organise for us to go up and see the man in the office within about 20 minutes.

Once we had the slip we needed, we jumped in a taxi to the bank which was about 10 minutes drive from the embassy. The process was very straightforward for a change and we were both able to pay the $85 without any issues and get hold of the all-important payment reference document. 

The taxi ride back to the embassy was slightly more problematic despite showing our driver where he needed to go on a map. He had to ask six different people where to go (all in different places) and even then we still didn't make it! We decided to jump out as soon as we saw something we recognised as the journey had already taken 45 minutes.

We found our own way back to the embassy and were glad to hear that everyone ahead of us in the queue had been there since 8am. Our gamble of having a lie in had paid off big time! Eventually, we were the last to be seen at around 17:30 but we went back to the hotel chuffed that we had only really taken half a day to get hold of our visas.

As we had been told that our van would be fixed by Monday evening at the latest, we were still hopeful that we would make the evening ferry. However, when we spoke to Yes man he told us that the mechanic was having difficulty finding the part that he needed to replace. This meant that we would not be able to pick up the van until Tuesday.

Ever since arriving in Azerbaijan, we kept hearing people taking about a three day maximum stay for our vehicle before we had to register it. In fact, we were misled by the receptionist at our hotel who kept insisting that it had all been taken care of. We were not totally convinced by this because we had heard that teams were having to go to some sort of immigration office to sort it out. Back when we were queuing for the visas, we had met a man called Ismail, aka 'the fixer' who had given us his number to call when we wanted to organise the ferry trip across the Caspian Sea. We thought that he may be able to help with the registration of the vehicle so, on Tuesday morning we spoke to him on the phone and he agreed to meet us at the immigration office straight away. 

Discussions with the people who worked there didn't exactly go smoothly. Firstly, they were annoyed because we were on our fourth day in Azerbaijan so the three day period had expired. For this they wanted to fine us $300 each, something that we had already heard about due to another team's misfortunes a few days before. Secondly, for some bizarre reason, in order to register our vehicle it had to be parked at the port. This was a bit of an issue for us seeing that our engine was in bits and pieces in a garage somewhere in downtown Baku. 

After arguing with them loudly for about 10 minutes in Azeri, Ismail advised us that the best thing to do was wait until we had the van back and then try to sort the problem out. He was also pretty sure that there would be a ferry leaving later that night - result! He dropped us back to our hotel at 12pm and at 5pm we called Yes man to make sure that the van would be ready for us in an hour. Much to our delight he said that it would but that he wasn't able to come and meet us because he had some work to do. This was music to our ears because we were both worried he was going to want payment for his (in the end genuine) kindness.

Driving the van was very tense as with the luck we were having, both of us expected to see the engine warning light almost immediately. By some miracle, the temperature gauge did not even go above half way, even in Baku's horrendous rush hour traffic. The bad news was that when we called Ismail he told us that there would be no ferry that evening and we would have to wait yet another day in Azerbaijan!

At 8am on Wednesday we received a text from him telling us to meet him at the immigration office first thing so that we could sort out our vehicle registration. This time it went a lot more smoothly as we had been able to park the car at the port like they had asked and Ismail had managed to reduce the fine to $50.

On the way back to the port we both felt that a huge weight had been lifted off our shoulders. Ismail then received a call saying that the ferry would be departing from a different port to the one we were parked at.  You would think that this would be straightforward process of driving the van to the new port, however, as we have come to realise, things rarely are in this part of the world.

Despite all of our customs documentation checking out, the crazy officials wouldn't open the barrier for us to leave and even Ismail didn't understand why. Instead he took us in his car to the other port, followed by a few ralliers who we had just arrived. 

Our hopes of boarding the ferry were dashed once again by a policeman at the port who said that as this port was for cargo ships, as opposed to passenger ships, the e-visas which we all had would not be accepted! After all the nonsense and chaos we had to deal with, we were both nearing our wits end but we have learnt you have to just go with it and things will invariably sort themselves out.

Eventually, Ismail was able to do what he does best and fix it so that they agreed to accept our visas at the port. We would be charged $85 dollars per metre plus $90 each to board the ferry. This cost us $520 altogether and by this time there were 12 cars at the port waiting to board. We think this is why they decided to accept the visas as they must have made a fortune out of us. Safety in numbers and all I guess.

We got chatting to everyone and weirdly enough we had not met any of the 25 or so people on the rally so far. One of the bikers told us how the bike he had started the rally on had blown up in Budapest so he was forced to buy a new one. He had swapped over the licence plates and even replaced the VIN plate with the one from his old bike by gluing it over the top of the one on his new red bike. One problem he is yet to overcome is the fact that his bike was blue to begin with! Still, he has not any problems so far and he's made it through some pretty tough border crossings.

Another team told us about how something caught fire in their car in Istanbul and when they tried to evacuate, the guy escaping from the passenger side opened to door into the path of a passing bus. Safe to say it took the thing clean off but somehow he still has both arms. They had found two men who were able to mend it for them and one of the techniques they used to stretch the door back out was to strap it to the back of the car and drive away really fast. Unbelievable.

After about 12 hours of waiting to board the ship, at 5am we were finally able to do so. Despite this, we were forced to hand over our passports to a man in charge of the ramp and none of us were totally confident that we would ever see them again. 

The boat itself was an old soviet cargo ship, primarily built from rusted metal it seemed. We were ordered upstairs as soon as we got out of our cars and after about 20 minutes of aimlessly looking for passenger friendly areas we came across a room with lots of floor space and a couple of sofas. Once everyone from the rally had piled in all the floor space was gone and we were all moved on. Luckily, we were moved into four-bed cabins which was a luxury that none of us were expecting. Granted, the cabins weren't the cleanest things I'd ever seen but at least we all had a bed! No sheets or pillow cases, but a bed.

Doug and I were rooming with two american guys and we all fell asleep within about an hour. When we woke up it was 4pm and by the time scales we were given we could have expected to be in Turkmenistan, however, much to our disappointment we hadn't even left the port yet! We decided to go and do a bit of exploring and it turned out that everyone had done the same thing as us and been completely bewildered when they woke up. Eventually the boat did set off and as it did so everyone celebrated as if the clock had just turned 12 on New Years Eve!

In the so-called dining room we had chicken with bread and played cards. The prices were steep, especially for beer but with all the time we had spent both in the port and on the boat, we felt we deserved a treat. Over a game of cards we got to know a few more Americans and then one of the Irish bikers taught us a game called 'lives' which kept us entertained for an hour or so.

The overriding topic of conversation was  whether or not Doug and I were screwed with regards to exiting Turkmenistan on time. The problem was that when we got our 5-day transit visas on  Monday, we told them that we wanted the first day to be Wednesday as we thought we would be getting the ferry on Tuesday. As you know, this ferry didn't go on Tuesday and it was Wednesday before we even got to the port to wait for one. We were now moving at least but it was now Thursday evening and we still had 12 hours left to cross the Caspian Sea, not to mention the time it would take to disembark. We only had until Sunday so at the most we had three days to get to Uzbekistan.

It was actually 11am on Friday before we reached the port of Turkmenbashi, 19 hours after leaving Baku. Firstly, we were all assembled in the sofa room before we were told to go back to our cars a couple of decks below. We ended up taking a wrong turn a long the way and by doing so we had to find our way through all the lorries on the boat. As we knew we would be last off this was a stark reminder of how long it would take before we were back on dry land again!

The car deck was quite small and the atmosphere was similar to being stuck in an oven so after about two hours of sweating absolute buckets, we decided to go back up for some fresh air. One sign of how bored we all were was how one of the Australian guys getting his hair cut with some clippers turned into a kind of pay-per-view spectator event. Another favourite pass-time was to exchange the weird stories we had heard about the way Turkmenistan works. Apparently, it is ranked only above North Korea in terms of public freedom and the last leader supposedly took it upon himself to re-write the country's history, the book of which is available in all public places within Turkmenistan. Who knows whether or not this is true but by all accounts it's a pretty strange place!

We deduced that the reason the unloading was taking so long was because the lorries were being done one at a time as there were lots of trailers on the boat but only two trucks! Eventually, six hours after arriving in the port we were able to drive up the ramp into the light of Turkmenbashi Harbour, the time was 5pm so we had been on the boat for 36 hours in total.

The fun was far from over. We were ordered to park our cars on the left hand side in two lines and then to wait in a strange blue, for lack of a better word, cage. The Irish bikers had got off the boat four hours before us and were just about to leave. To everyone's dismay, they told us that the road tax for Turkmenistan had to be paid upfront in dollars. They had paid about $115 each but this didn't really help us i) because we weren't on motorbikes and ii) because we only had $100 in our wallets. We have also been told that getting money out is next to impossible in this country and ATMs are few and far between, even in the capital. 

After discussing these problems for a while and being organised into a queue, conversation eventually returned to how much pressure Doug and I were under to reach the border before our visas run out on Sunday. Even if we had a relatively speedy border crossing we would not make it to Ashgabat (the capital) until the early hours of Saturday morning and we had a long way north to travel after that, via the doorway to hell. One thing that I haven't mentioned is that the supposed penalty for breaching the time limit on a transit visas is £1,500 per person. 

The process to get through the border was by far the most complicated yet. Thankfully, Window 1 was for us to get our passports back and strangely enough, Window 2 was to pay for our passports to be given back. Window 3 was in fact the same as Window 1 except this time we had to tell the man which route we would be taking through Turkmenistan and which town we would exit through so that they could charge us the correct amount of road tax. After this point, vehicle owners and passengers had to split up. Doug had to go into Windows 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 alone whilst I filled out a passenger declaration form and checked a few bags through. By the time Doug had gone back and forth a fair few times and collected enough bits of paper we were finally free! Once we had waited for everyone to get through it was 23.15 so we all drove out of the port in search of food and a place to stay.   Tomorrow we have to wait until 9am for the bank to open so that we can get some dollars out - no one really has any left at this point! We also need to fill up our jerry cans as we have been reliably informed that petrol stations are very hard to come by in these parts.

Our aim is to drive until we get to the door to hell which is about 800km away from where we are. The problem is finding a local to take us there as although the gas crater is easy to find, getting back to the cars apparently always proves much more difficult!

See you later

The Show Must Go On!

I have to tell you, the last couple of days have been the hardest of the rally so far. We slept in the van on Thursday night in the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi. We set off again early on Friday morning headed for the border with Azerbaijan in high hopes that this crossing would be more straightforward that the two previous crossings into Turkey and into Georgia itself.

Everything was going so smoothly to start off with, we stormed through the Georgian end and then we hit a small queue before we could actually enter into Azerbaijan. We met some very nice Azerbaijanis and got chatting to them about the usual things, Manchester United, Liverpool and Luis Suarez. We have found that these topics are always best when there is a language barrier present but half way through Doug's impression of Suarez biting someone (complete with dog noises) a heavily armed border guard came over to tell us that we would have to go through the border separately: me on foot, Doug in the van.

We were still hopeful that the transition would be a smooth transition and from my end it all went like clockwork. I handed over my documents to the officials which then got stamped and I was ushered through the building into Azerbaijan. Along the way I helped carry two bags of mangos for the men that we met in the queue and for this I earned two mangos. Result!

Once their driver came through and we said our goodbyes, the waiting game began. It was about 30 degrees outside but as I still thought he'd be along any minute I was not too bothered. A couple of hours went past and I thought it was odd but maybe there was another problem with the computers or something. Another hour went by and I was forced to find some shade over by the side of the road - the factor 50 was still in the van!

When I asked a man for the time and he said 3 o'clock I knew something must have gone wrong. Doug had been in there for 4 hours! Me being a maverick, I decided to make a move the wrong way back up the tunnel towards the customs desk. Along the way I passed an army man guarding a door and by this time I could see the van parked up across the other side of No Man's Land. I explained the situation but he didn't care one bit and insisted that I cannot go over to the van and also that we speak in Russian.

Next I tried the customs folk themselves, one guy in particular seemed sympathetic to my cause but he wasn't willing to let me go and find Doug either. I started speaking to the lady who was operating the x-ray machine in very broken English but she was very nice. I think she found it cheeky that I asked to share her bowl of mango slices with her but she let me do so nonetheless. The first man then left the building through a side door and walked over towards the van. He came back a few minutes later and told me that Doug would not be long and I must go and wait outside again, but not before I stole one last piece of Mango!

I waited another 45 minutes outside but at least I knew what was going this time. Upon being reunited with Doug and Frankie, I realised that it had been quite an ordeal for them both.

First of all, he wasn't even allowed through the gate for at least an hour and when he was finally let through, all of his documents including his passport, visa and V5 were taken off him and he was told to go and sit on his own on the grass. He said then another hour passed and he eventually asked one of the army guys what was going on, who then subsequently found all of the documents in an empty kiosk on their own. He then basically had to follow one man around the building for another couple of hours before he made his colleagues get on and complete the necessary documentation.

One thing Doug didn't get back from the officials was his visa so we're not too sure if this is going to be a problem or not. He also told me about one man who was slightly more irate about the time it was taking who was shouting and shouting and wouldn't stop shouting. The border guard was shouting back at him until he screwed up all of his documents into a ball and threw them into the corner. We have since found that as of yesterday Azebaijan have introduced a ban on cars that are more than ten years old getting into the country so I think we just managed to sneak through in our 1996 fire truck!

We carried on driving as we still wanted to make it to the capital and ferry port Baku by nightfall. Along the way, when I was driving we were pulled over by the police. The first man came up to the window and shook both of our hands and then took me into the back of his car. He spoke no english but from what I could make out he was accusing us of going too fast and that the usual penalty was 5000 US dollars. Obviously, this man was mental. He crossed out this number on his bit of paper a few times, each time writing a smaller number down. When it stood at $500 and I still said no, the first man made a weird hand gesture to denote my arrest and then he began to drive away. At this point his friend said 'No, no, no, wait...'

This was a well rehearsed good cop bad cop routine if ever I had seen one! The second cop then got me to write down what I could afford - I wrote down $50. They were not happy but that's all the bastards were getting. I went back to the car to get it and when I returned I asked them for a receipt for this no doubt clandestine transaction - no such luck. This put me in a really bad mood because I had promised myself that we wouldn't pay any bribes but as it turned out I just lost my patience. Speaking to a couple of guys since made me feel slightly better as they had lost the battle at $200!

Back on the road again we tried to be a bit more vigilant of the speed limits, although at one point we did get shouted at by a policeman on foot next to his car. We decided to ignore this and carry on driving.

Our spirits were still quite low at this point but no where near as low as they would be in a couple of hours time. Our engine began overheating again but this time it was much, much worse. The noise can only be described as a that of a steam train coming from under Doug's seat and when we lifted it up to have a look we both knew the coolant tank was about to blow. For some reason we decided to pre-empt this happening by removing the cap on the top ourselves. Boiling hot coolant splattered out everywhere in the cab, including Doug's face. I escaped without much harm but he was in a fair bit of pain especially on his hands.

Once we got ourselves and Frankie cleaned up and cooled down we set off again but it only took 100 metres before the engine warning light came on again and we had to stop. This time we set up the table and the umbrella so that we could play cards while we waited for the van to cool down again. We weren't really sure what we were doing at this point or what was wrong but as we were in the middle of no where and both feeling a long way from home we didn't really have a choice.

Night time was fast approaching when a Swedish couple driving a Toyota Rav 4 pulled over along side us. Doug had met them both before at the border crossing where they left him some bottles of water with a note next to our van. We already knew they were nice people just from this simple act of kindness but looking back, we had no idea.

Bearing in mind that it was getting darker, we were 400km outside Baku and in a van that didn't work, it is perhaps odd that when the Swedes offered to tow us we didn't jump at the chance. We eventually changed are minds and were so glad we did. It took us 8 hours in the end driving at no more than 35mph to get across Azerbaijan, eventually arriving at a hotel at 4 o'clock in the morning. It was probably the hardest driving of the trip so far because the van was even overheating in neutral when being towed, which meant we couldn't keep the running, which meant we couldn't charge the battery. Consequently, we were faced with the dilemma of having lights but killing the engine or saving the engine but having no lights and probably be rear ended. Luckily, we were able to bump start it in fifth gear every now and then and then wait about 10 minutes for engine overheat again and turn it off.

After this beast of a journey, we entered Baku from the West and as we did so we came across a man in a black Mercedes who the Swedes asked for directions. Doug and I both thought he was trying to sell us drugs but as it turned out he showed us to a hotel and said he had a friend who could fix Frankie if we took it to him the next day.

We woke up feeling slightly more upbeat and before sorting out the mechanic we decided to take a walk down to the harbour to enquire about the ferry to Turkmenistan. Whilst chatting to a couple of other ralliers, two Irish teams arrived in some very Irish Nissan Micras. I asked if any of them knew about cars and wanted to earn some beers. Just as luck would have it two of them were mechanics and offered to come and take a look at poor old Frankie at our hotel.

As they were at work we heard a few expletives muttered along with the two words we were most scared of 'head gasket.' They did a few tests but the one which put the nail in the proverbial coffin was when we could smell petrol from the coolant tank. This was it. The rally was over.

We were both now in the worst mood we'd been in since the rally began and at one point were seriously discussing the logistics of getting home from Baku. Would we have to import the vehicle? Would they let us leave the van here? Would we be able to scrap it? Most important of all though, HOW MUCH WOULD IT ALL COST? Next thing we get a call from our man Elman (AKA Yes Man) asking us if we still needed the van fixed. We were not hopeful but decided to invite him over anyway as we had nothing to lose. We followed him to his friend's garage and we met about seven guys who spoke no english. The head guy said that it would be at $600 to fix but we managed to haggle him down a bit to around £265 if he could have it running by Monday.

We are hoping that this will sort the problems out otherwise we remain just as screwed as we were last night. Tonight we are going to relax and have a few beers after a heavy couple of days driving, we'll update you when we get the van back!

See you later.

An Odd Night Out in Trabzon

When we arrived in Trabzon we were determined to make the most of our time here so after yet another go karting session at the local shopping mall we decided to go out for a few drinks at the pub near our hotel.

After a few pints we got chatting to two Turkish men named Sergei and Cesaro (nicknamed Sergio Garcia and Julius Caeser). They had nicknames for us as well, Michael Owen and Michael Douglas - absolutely normal stuff so far but bear with me!

They told us that they worked as waiters at the Novotel and could get us a cheap room if we wanted one. Looking back I'm not so sure if this was true. Sergio asked us if we wanted to go to a disco with them and as we didn't want to miss out on a good time we jumped in and stopped for cash on the way.

I thought it was a bit odd when they said we would need at least 400 Turkish each because that's more than £200 so instead we decided to get out £30 instead, much to Sergio Garcia's disappointment.

Upon arriving at the club we realised it was a bit on the shady side, downstairs beneath a hotel with questionable choices of wall paper and furniture throughout. Anyhow, when we got downstairs we saw more of what we expected with people drinking and dancing, generally having a good time.

Twenty minutes later though, there was a bit of panic at the disco. The lights came on, the music stopped and everyone sat down whilst pretending to be much less drunk than they were a few minutes prior. Seven policemen then entered the room and demanded to see everyone's ID. We think that they were raiding it for prostitutes because when they left they took with them some women who perhaps looked like they hadn't had the happiest of childhoods.

Regardless, this was our cue to leave. We tried saying our goodbyes to our supposed friends but they did not seem very h[gallery] Drag and drop images you wish to upload within these gallery tags. [/gallery]appy with us. As we walked up the stairs Sergio Garcia followed us demanding we paid him 400 Lira for something (we're still not sure what) and when we tried getting into a taxi he told the driver not to take us anywhere because we owed him money.

We decided to walk instead but again he followed us. We now saw a whole new side to Sergio as he got more and more aggressive with us. When he began pushing Doug he retaliated by pushing him up against the fence with his hand around Sergio's neck. And just when we thought the situation couldn't get any more mental, a car pulled over and a woman started shouting over at us in Turkish.

We understood enough to realise she was rescuing us so we both ran to her car and got inside. Doug didn't realise but there was a baby asleep on the front seat which he accidentally sat on! I was in the back with another child of about 3. The woman didn't speak any English but she said she was a teacher in Trabzon and agreed to drop us off safely back at our hotel. As such she earned the nickname Mother Teresa.

Anyway, the V5 is now in Istanbul according to the tracker so hopefully we'll have it tomorrow and we'll then be able to head back up to the border for another round of fun and games with the lovely Georgian officials.

See you later

U-Turn

Yesterday, after a a beautiful 8 hour drive across the northern coast of Turkey we hit a huge queue at the Georgian border. What's more, Frankie started to over heat as we pulled in. Our solution was to prop up my seat with our umbrella to let the heat escape the engine ba faster.

I got chatting to another team in the queue coming the opposite way and then a minute later Doug got ushered on round a load of coaches towards the back of the queue. That's fine I thought, I'll just walk up in a second. As it turned out, the queue was three miles long but a bit of exercise never killed anyone.

When I got back to the van Doug was chatting to some Swedish guys, one of whom had his arm in a sling and a few rips in his shorts. He had been attacked by two dogs whilst stopping to pee at the side of the road. Although he saw one of the dogs when they pulled up, he wasn't worried about it because it was chained up. Unfortunately for him, the chain was really long and when he attacked another one decided to join in.

Luckily, when they asked some Turkish men for directions to the hospital they led them straight there, they even waited with them whilst they got their shots! After that they took them o thir house, cooked them dinner and invited all their other family members round to meet them. Top marks for hospitality!

Anyway, back to the queue, our initial guesstimates were that it would take around four hours to get through into Georia. The way the border worked was that the queue basically went back on itself so that people who had just arrived were actually the nearest to the front but on the other side. This meant that there was a chance for would-be cheeky buggers to spin around and jump the queue.

This turned into a game that we called Monday Night Border Wars. This involved everyone in the queue who had not jumped in essentially blocking off those who had. It got very tense at times and we were certain that a punch up would ensue, especially when, in amongst all of the confusion we ended up skipping about five cars in the queue ourselves. NAIL BITING STUFF!

This eventually calmed down and six hours after we first arrived, we finally got to the front. The first part involved exiting Turkey so we had to get our passports stamped here. This took a bit longer due to the right of way that Turkish lorry drivers had over us despite us being parked directly outside the necessary window.

All was fine and the next two windows seemed to do exactly the same thing by checking our passports and our vehicle documents.

The trouble came when we got to the Georgian end of the process and in fact, the very last window! The guy was not amused in the slightest by our black and white copy of the V5 document and even less so when we handed him the iPad. He marched Doug off to see the Duty Manager who screwed up our make-shift document and told Doug in no uncertain terms that we had to get out immediately. We would not be let into Georgia and we had to return to Turkey. What a disaster!

The time was now 2 o'clock in the morning and we had to try and find a hotel somewhere back down the coast. Every hotel was full in the next town and when it got to half past 3 exhaustion had fully set in. We were close to sleeping in the van but then came across a hotel in Rize which had one room left. Probably the worst hotel room we have ever stayed in but nonetheless a room.

Again, Doug's mum Liz has come to the rescue by offering to have the original V5 document couriered over to us. Hopefully it gets here soon!

See you later

Samsun, Turkey

We arrived in Samsun late last night after a long day of driving. We managed to stop in Istanbul for lunch but not before causing chaos ın the bus station by driving the wrong way through the one way system, twice.

Hopefully we will make it to Georgia tonight and hopefully the border crossing is more straight forward than the last one!

See you later

Varna, Bulgaria

Right so the beach party got out of hand as expected. The place was very much Romania's version of magaluf/ bennidorm. We're now feeling a bit worse for wear and heading through Bulgaria with our friends 'farmer' and 'hand job' (don't ask).

They have already provided fantastic entertainment by crashing straight into the back of a Romanian car near the transfagarasan highway. Which by the way, is quite possibly the most stunning piece of road in the world so look it up on google. They also helped us strap our exhaust back on using some metal wire but this only lasted 20 minutes, after which it fell off again. In the end we ripped it off and now it is sat safely in a bin bag in the boot.

We found another go kart track on the way so we decided we had to give it a go! I won by a considerable distance but apparently everyone else's karts weren't working properly. My foot.

Turkey is now in our sights and we expect to be in Istanbul this evening some time. Having said that we do tend to miss our ETAs quite regularly because we pull over every now and then to do go karting/have a picnic.

See you later!

Sibiu, Romania

Just realised we have a word limit on our text updates so apologies for the posts that didn't make any sense!

We are now in the town of Sibiu which is quite nice by Romanian standards. We are meeting up with other ralliers for a day on the beers before we set off for the Romanian beach party tomorrow.

Last night we had some overheating problems, we knew something was wrong when a distinct bubbling noise, like that of a boiling kettle, started coming from beneath our seats.

Apart from that that, the only problems we have had stemmed from the fact that we chose the 80 octane petrol back in Hungary. We realised that you get what you pay for in these parts because despite saving ourselves a few huf, Frankie kicked up a massive fuss and we now know never to pull that trick on her again.

Also we managed to form a convoy with some Swedish guys last night called 'The geek and the freak.' The geek is a man named buster (weirdly) who studies electrical engineering in Stockholm. The freak is an interesting chap called Adde (pronounced adder) who drives 100 metre cranes for a living. It appears as though he is trying to make himself look as much like a snake as possible. Covered in tattoos with huge stretchers in his ears, Adde has definitely gone his own way in terms of his exterior. His best feature by far is the ping pong balls that he has had inserted into his arms. Hence our nickname for him 'smooth arms' Such a nice guy though, we both love him!

As for Romania, although it's a bit rough around the edges the scenery is absolutely stunning. The roads look like they've been built by a man who promises his wife every Sunday that he'll 'get around to it' but never actually ends up finishing their dream kitchen conversion.

Other teams are starting to arrive at the pub now so we have some drinking to do.

See you later!

Ewan, Doug and Frankie

Nuremberg, Germany

Just arrived in Nuremberg!

It has been quite an eventful trip so far so lets recap.

After a scrumptious burger and a few beers, we wanted to put Frankie's sleeping facilities to the test straight away. We both agreed that although tight, it wasn't as bad as expected. The only downside was the lack of dignity in getting out of the damn thing in the morning. I basically fell head first out of the driver side window, much to the enjoyment of several onlookers.

A couple of hours later we set off on our intrepid adventure but before we even left the gates of Battersea Park we had to pull over along with some Aussies to admit the fact that none of us knew how to get to Dover. Luckily, some Italians drove past at just this moment so we rushed back to the cars to begin our pursuit.

We built up a conga line of about 5 or 6 cars which lasted around an hour, after which we became acutely aware of an awful shudder that came about every time Doug lifted his foot off of the accelerator. Our first thought was 'that's fine, we just need to keep accelerating.' I'd say it took us about 10 minutes to realise that this was a ridiculous solution to the problem and decided to pull over when Doug felt that a wheel was about to fall off.

Sure enough, beneath the hub cap on our back left wheel were three bolts which were very loose, in fact one of them was hardly on at all! We were relieved for two reasons, one because we'd managed to avoid a horrendous crash, and two because it was on our very limited list of 'things we know how to fix.'

The only other hitch we had before the ferry was when Doug went the wrong way down a one way street in Dover. I'm not even joking the cars on either side parted for us to drive through the middle so they obviously thought we were a real fire engine!

Once we arrived in Calais we headed up to Belgium, through Brussels and then into Germany. We were reminded of the fact that we are both useless people when a 5 hour drive to the Nurburgring took around 9.5 hours due to repeatedly getting lost along the way. We have said from day one no SAT NAVs and we are sticking to it!!

Nonetheless, we arrived in high spirits and much to our delight there was a camp site opposite the complex. Our four-seater picnic table came into its own, as did our gas cooker and parasol. The midnight meal of choice was pot noodles and to go with a can of stella - no expense was spared.

We both slept like babies. So much so, in fact that we didn't notice a storm passing over. At least until the morning when we realised, to our horror that we had left both the sun roofs open and all of our stuff, (including us) was now rather wet. Disaster.

Oh well we said, at least we get to drive around the famous Nurburgring today! No ... it was closed. The only way we could get on it was to pay them £250 to drive us both round in a BMW. No thanks, so we went go karting instead.

At this point we met a couple of fellow ralliers from Austria who helped us sort out our route through Europe over a coffee. They suggested that we drive down the Rhine in Germany en route to Nuremberg because it was very picturesque. Indeed it was.

However, quickly became clear that our new convoy wasn't going to last when we told them that our fuel tank only took 30 litres and our top speed on motorways is 65mph. Safe to say they were not interested in partnering with us and they went speeding off into the sunset.

Whilst we're here, one thing we hate about Germany is the fact that their motorways only have two lanes a lot of the time. The slow lane, which is full of lorries going at 55mph and the fast lane, where everyone wants to do 90mph! It was impossible for poor Frankie who's 65mph was too fast for the lorries but far too slow for the likes of the German speed freaks. Every time we tried to overtake we would be bullied back into the slow lane by cars driving right on our back bumper!

Tomorrow, we leave for Klenova Castle in the Czech Republic where everyone is meeting up for a party. Hopefully we can make friends with some ralliers in slower cars/vans so that we can convoy with them! We are worried that if we don't find anyone we'll be royally screwed because there will be no one to fix Frankie when she inevitably breaks down.

Ewan, Doug and Frankie xxx