We Survived
Survived is definately the word given the state of our car when we finally pulled into Limbe late last night.
We lost our last working phone enroute yesterday hence the lack of updates on our final day.
Having ripped our car to pieces on the fabled Ekok - Mamfe road we stayed in Mamfe for a few hours in the morning to visit our fifth mechanic of the rally. He tied our exhaust back onto the car, tied up the sump guard and helped us bash the our wheel rims back into shape, giving us back two spare wheels.
We left Mamfe at 11 hoping to make the finish line by the end of the day. We took a road south to Nguti along a road that wasn't on the map but had been cut by a helpful logging company. The road was pretty decent and despite some big hills that the car struggled up we made decent time without inflicting too much more damage. Thank heavens for the deforistation of the rainforest. The views were superb driving on a dirt track through stunning rainforest.
Made it to Nguti and got a bit of tarmac before we again hit bad roads about 50km out of Kumba. One long section of very stony road saw us pick up yet another picture. We went to our newly repaired spare wheels and found them both flat. One seemed ok so we pumped it back up, put it on and continued forward.
Made Kumba just before dusk where we picked up a lovely tarmac road that would take us to the end. Smooth road surface with road markings and sign posts, something we hadn't seen in a long time.
But what should have been an easy 100km drive to the finish turned into a tense affair. The engine was making a terrible noise and going much over 60kph the gear box and front wheels would shake quite violently. So we limped on, engine began to feel hot so we stopped to let it cool. We stopped quickly at one point when we could smell burning oil but we could see nothing pouring out of it so assumed it was a locals car.
Arrived in Limbe in the dark at around 8pm and were greeted by Duncan and the remaining rally teams, so relieved to have actually made it and amazingly finished under our own power.
This morning the right front is flat again and a quick look from a mechanincally minded chap tells us that both torsion bars have been bent, that would explain why the car was running so low at the back.
We managed to get flights and we should be leaving africa early tomorrow morning.
But we made it!
