The higher you are, the greater the fall.

South Africa, Uncategorized 25 Responses »
Jan 302012

Firstly, we made it! We are in cape town! The end, finito. London to cape town world cup rally is over. All a memory now. A spectacular entry into the Table Bay Hotel. People everywhere and photographers and congratulations and pats on the back and everything. totally surreal! In the end we came a comfy 32nd place. Thats what you get with sensible driving and a very well prepared car. The buzz was phenominal.

Then.

What happened next you couldnt even write it in a fictional novel. It just doesnt happen. Ever.

We turned out of the couldersac of the hotel finish line and had a (no joke) 30 meter transit to the carpark. And we hear a clunk.

Not a good clunk.

Then a few more clunks.

Then nothing.

Then more clunks and horrible noises.

After some investigation we have come to the end, we have blown up our diff. The diff center is kaput…..

It is such a shame, considering our plans to see more of africa. But Penny won’t be touring africa this time round, maybe/hopefully in the future she will be back. But for now, she will go on a boat back to Aus and go from there.

And us? not sure at the moment, we will work it out tomorrow if we get a hire car and tour or whatever. For now we are going to the prize giving diner (we won “agaisnt all odds” award!!). Such is life, it was meant to be. I am young enough and have many years to come back to africa, and i will! Mark my words i will!

More tomorrow.

James

Posted by james at 2:38 am

To infinity… AND BEYOND!

South Africa 9 Responses »
Jan 292012

Also, thank you all so much for following me thus far on this adventure. Everyone knows that the London to Cape Town world cup rally finishes tomorrow. But that is only the beginning for me and dad. Because we are planning on driving back north! Why? you might ask? Well, because we; A) are in africa, B) have a car in africa, and C) want to see more of africa.

So, we have a very vague plan of having a few days off in Capetown, seeing some good friends outside of Jo-burg, then going back north, maybe Botswana, then up to Gurun-gurun crater and the Serengeti and hopefully some gorillas and most likely finishing in Mombasa, Kenya to ship our car back home.

And this all means that i will continue to update this blog on our continued adventures as often as possible about what we are doing, and if i get arrested in the future (touch wood) and much of the same as what i have done so far. I hope you will all have the continued support and interest to continue checking and reading throughout Febuary and most likely the beginning of March. So to my friends back home in brissy, i still don’t have a solid return date yet but i will keep you informed :D

 

James

Posted by james at 6:49 am

I shot the sheriff, but did not shoot the deputy!

South Africa 7 Responses »
Jan 292012

Bahahahah! So just came back from dinner and this story MUST be shared.

What do you get when you cross a 1923 vauxhall carrying 6 people (2 on each running board), a bunch of bored coppers in the middle of Clan William, South Africa and a 100meter journey at 15kph after dinner?

A 4000 rand fine for dangerous driving, a journey to the local watch house, a threat to be locked up untill monday for the judge to sort me out, and a bloody good story!!

Now we are coming to an end of this adventure, and alot of positions are more or less locked in place, a few of the other competitors that love Penny so much wanted to go for a little drive in/on her. And because tonights accomidation was spread all over town with a central bowls club dinner, a few of them had booked in (earlier in the night) a lift back to thier motel on the running boards! Fine, no problems, they have a rollbar to hold on to, i was doing less than 20kph and it was at maximum a 150meter journey. So Grant and simon, and Paul Carter and John Balyss and David (from the landy) all pile on and off i set. blub blub blub blub down the road. Then i turn down the main road (empty, this town has maybe 1000 inhabitants MAX) and what happens to be on the corner? The bloody cop shop, with 3 cop cars parked on the side and 8 bored coppers leaning on them. To be fair, any other country in africa you see people truck surfing (standing/sitting on top of the cab on a prime mover lorrie/semi). So they pull me over and blah blah blah lecture me about safety and then crack out, “Well, i should arrest you now and keep you untill monday to be sorted out with the local judge.” Where as at this point in time retort, “No sir, i can’t do that sir, we’re leaving tomorrow sir, i realise it was a silly thing to do sir, i’ll never do it again sir.” And he took very kindly to my – brown noseing – and then just gave me a fine. Yes i made sure i got a receipt. And i think i’ll frame it!!

THEN he refused to beleive that the car was a real car for the roads, and refused to believe it was registered untill i could fine rego papers (back in my hotel) so he took my license and i had to get rego papers and come back meet him at the cop shop and pay the fine blah blah blah. Good sir Grant Tromans helped me out for the fine as it was his idea for the bus ride after dinner.

 

James ‘hardcore’ Stephenson

Posted by james at 6:48 am

The penultimate day!

South Africa, Uncategorized No Responses »
Jan 292012

The rally is devided into two groups the last 2 days; the fella’s that want to try and steal 30 seconds off the person in front of them and drive like maniacs, and the people that know there is no way to catch anyone and just drive with the intention of making it. And me? well because we are in our own race, and these Namibian/RSA roads are completly wonderful, i drive the time trail sections just the way i have been doing them, swiftly!

Today was another blinder of a day, we left our hot springs resort in the middle of a canyon and the first section was only 12k’s on smooth gravel with long sweeping corners. Fabulous. Now we are own well made roads we can finally get some speed up and haul our 2.5tonn car along. The results havnt come up yet but it felt like i took a podium place. I’m not really sure if another vuaxhall could have possibly done that section any faster. It wasn’t reckless by any standards, but it was fun! And i was so chuffed that none of the cars caught up to us and we had to let them pass. Top stuff Penny, you did well!

The border from Namibia to RSA was the most fluid out of all of them today, no more then 15 minutes. In and out, and then in and out on the other side. Kudos to them.

There was a few time controls that looped off the main road around lunchtime going up and down the hills to the side (would have been nice drive) on dirt roads, but the map suggested they were really windy going up and down, and it was another STINKING hot day, so we decided to give them a miss. Even plodding at regular driving speed on the main road we were running at 200 degree’s F, let alone if we started to push it to make the average speed’s set for each given section (mind you were set at 95kph, no possible chance of keeping up). And our decision was a good one, we plodded along to do Olifant River time trail late in the afternoon and made it in on our schedule time. Another short section of 11k’s and to clear it we were given 7 minutes, i clocked in at 10minutes 2 seconds. Faster than the americans in a jeep, and an MG. :D

an easy 350k’s tomorrow with 2 short sections in the sederberg hills just out of cape town, can’t wait! Then festivities all through the night at the Table Mountain hotely/bar thing. And then a sleep in, i’ll be looking forward to having a good nice lie in on monday morning, with nowhere to drive, no times to do anything, just bumm around.

 

James

Posted by james at 6:31 am

Houstan! We ahhh… We have a problem.

Namibia 2 Responses »
Jan 292012

9:38 am. Whats this? I have some spare time in the middle of the day to write a blog entry. How unusual. Oh wait, it’s because we are broken down in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Hahaha. Not a major problem, just minor, but big enough to delay us too much and cop maximum lateness all day. Which is a shame, it was going to be another day on beautiful gravel roads for 700 k’s and 10 time controls we will miss. Which means about 5 hours of penalties :( we won’t hold our glorious 31st place tomorrow.

I was driving along, and noticed the front right mudguard was wet, and i thought to myself “hang on, there are no puddles in the desert, how is it wet??? Shit….. our radiator has a crack in it.” Only a very small crack on the side where the solder had started to split. Smaller than a pin hole. So we dried the area up, and pushed silicon gook all over it, put more silicon gook all over it. And voila, no more leak. Now we are just waiting for the gook to go off and dry so we can plod our way down to Ai-Ais tonight. Everything else? Fine!

8:15PM. By Poseidon’s Trident it was hot today. We were in the worlds oldest desert and it was scorching hot! Pushing 40 degree’s C. Not very ideal for tyre life and engine heat. Reports from other drivers are that lots and lots of people got flats or de-laminating tyres, from the intense heat and gravel roads, the tread just working so much harder it was literally falling apart on the lesser quality tyres. We couldn’t make up the time we lost this morning for two reasons; our engine was getting too hot when we pushed it, and we were just too far behind from our radiator problem. Even taking shortcuts and more direct roads we only made the final time control 30 minutes before maximum lateness. But still drove 700k’s on the same beautfil gravel roads.

700k’s on roads like this takes so much energy and concentration, especially a giant car like that at respectable speeds on the gravel, i’m exhausted, but i am getting fitter from doing it hahaha. Only 2 more days to go. Then a bit of a rest!

Namibia is beautiful, almost entirely desert but there is something about the rugged-ness and just how old this place is. The canyons, and rock escarpments and sand formations are just amazing. Our SD card reader is currently broken, so no photo’s until we can buy a new one in Cape Town sorry. And so so dry. The amount of water we drank today was phenomenal. More sand in places you didn’t think you could have sand in as well haha.

Pulled into a lonely servo – 300k’s from anything else that had any signs of life – and jumped out and heard a hissing sound. Then i had a bit of a chuckle thinking the poor fella next to us had a flat tyre. Wrong! It wasn’t the poor fella next to us, it WAS us. So we changed another tube today, not quite as formula one fast as yesterday because it was hot and we didn’t need to rush, but still changed it out in 15 minutes or so, ready to hit the road again. Just another one of those “brilliant, no spare wheels remember, dad! Remember what happened to them?!”

ANNNDDDD our starter motor kinda broke today as well (our good luck must slightly be wearing off). Not a big problem, we will push start tomorrow and when we have more time tomorrow night we can fix it, just a bolt snapped. No biggy.

 

Animals:

-Some giant deer kind of thing, with no horns,  the size of a horse, oval shapped furry ears a bit like a rabbit, and pale grey all over. No idea what it was.

-and a mongoose. A few of them actually, so plural of mongoose would be Mongeese? Mongooses? Mongi? Who knows, but we still saw them.

-Ostriches

-and some more warthogs.

 

James

Posted by james at 2:31 am

7 Left medium fast over crest then 40 right

Namibia No Responses »
Jan 292012

Today i felt like a full on rally driver. The only thing to make it more official was if dad had pace notes calling the corners out to me. Thus far, my favourite day of driving. Namibia has brought everything that was promised and then some! 600k’s today and about 500 of it was on gravel, and it was the most beautiful gravel roads ever: wide, smooth, no potholes. On tarmac we sit at about 107-108kph and on the straights the roads were good enough to do the same speeds. It was just heaven. And over the entire day we only dropped about 17 minutes over 6 time controls, and we even cleared a few of the sections. I was so chuffed about the results. And now we have jumped up to 31st position! Movers and shackers over here, watch out leader board! haha.

We were also about 1minute before our schedule time to leave after a lunchtime stop, and we see that one of our rear tyres was de-laminating and falling apart. And because we don’t have any spare wheels, the only thing to do was change the tyre, with levers and lube. We mananged to change a tyre and tube and be back on the ground in no more than 12 minutes, then a mad dash to the next time control (luckily they moved that time back 8 minutes) to be 1 minute early. So in all, changed a tubed tyre with no loss time! Bonus!

The Namibian’s take their stop signs at police checkpoints very seriously as well. We got hardcore yelled at because we didn’t stop on the line and started rolling forward. It looked like he waved us through, but no, eveidently he didn’t. And then proceded to tell us that a stop sign actually means STOP instead of ‘please, keep rolling through.’

Heaps more warthogs on the roads today, we were flogging it up a hill, dad was looking behind us taking a picture of the scenery and then BAM, a family of warthogs dashes out of the scrubs, sees us and thinks we are a giant predator and then scuttled away again. All in the blink of an eye.

 

James

Posted by james at 2:30 am

Hakuna Matata

Uncategorized 7 Responses »
Jan 262012

What a wonderful phrase, Hakuna MAtata, Aint no passing craze, It means no worries for the rest of your days! – Timone and Pumba, The Lion King. Well, we saw a Pumba today. He wasn’t a very big warthog, but a real one none-the-less, with big tusks and all. Running along in the scrub next to the road.

12 Hours 17 minutes, 1045km and 3 police stops to check licenses, 2pee stops 1 fuel stop, 1 border crossing and a partridge in a pear tree later we have made it. Today was long, not terribly difficult as such but just ridiculously long. For the entirety of the day i turned 3 intersections and i was hanging out for tiny kink’s in the never ending road just for something to do. As an Australian i thought i knew what long straight roads were like, wrong! There was a section today which was just under 200k’s long without a single undulation, kink, bend, bump, hole, wind, rise, dip, bridge or tunnel. Just straight, scrub’s and bushland on either side. Tomorrow would be a good day for another rest day… But not long now, only a 600, 800, 600 and 350km day remains between us and Table Mountain Bay Hotel.

We also saw an Elephant!!! He was just chilling on his own, right next to the road amongst some trees (he was probably about to push one over). And he has massive long tusks! It was awesome! Seeing him made the massively boring drive seem totally Irrelephant (see what i did there? Ahahaha).

Patrick and Christine in the Karmann Ghai had some problems this morning. I feel for them a bit, they have been having a constant stream of minor/medium issues that force them to be late in all the time (after midnight sometimes). But they keep on trooping, and this morning everything was looking good, they were about to start on time and slog out today with ease….. but that wasn’t to be. Patrick opened the boot of his Vee Dub and saw petrol leaking out of his carby. Me and dad come over to help investigate as Patrick isn’t a big Karmann (see what i did there? Car-man! Hahaha i’m on fire!) and it looks like overnight the carby float in the bowl didn’t seat correctly, and it was gravity dripping all night from the fuel tank. We wipe up all the excess fuel and tell him to start it, but it goes Whurrrp and it doesn’t turn over. Because the Vee Dub’s have a downdraft carby, situated above the flat-4 engine, the dripping fuel has filled his pistons and the liquid compression won’t let it turn over. He ended up getting towed to a local mechanics place for someone to take his plugs out to drain the engine and change the oil for him. But he still isn’t at the hotel yet, hopefully see him at breakfast.

Still no problems for us :D

James

Posted by james at 5:01 am

Livingstone I Presume?

Zambia 3 Responses »
Jan 252012

Livingstone I Presume?? We are at the infamous Victoria Falls….. And it is amazing. The size of these falls is incredible, 1.7km long!!! We are only 5 minutes walk to the top of the falls and the it is just spectacular. I have been to Niagra Falls but this is a whole another scale of big. No footpaths or anything, just tracks through the forest that lead you to a little bridge that is immersed in a forever cloud of mist/spray. The flow is at about 50% and the sound is already booming/deafening when you’re close. The Zambezi Sun Hotel (where we staying) has a beautiful lawn all around the place, and animals roam around! So far i have only seen zebras but apparently there are some regular elephants and giraffes that sometimes choose to make themselves seen. No luck yet  But you can definitely see giraffe and elephant poo on the edges of the forest.

The bungee-jump is temporarily suspended because about a month ago the rope snapped and a chick plummeted into the water, luckily surviving.

Today was just another transit day, no timing. But on the road we saw a tortoise crossing it! He was a bit cute. And at a local cafe we pulled up to for about 45minutes, Matt and Owen (MG) pulled up and said they saw the same tortoise but about 30cm further away from where we saw him. Little trooper! Hahaha.

Tomorrow is the dreaded 1050km day, including a border crossing. It will be lonnnngggggggg.

On another front, the father/son beard growing is hilarious. Dad now succsessfully looks homeless, and i look like a ruffian. hahaha.

James

Posted by james at 2:45 am

Dunstan Checks In

Uncategorized, Zambia 1 Response »
Jan 252012

Dunstan Checks In is the coolest movie made about a chimpanzee. Well, i thought of that when we saw a chimp (it could have been something slightly different but i don’t care) running along the side of the road picking things up and investigating them. Deciding whether he can eat it, hit something with it, or scratch his butt with it.

All i can say about last nights accommodation is that it was interesting, and an experience. In the buffet style dinner they had for us; whole fish heads to chose from (obviously i tried some, you can guess that it is not on the list of things to do again). Cold water shower has been the norm for quite a while so that wasn’t unexpected. There was also a massive thunderstorm that rolled through at about 4 in the morning, woke everyone up with really really close lightning strikes. Well i slept through it.

There was a few crews that actually arrived at this place and decided to drive the next 600k’s to Lusaka (an intercontinental Hotel) to skip out the dodgy night. I reckon these are the times that you remember, to total shotty-ness of it all is great!

The world cup stage today was fantastic!!! Best short stage so far. Only 9km’s but it was on an old farm, amongst some buslands. Very narrow and fairly straight aside from a few bends and kinks now and then. It was only 2 wheel tracks, thick grass either side and a ribbon of thick grass in the middle (lapping at the undercarriages). Just so much fun.

 

James

Posted by james at 2:43 am

Can’t orginise a piss up in a pub.

Uncategorized, Zambia No Responses »
Jan 252012

The border today from Tanzania into Zambia was total chaos. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people in this little town. The queue of trucks down the road trying to cross the border would have been at least 2k’s long. We cut our way through to the border-propper and all the fun started. Dad had the documents and i stayed at the car, some local guy pointed us where we needed to go and was our personal fixer. The disorganisation and how much of a shambles was incredible. I stayed in the car slowing pushing/making my way through the border (about 500meters) without getting out. And dad walked from immigration to customs to police to immigration again. People could walk from one country to another no problems, just like i drove my way through the whole process and pulled up at a petrol station on the other side and not a single person looked at me or my car or rego. Dad popped out and said “let’s go, all done.”

Today was just a transit day, Mbeya to Mpika, Zambia. A nice tarmac road was very welcomed as we pulled out of the border, albeit it was riddled with trucks. Slow trucks are fine though, easy to recklessly overtake without any bad reproductions. But my god, the buses that come down this road! Big giant Coaches that fit like 60 people or whatever, they recklessly overtake ME! And i’m already doing 110kph. But every now and then we have to stomp on the anchors because a cluster of potholes pops up. I swear to god, if some of the little MG’s or Porsche’s stopped at the bottom of these potholes, and you took a picture you wouldn’t be able to see the wheels. These potholes can eat things, never to surface again.

One thing Zambia is better than any other country so far at: wrecking trucks. I can’t drive more than 50k’s and NOT see at least one tuck on its side. In the middle of a town, on a flat bit of road, with no potholes/speed bumps, there is a truck…. on its side. Sometimes it would just be a trailer on its side. And you can tell how long its been over for by the degree of how much has been stripped off. If the cargo is gone then it has been 1 day. If the wiring, wheels, breaks, and hubs are gone then it has been 2 days. If the only thing that remains is the chassis rails, then probably 4 days…. Maximum

 

James

Posted by james at 2:40 am
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