The last day, will Molly Porsche make it ?

Day 25 the last day.

This is always an exciting day in any rally. You have nearly finished but you still have to get across the finish line. Every knock, rattle and bang are heart stopping moments as you fear the worse and may be the car or you won't make it. its only about 400km what can go wrong?

There are two ways to go today. 

One along the main tarmac road and the other over the Cederberg Pass. Its worth looking this up and watching videos of guys on trial bikes trying to do this pass. 

We are doing it in very tired and battered rally cars. I have no idea what the scenery was like because I couldn’t take my eyes of this mountain goat track of a road. We think it is the final sting in the tail of this great rally and a way of eventually braking Molly. But no, she won’t give up, some of the gradient is so steep we are in 1st gear going up and coming down. We did stop every now and again and I must admit the scenery was stunning.

Alas one poor car the Jeepster of Dick and Matilde didn’t make it, they had to be towed and trucked out.

After this we eventually get onto tarmac roads and head for The Cape of Good Hope, passing through fantastic Alpine like scenery and some brilliant twisty turny roads and Molly has a rather spirited race with an MGB :)

There has been a competition to see if any car can finish the event without any mechanical assistance. Its amazing how many rattles and bangs you can hear and feel over the last 20km.

We drive onto the tip of The Cape of Good Hope at 4.00pm we have finished!!!!!  We have covered 9125 km not the 7000 we thought we were doing.

Having crossed the finishing line we then have to drive back to the hotel in Cape Town, the route takes us along Chapman's Peak Drive. I have taken an extract from www.dangeriousroads.org website, take their word for it not mine :) What a way to finish.

Situated on the Atlantic Coast, Chapman’s Peak Drive is one of the most spectaculars roads in the world. With a length of 9km, winds it way between Noordhoek and Hout Bay, at the south-western tip of South Africa. The road is part of the M6.

This short road, with 114 curves, skirts the rocky coastline of Chapman's Peak and offers stunning 180° views of the western side of the CapePeninsula. It is widely regarded as one of the most scenic stretches of road anywhere in the world.

We have had the most fabulous time, we have made great new friends and we have discovered a place called Southern Africa. Sometimes this rally has bought us to tears. These have been tears of laughter and tears of total joy and overwhelming awe at the beauty of this quite incredible continent. 

Thank you Endurance Rally Association for a marvellous event. We will do it again. Thank you to Gantspeed Engineering for preparing Molly and making her such a joy to drive. Lets see if Molly can reach 30,000km of competitive rallying without any mechanical problemsI I would also like to thank Molly for keeping us safe and my wonderful wife Julie who has now navigated us some 25,000 competitive rally kilometres without a mistake, all I do is do as i’m told and steer Molly. i wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thank you for reading our blog, we hope you have enjoyed it and may be inspired you go rallying and have your own adventures :)

On to Bhutan our next rally in 2015.

Go, go, go Molly.
Nearly forgot to mention we came 9th overall, which is way beyond our expectations :)
Full results can be seen on Endurance Rally Association results

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David, Julie and Molly Porsche 

Desert more desert and thick fog

Day 21 The first part of this day is only 1.21 km, we drive to a museum where we see the rock carvings of ancient man. Fascinating, its only 8.00am and its already very hot. 

We then drive across the desert to a place called Uis which is a mining town. This was only a shortish distance of 142 Km but it was a real problem for some of the bigger engined cars. There should have been petrol at Twyfelfontein but there wasn’t. This meant that the big cars just could not get to the next petrol stop, many ran out but with the help of other competitors and Greg and Jenny in their 4x4 everyone was able to beg, borrow and steal enough petrol to get to Uis and the next petrol stop.

In Uis there was an amazing cafe called the Coffee and Cactus a truly beautiful establishment with fantastic coffee and cakes all in the middle of nowhere.

We have two time trials today both of which Molly and her ever so slightly knackered driver and navigator managed to clear, that means no penalty points Hurrah !!

The day finished at the coast in Swakopmund. This is a relatively big town and right on the Atlantic coast. The desert meets the Atlantic and this stretch of coast is know as the Skeleton Coast because of all the shipwrecks caused in bad weather.

The temperature dropped from about 35 to 10 in a matter of a few km, very refreshing but actually a bit too cold. We even have to put the heater on in Molly.

Some very bad news today, Andrew and Gina have had to call it a day, the Crossley has terminal mechanical problems and can be driven no further. The car and crew have done remarkable well to get this far. Lets hope Andrew and Gina can hire a car to finish the trip.

Molly's still going but the petrol is giving us problems. We have just realised that the higher the grade the worse the actual petrol. To get a higher grade someone adds all sorts of chemicals (ethanol) and in these very high temperatures this evaporates before it gets to the engine and causes the car to misfire a lot.

Never mind we carry on and enjoy the journey.

The anticipated weight lose in these high temperatures is definitely not going to plan. The food and odd glass of wine has been exceptional and a little too freely available. Think some serious work in the gym will be needed when we get back. Well that’s what we say now.

Day 22

Off into the desert again past huge sand dunes to a place called Solitaire. The scenery on this drive starts as one long dead straight road straight through the middle of the desert. At 9.00 its damn hot and we try to keep Molly cool by dropping our speed and just cruise along at about 90kph. Suddenly the landscape changes into one of breathtaking beauty. Mountains, sand coloured grasses, blue skies and fluffy white clouds in all directions. The road suddenly turns into a gravel based Alpine road with stunning views at each turn, we have never seen landscape like before. There was meant to be a time trial today. Luckily it was cancelled due to road works. I say luckily because it gave us the chance to really see this amazing countryside and stop and take pictures as we passed the Line of Capricorn. 

We arrive at Solitaire and unfortunately my mechanic demon comes out to play and I decide it would be a good idea to air hose the engine bay and get all the sand out of it.

I finish doing a really professional job, go to start the car and no matter what I do Molly will not start. This is very serious for two reasons 1 we can’t go any further and 2 I may need to get help from the mechanics and lose the battle to see which car can go the furthest without their help.

I chat through what I have done with Rob (one of the mechanics) who suggests I look in the distributor and see if I have blasted dust into it.Once I have identified what a distributor is I take the cap off and find the desert in there. I give it a clean and another gentle blast with the air gun and lo and behold Molly starts and we are back in business, still untouched by a mechanic. I am now beginning to consider myself quite a bush mechanic, I changed a brake light on the South America rally, changed a petrol filter, tightened the exhaust and now fixed a distributor. Think that all deserves a beer.

Bit of a problem for one of the other cars today, the Jeepster driven by Ernie and Jeanne had a spindle give way and their wheel came off. They are OK and hopefully they can trailer the car back to town and get it fixed. It gives you an idea how hard these roads are if a Jeepster has this sort of problem.

We really like Namibia, full of contrast and lovely people. 

Sorry again for lack of pictures. The internet in the middle of the desert is a bit slow :)

Etosha National Park and Rhino watching in style

Day 19

Julie woke me in the middle of the night to announce it was raining. Quite amazing as we have not seen a cloud for the best part of 3 weeks, but it does remind us that we are on our way back to the UK.

Today is a transit day and we have all day to travel about 180km across the Etosha National Park some 80,000 square Km of true African landscape, salt flats, scrub, trees, elephants, lizards, tortoise, impala, ostrich, birds of prey, and most exciting of all a rare black Rhino.

The road is a rough track but we are limited to 60kph. This is designed to give you time to brake if an elephant or similar decides to cross in front of you. We were lucky and saw a Zebra crossing :)

Our stopover last night Mushara Lodge was probably the most naturally welcoming place we have stayed all trip, the staff wore badges saying how long the had worked there, some with over 13 years service, they loved the place and so did we.

Tonight we have arrived at Ongava Lodge, I know I have said it before but this place is just wow! We have our own thatched lodge overlooking a small watering hole teeming with wild life. We are hoping the hippos turn up later.

Molly is still going strong but we do wonder if we bought the right car. a lot of the driving is on dead straight flat roads. We try to keep Molly at 3500-3700 rpm which gives us a cruising speed of around 115km. The bigger cars are batting along at considerable more than that and we always seem to be tail end Charlie. Not that it's a problem, we are nearest the sweeps (this is the last car on the event and is manned by our highly skilled mechanics). What am I saying, we're in Molly Porsche and don’t need mechanics :)

Tomorrow there are a couple of timed stages but if they are anything like the last one there is no real point in us wrecking the car driving flat out. Our top speed on gravel is probably 120-125 kph and some of the guys are hitting over 150 kph. Think we may have to fit a 2.7 RS engine to keep up. 

We are on the homeward leg now, Africa is a stunning country and we can see why many of our friends in the UK told us we would love it. They were so right. The country and the people have been very welcoming. We have had the odd case of stone throwing by some of the kids but we get that in Sevenoaks :)

So far a fantastic journey and a great event.   Come rallying and see the world with a different pair of eyes.

STOP PRESS

we are sitting by a log fire, glass of red in hand and just below us at the water hole are 3 rhino, a Mum a baby and helper, above us the southern hemisphere night sky, think Molly may fail to start for a few days :)

Julie flies us home !

Day 17 was a very busy day we had to fly in from our lodge in the delta, because we were the first to the delta we were last out.

Another flight in a small light aircraft, no problem becoming quite a regular flyer now, soon we should be able to book our seats a month in advance and use the executive lounge.

We leave the airport parking at 11.00 we have to get to the Botswana / Namibia border by 6.00pm it was a distance of some 400 km. Not a lot in a modern day car but in a 1958 1600cc Porsche in 30+ degrees it was a long way. We made it along with all the other crews to find that the man who stamps the custom forms had taken the day off (it was Sunday) The office phoned him and he kindly came in along with his very young son to calm the chaos.

Through the border we all go and onto our nights stop at Popa Falls.

We really enjoyed Botswana, its a prosperous country proud of its roots. All the people we met were happy with genuine smiles and welcomes. The president does however bear a striking resemblance to Lionel Richie, its probably why the National Anthem is ‘Hello is it me your looking for” :)

From the border we have to drive 25 km to our lodge on the bank of the Okavango River. Great place but a bit overwhelmed as the rally road show hit them.

We are treated to a river boat cruise were we see Hippo and Crocodiles followed by a cheese and wine sundowner party in the middle of the river by the Popa Falls, all a bit surreal and very wonderful.

A very busy day with transportation by boat, air and road. Bed at 9.30.

Molly is still going well even on slightly iffy petrol. All the other crews are still running and having a brilliant time.

The roads are good but very flat and a bit too straight for my liking, but you can’t have everything.

Tomorrow is a very long driving day and a trial section thrown in for good measure.

Bye bye Zimbabwe hello Botswana

Day 13 and 14
This rally is quite amazing. We have seen some fanatic sights along with some terrible poverty.
We did not think much of Zimbabwe, the country appears to be very poor. There are a lot of burnt out houses, terrible roads and the people seem to be very subdued. The main form of employment appears to be traffic police.
Having been done for speeding in South Africa we were very careful not to be "done" in Zimbabwe.
As it happens we were one of the very few cars not to be pulled over for one reason or another,
all those stopped were fined for various reasons ranging from speeding to not having a white reflector fitted to the car. The amounts ranged from $5 to $30, some crews even managed to get stopped 3 times.
We left Zimbabwe this morning and entered Botswana, what a difference a border makes.
The roads are great, it's clean, and the people are happy and smiling, even the police are giving us friendly waves.
All the cars are going well. The competition has now been calculated on the overall times. We are in 13th place, mainly due to our slow time on the last stage. We are only 5 minutes off the lead so all is not lost and our actual rivals are well within reach. We will never catch some of the 5 litre monsters :)
We do have a little competition going on as to which car can go the furthest without the mechanics looking or working on it. We think there are 3 of us still in the running. Let the best Porsche win :)

Yesterday we were at Victoria Falls, and for the first time ever we flew in a helicopter. It took us up and over the falls, absolutely breathtaking. Might have to get one and avoid the London traffic :)
We are now at Nata Lodge in Botwana, a fanatic place but because we are in the middle of nowhere the internet is very limited. Sorry for the very short post.
Tomorrow we fly to the Okavango Delta in a small light aircraft another first. Not sure there will be any internet for a couple of days.
Here are some photos of our fantastic adventure. If you have never been to Africa you are missing a whole new world. Better still get yourself a classic car and really have some fun. We simply cannot recommend this enough.

Fred and Barney Flinstone invite us to their place

Day 10

We leave Agatha Coach House and continue driving through mile after mile of farmed forest offering some stunning scenery.

We arrive at the only time trial of the day, this is on a red dirt track through bits of forest and logging areas. I must confess not feeling 100% after all the excitement of yesterday, but we line up, the count down begins 5,4,3,2,1 and we are off against the clock. We come across some pedestrians and a local car driver, who was not impressed to see us belting along in the other direction but on his side of the road. We decide that all things considered we should back off and eventually cross the line outside of our allotted time. We now have 1 penalty point and are no longer in the joint lead. But if you read the results carefully and with a bit of party political type swing, we can still say we are in joint second place :)

We arrive at the recommended lunch stop to find that the Bel Air has hit a Guinea fowl and smashed its windscreen, the Guinea fowl was not so clever either.

Scott and Salome have had terrible luck with their car.  The master brake cylinder went going down the Swartzberg Pass not a good place to lose your brakes, they bought a brand new one, unpacked it, fitted it, and it didn’t work!

As they live in Johannesburg when the windscreen broke they were able to have a spare windscreen bought over to them, 5 hours later they were back in business.

Tonight we are staying at a place called Mapungubwe, I expect you have heard of it. It means ‘city of gold’. Hmmm!

Our route book says ‘ there is a serenity you cannot ignore’ I think whoever wrote this must have had extensive training as an estate agent. 

The serenity is absolute, mainly because we drive along a rough dirt track for 40 min to arrive at a group of round brick built, thatched buildings and no people, nothing. Its a bit like Fred and Barney’s houses in the Flintstones. You keep expecting Dino to coming jumping out at you. (hope you remember this cartoon ;) )

The route book again says ‘your lodge hosts will have details for you'. What hosts? It suddenly feels like "I am a rally driver, get me out of here”.

After a while we do find two ladies who helpfully advise that they don’t know anything about our supposed BBQ and sundowners experience.

One of the crews phones the organisers and things start to become a little clearer, basically don’t panic it will all be fine.

Our homes for the night are actually really comfortable, the outside shower is brilliant and at 7.00 the BBQ is in full swing and everyone is having fun.

The huts are set amongst some incredible rock formations which glow in the bright sunlight, maybe this is where the city of gold phrase comes from. Some of the rocks are balanced on top of each other as if they have carefully sculptured, but it's simply nature that has created these incredible balancing acts.

This location does turn out to be quite special, and one i would come to again preferably driving a 4X4.

All the cars are still going well and everyone is having a fantastic time, but I do wish the other crews would stop asking how Molly is doing with her new body design and such comments as ‘David try turning the steering wheel before the bend, not after it’ are not really appreciated it. We are still going and have had no mechanical issues at all, Go Go Molly.

Oh no, Molly has a new front end, and a speeding ticket.

Day 9 and we are off on our journey again, it’s really hard to drag ourselves away from here. In fact Molly really does not want to go and refuses to start for about half an hour, but with a bit of coaxing and hitting with a branch she reluctantly starts.

We drive about 100 yards from the lodge, down and up a deep gully I turn the steering wheel sharp left and because all the weight is in the back of the car (Julie’s luggage again) Molly decides to go straight on.

There’s quite a big bang and crunching noises as we have gone straight into a very big rain ditch.

Julie says we can’t get out of the car because of the lions and leopards, but I think the noise has scared anything like that away. It certainly scared us

I get out expecting to see the two front wheels pointing in opposite directions. We have been very lucky everything mechanical is ok its just the front wing which is now badly bent.

We get Molly back to the lodge, bash out the wing, with the aid of my big hammer, ( only tool I really know how to use) and car jack for bending the wing away from the tyre and a very strong park ranger. Front wing modifications complete we set off again. 100 yards from the lodge, same bend we nearly do the same thing again, now that would have been seriously embarrassing, we make it round the corner and set of for the rest of the day’s drive.

Our bad day does not end there. We come across two not so friendly policemen who decide we are speeding. I ask for proof and he points to a 60km speed sign hidden behind a bush and the radar gun 50 yards past it. He also adjusts the holster of his gun. He now has my full attention and I am 100% certain he is correct.  After a lot of chat and pleading we get down to the nitty gritty, paying the fine. The fine can either be at the police station or a spot fine. The kind policeman advises me a spot fine would be better for both of us. We part with 200 rand ( about £15) he seems to find a safe place to put it in his trousers and we drive off. He promises to send the receipt on in a few days. He must having an amazing physic powers as we didn’t tell him where we live :)  He catches other competitors that day, all have a similar story.

The route is around the edge of Blyde River Canyon, one of the biggest canyons on earth. The viewing point we stop at is know as Gods Window, and thats a very good description of the view.

The day ends at a marvellous old hotel called Agatha Coach House, its so quaint and olde worlde that not a lot works, but the bed is comfortable and the views over 1000’s of hectares of forest is spectacular.

We lose another car today. The old Mk2 Jaguar, The Dowager, has a terminal engine problem and retires hurt, what a shame. Lets hope Greg and Jen can get a hire car sorted and catch us up.

The oldest car in the event a 1925 Crossley is still going along very well. It's had a few overheating problems but is now in fine fettle and keeps a steady 60MPH.

Being able to drive the Crossley these distances on these roads is a great achievement for car and crew. You try it with only front drum brakes and a hand brake for the rear. Great effort by Andrew and Gina,  mind you a Crossley was the first car ever to cross from one side of Africa to the other.

Kruger National Park and Sabi Sands, the most amazing places.

Day 7

we leave The Royal Sawzi and drive through Swaziland in daylight, different place, much nicer.

We are heading for the Kruger National Park.

We now have a full compliment of rally cars again, unfortunately we lost a Buick. It developed a major engine problem and had to retire. The owner lives in South Africa. He got it shipped home and then rejoined the rally in a 1973 Merc, welcome back Udo.

All the other cars are performing pretty well. Molly is running very well but has had to have a major service ( by my standards ) I have tightened up the rear exhaust clamp and changed a petrol filter. I have managed this all on my own with no manual, no phoning Gantspeed and more impressively not hitting or cutting myself in the process.

The petrol here is what they call 95 octane, it what I call rubbish, still we are going along and having a ball.

Very excited about driving through Kruger National Park. You have to fill out all sorts of forms and promise not to hunt any of the animals.

Kruger is not the sort of park I am used to, can’t find any swings and the ice cream vans seem to have gone home. But what we do see is a baby elephant crossing the road closely followed by its Mum. 

Before we came here we looked up elephants and Kruger Park on Google/Utube. The video of the elephant rolling the car over in Kruger suddenly became very real. Mummy Elephent did not like the cars that close to her baby. There were only two cars, the guy in front and us. He slams his car into reverse and I try to find a similar gear, I know its in here somewhere but in my moment of terror I can’t find it.

Fortunately Mummy elephant seems to have proved her point, baby is safe and so are we as she carries on her way.

Think the guy in front may need to stop at the nearest building for a change of attire :)

Kruger is vast covering 2,000,000 hectares, you could spend a week driving round it (bit like an Ikea car park). We only have a couple of hours.

We need to press on to our next accommodation at a place called Sabi Sands.

Julie advises me its not far only about 40 km. What she doesn't know is it is along really sand covered safari park tracks.

Sabi Sands is a private game reserve with lodges scattered around it. To give you an idea of the scale of the lodges some of the owners are the Getty family and a chap called Sir R Branson.

As we enter Sabi Sands Molly gets thoroughly searched in case we are poachers and trying to sneak guns and such like into the reserve. Apparently they do this to all Porsche 356s which enter the reserve :) Whilst this search is going on one of the residents comes up to us and says that he has seen some crazy cars try to get to the lodges but nothing as crazy as us in Molly.

We have tried to photo the tracks we used, not sure they really show how ‘interesting ‘ the tracks were.

Molly proves them all wrong and we arrive just in time for late lunch.

The lodge we are staying in is called Leadwood.

I am not usually stuck for words but this place has done it. Simple stunning will do. 

As some of you will know we are not very lucky with our hotel rooms, we think we have cracked it with this lodge, settle down for an early night (5.30 start tomorrow) and just when you think you’re about to go to the land of nod a lion roars outside, and you know what you don’t care, this is Africa this is stunning.

In the morning we actual get up close and personal with said lion and his girlfriend. That will be day 8, where we have 5.30 start and one of the most amazing days we have ever had.

Next blog is all about the Big 5 + + +
Sorry for the lack of photos but we are in the middle of nowhere and its bait slow :)
Hopefully tomorrow the connection will be faster.

some photos of Molly Porsche in action

These are some of the great photos taken by Gerard Brown,  bit biased towards Molly.
 For for more amazing photos of the other teams and the Southern Africa country side please go to
http://gerardbrown.photoshelter.com/gallery-collection/Classic-Safari-2014/C0000JorgUlfukko

I know this is a Jaguar, her name is Dowager Number 15, driven by Greg and Jen.

 They keep overtaking us :)

This shot by Gerard gives you an idea of what the mountain pass was like, note the safety barriers and the sheer drop :)

Go Molly Porsche :)

Big driving day and WTBHWT !!!!Porsche 356

day 4

Today is a monster driving day covering some 630 km from Cradock to The Golden Gate Highlands National Park. To start the day we have two time trials. The first one on quite nice loose gravel we have to cover 9km in 8 minutes  and we do pretty well clearing the stage. The only slight delay being a cow trying to cross the same piece of road as us.

I think our wing mirror clipped the ring in its nose :)

The second stage was on much rougher ground with a couple of railway crossings thrown in for good measure and we have to cover 11km in 9 minutes.

Because we had done so well in the first one and Molly was going well we (well mainly me) got a bit over enthusiastic in a couple of places.

One of them was at a level crossing that Julie mentioned to me in a sort of shrill screaming type of instruction, we flew over it, having failed to brake, luckily the 09.25 from Cradock was running late and no damage was done.

Thinking our luck was in we pushed on a little harder, suddenly we are hurtling down a very rough piece of road with a sharp left hand bend, road cambering the wrong way and quite a big drop on MY side. Brakes fully applied but not having a lot of effect, only thing to do is try and take the corner. Julie is in shrill instruction mode again at this point and I am trying to remember what my rally driving instructor has told me to do when imminent disaster is about to strike.

Now did he say don’t brake or don’t accelerate. Not terribly sure what I did it all happened in slow motion, Molly going completely sideways, ditch fast approaching and me telling Julie its all her fault because we have too much luggage in the back and its making the car spin.

Next thing Molly was back on the track, going in the right direction and all was well with the world.

We carried on and cleared the stage, but strangely in complete silence.

After all this we get back onto the tarmac road and settle down to doing 400 + km.

The scenery en route is simply stunning. We are now staying in the Highlands National Park. We have a warning on the patio doors to keep them closed otherwise the room will be raided by baboons. Doors are firmly closed, you can only have so much excitement in one day.

Fast forward about 10 hours to day 5 morning at about 7.00. WTBHWT (this is me trying to do mobile phone talk) it stands for What The Bloody Hell Was That.

Our patio doors are trying to be forced open and there is someone trying to bash through the tin roof. Oh no its a Baboon attack. They are trying to get into every room swinging from balcony to balcony checking the doors in a forceful way. The thought does cross my mind as to what would have happened if he had got in.

Those who know us well will know about Julie’s ‘grumps’ in the morning. The confrontation would have been interesting.

Its now 8.00 and they are still charging around on the roof and making a terrible but exciting noise.

Now did i close the car windows ????

Last night we had the results of the stages. We did not win either of them but we did come 5 in the first stage and received no penalties for either which means we are officially in first place :) along with about 15 other crews :(

But this is not a competitive rally so we can’t publish the times but to give you a hint of how uncompetitive it is on the first stage one car was over 1.5 minutes faster than us and on the second stage another car (think it was a porsche :) ) was 2 minutes quicker than us. That’s 11 km on terrible roads in around 7.5 minutes amazing driving and congratulations to the navigator for not getting out half way.

Some information on yesterdays stunning pass

Our room, you can see the Tin bath hanging on the wall :)

And were are off

At 8.12 this morning we started our great adventure. We left the Cape Grace Hotel and headed off along the cost road towards Stellenbosch.
We are a little bleary eyed due to lack of sleep. As mentioned in the last post we had a really nice room overlooking the joyfully coloured little fishing boats. What we did not know was at 4.00 am they decide to move around. One of them in particular wanted to be a formula 1 jet ski boat and had taken his exhaust system off. It's quite amazing how much echo there is around a bay at that time of day or was it night.
This is the view from the quiet side of the hotel) We really slum it on these rallies:)

Anyway Philip Young flags us off with a steel band playing and much hooting, hope it woke the guys up in the fishing boat.
The roads are very good and the traffic quite light compared to SE England. The scenery even just leaving Cape Town is stunning. It's not long before the rally route leaves the main roads and heads cross country on gravel roads.
These are really nice well graded gravel roads and they take you to places you would never normally see on the tourist route. It also gives you a chance to put your foot down with no danger of speed cameras. Speed cameras in South Africa have been sub contracted out by the police and the company running and enforcing them does not play fair so you have to be extra careful.
We have started our animal count, not quite in the big 5 league yet but we are quite proud to have seen two mongoose, an ostrich and a rather large snake.
They didn't spot me hiding behind this tree.

In the afternoon we have our first bit of competition. We have to cover 10 kms in 9 minutes on a hilly gravel road. If you do under the 9 minutes you technically do what is know as 'clear the stage' I only usually manage to do that when i sing, but today with Julie and Mollys help we 'cleared the stage' Come on Molly.
I forgot to mention the scrutineering, Molly passed with flying colours. The 'drink' we bought for the scrutineer was a bit of a waste of time, he turned out not to be the scrutineer at all. Think he could have mentioned that before the 4th whisky.
It looks like all the cars have finished the first day safe and sound, bit dusty and tired but thoroughly enjoying South Africa.

Arrived in Cape Town, now where is Molly ?

Well we arrived in Cape Town yesterday (Tuesday) in the pouring rain.
How many times does it happen when one of the locals comes over and cheerfully  says ' you should have been here yesterday it was a beautiful day'. I find these comments really help dry your clothes and shoes out a lot quicker.
However today is that beautiful day. 
We have met a couple of the other competitors and some old friends. Always helps to settle the nerves.
Next thing on the agenda is to find Molly. She is somewhere in the container port.
Tomorrow assuming Molly is all ok we have to have a briefing ( odd term as they seem to go on for hours and involve a lunch) and then scrutineering. Now, we are hoping for a slightly better result than the scrutineering in South America where we failed. It's looking more promising because the South America engineer who walked up to Molly muttering ' don't like Porsches' is not here, and we have already had a little chat with this years 'highly trained' engineer in the bar.
We will wait and see.
We are staying at the Cape Grace hotel and very good it is to. Even managed to get a room NOT next door to the lift, disco, air conditioning plant or above the kitchen. Must be some mistake and no doubt we will be moved on in due course:)
We have just been advised that we can collect our cars, its only 10 min drive away. We all pile in to two mini buses and set off at 3.00pm. 45 minutes later the two mini bus drivers decide it would have been better to start the journey with an address or an approximate idea of the location of the cars. To add to the excitement the secure storage area closes at 4.00pm and is closed rte following day meaning that we would all miss the start of the rally. No pressure.
After many phone calls and the use of Julies GPS system we find the cars. There was no need for panic we had a full 5 minutes to spare.
One poor chap rather wished he had not found his 

Only joking.

The cars were all fine and we were soon finding our way back to the hotel, which was surprisingly only 10 minutes away.

Arriving back at the hotel we have to sign on and start looking at the route book, there is only one true professional way to do this, as shown below.

Next scrutineering!!!

Highway Code

Julie has been busy reading every book under the sun about Southern Africa and scarring her self silly. The book giving her the most nightmares seems to cover and the driving standards in Southern Africa.
On the last couple of rally's we have had to tackle some very dangerous roads, but to be fair the driving standards have been reasonable and traffic very light.
Southern Africa seems a little different.
The road signs (straight out of the Southern Africa 'how to drive and survive manual' ) are a interesting, I have posted some below.
The last sign is designed especially for rally navigators :)
Some of the roads are a bit ify to you can see what i mean on The most dangerous roads in Africa website.
I have put a photo of one of them on our journey at the bottom of this page so Julie won't see it ;)



 

 

 Glad Julie is in charge of navigation :)

 Glad I'm in charge of driving :)

Getting ready for the Classic Safari Challenge or is it Survival Challenge?

David, Julie and Molly are off on another adventure.
Next Monday we fly to Cape Town, South Africa, and meet up with Molly, our 356A Porsche. It will be good to be reunited. We have only seen her for a few days since we left her in Cape Horn, South America, and the few days we did see her she got a bit over excited and dropped oil all over the drive :)
Gantspeed had a word told her to grow up and behave. Which she did. I thought it was a bit harsh to then put her in a big black box for 4 weeks and send her away. Just hope she does not throw a paddy when we meet up.
This adventure is called the Classic Safari Challenge. It is run by The Endurance Rally Association (ERA) and is approx. 8000 km over 26 days, taking in a huge amount of Southern Africa.
There are 28 competitors. These are broken down into classes with ages ranging from 1928 up to 2010. These are the car ages ( I think).
Some of the competitors we have rallied with before and we are looking forward to meeting up with them again.
We are about to start packing for the trip.
We have compiled a bit of a packing list. Clothes, shoes, anti everything sprays. Then I decided to  do a bit of research on this Internety thing to check what else we may need.
I am not terribly sure that it was such a good idea. While I was searching for 'rally drivers survival techniques' I came across an article about something called the rule of 3. It goes a bit like this,

The Rule of Threes
The rule of threes is only approximate (and can change a bit under certain particular conditions), but it will give you a good general idea of what is important. In its most basic form, which covers most circumstances, it goes like this:

1. You can survive for three hours without enough warmth.
2. You can survive for three days without water.
3. You can survive for three weeks without food.
4. Sometimes people add a few more "threes" to the list, here is an extended version
5. You can survive for three seconds without blood.
6. You can survive for three minutes without air.
7. You can survive for three months without human company.

Another rule sometimes added to the front of the list is "You can survive for three seconds without thinking", meaning that it only takes three seconds (or less) to do something dumb enough that it could kill you, if you are not thinking straight.
All very useful, but it excludes the real essentials of  lasting 30 seconds without checking your Facebook status, checking the football scores and checking to see if you have won £3000 on your
accident claim you never knew you had.
Oh yes!  and checking that you have anti charging angry animal spray.