Homebound

Hi all. Well I’m just sat in my clubworld seat waiting to
set off home (thank u Quin). It been an amazing year and there are
some very strong plans already set for me to finally race next
years edition. I’ll post the final two days of the rally up when I
get back. And restart on the gumball campaign as well.
http://gumball.betsafe.com/entry/ben-gott/ and then click the green
button. Look forward to catching up with everybody over the next
few weeks. B

Final road mission and the aftermath

Rocco woke me up at 12.30. They were all packed up and ready for the off. We loaded the box and did a final check. For this run Uwe was out and going to travel in the Dodge. Rocco and Graeme came in with me and Kevin. Kevin happily choose to travel in the bunk. We rigged up a satnav and sett off. We stopped briefly in a fuel station in town and got me lots of energy drink and snacks and did the usual fueling. I drove all through the night, the guys all got some well deserved sleep. Graeme would wake up occasionally and check that i was OK. We were on the main motorway around 6.30 when it was getting light. There were already people setting up on the reservation, getting ready for the rally to rumble passed. They were surprised to see a truck already and half asleep as the wave’s weren’t as energetic as usual. About an hour later, 600 klm gone, my eyes started going. There’s a lot more strain on them driving at night. I knew it was time to pull over when I saw a load of trucks parked up on the side of the motorway, but when i got closer I realised they were actually bill boards on the grass bank. I woke Kevin and told him he would have to drive the final 200klms or so to BA, then i would take over in town. I climbed in the bunk and was out like a light. I came round just as we got to a payge on the outskirts of town. We swapped back again. We headed to the hotel first, booked in, had showers and got a hour’s rest. We meet up with all the SA guys on bikes who had been following us over the whole rally, their bikes and stuff were going back in the container too. We got back in the truck and headed off to the dock. We were going to unload all the stuff out of the truck, put it back into the boxes they came in and then load the bikes and other stuff. Then when the car is finished after the podium they can drive it straight there, load it in to the container, put all the used wheels around it and close the doors. It was a very hot day and when we got there we found the container outside, not under cover like when we unloaded it. This was going to be sweaty work. Everyone chipped in and we had it done in just over two hours which was great. We went back to the hotel for a well deserved beer and another shower. When we got back all the other service teams were in too. The hotel fridge was emptied of beer in no time at all, then they refilled it and we emptied it again. Alfie and Jurgen tuned up too along with Daniel, we were joined by Patsy Quick and crew, plus Simon Pavey. The atmosphere was fantastic – we’d none it! Lots of story’s of woe and triumph were being told. We were all already a bit tipsy by the time we went to dinner. Las Lislas, my favorite restaurant was the choice for tonight. A table for 30 had been booked. Stephane, are german/chillean friend/fixer and I tucked into a bottle of Malbeck. I ordered the best Ribeye steak money can buy and gorged out on everything. I even had a cheeky 115 pesos cuban cigar that was fattest cigar you have ever seen and a grand manie at the end as well. I was pretty much ready for bed then, but Alfie suddenly announced he had the address for the Red Bull afterparty and we were all going – I was forced to go, honest. We bundled into cabs and headed to the club. I don’t even know what the place was called, but it was heaving. Great tunes, Dakar coverage playing on one of the walls and after figuring how to get into the VIP area, a free bar serving anything and Redbull. Whiskey was the weapon of choice. I thinking we rolled out at about 5.30 in the morning – a little bit worse for wear.

Dash for lunch

Not to bad a start today. Up at 7, for an off around 8. We had been sandwiched in between BMW, VW and the Epsom truck team who had all gone so we had loads of space again. The rest of the rally was still pretty much there when we left. We were heading back to Cordoba today, around 500klm. It was a really good run as well, stopped once for fuel at a little petrol station in a small town. I’m quite sure he had upped the price for the rally. It was 1 pesos more per litre than every other one we had been too, but i didn’t have a choice as we were low. We got to biv at 3.30, lunch was till  4 so we would make it, except I hadn’t had a chance to refill the water tank. Just as we were about to park up in are spot, Kevin saw a watering hose on the grass bank next to the road. We grabbed it and I chilled out on the grass in the shade. By the time we had done that, parked up and dropped the box off, it was past 4. We shot over and got in the pasta queue, luckily there was a few pieces of chicken left over from lunch and i managed to get the last one, nice. After that we lounged about a bit and watched the rally roll in, the Overdrive Team were also trying to find a vibration on Nani’s car, which they were prepparing for a race as soon as it gets back to Europe. They were running it up through the gears while on Axle stands, which is always fun to watch. We were ahead of the rally today, and you can definitely see that it had thinned out a bit now, a lot of people had dropped out over the last few days. Daniel came in around 6ish with Alfie not far behind. They had both had good days again, it didn’t look like the car needed much doing to it, and now it was running super cool. The fix had worked. I wrote the last few days of the blog and went to bed. The guys were going to get everything done and wake me up when they were ready to go. We wanted to get back to BA so we could load everything back into the container and get ahead of schedule.

Quick update

Ive just written the last post, which was yesterday. Were back in cordoba now. Due to timing with the container back to south Africa. I’m leaving for BA tonight so we can do the bulk of loading it tomorrow so podium day on Sunday is a bit les hectic and doable, the team fly back Sunday afternoon! I doubt I’ll get a post done until tomorrow night, if that. So all is well, both car and bike are in and keep present places. It 9 o’clock now and I’m about to get some sleep in prep for the 10 hour drive through the night.

Hot, hot, HOT

My alarm went off at six, I looked in the side mirror and saw the guys all clean and showered and next to a clean, race ready car. They had done it. While they went off to breakfast I grabbed a quick shower and got the rest of the truck ready for the off. They had also packed everything away and Kevin had even sorted out the loose tyres on the roof (we had a bike tyre fall off the day before while towing Alfie!!) They hadn’t had any sleep again so I wasn’t expecting much conversation in the cab today. A lot of the rally had already left. Most people had gone for an early start as space in the next biv had been warned to be short. Kevin and Uwe slept for the first 2 hours, the roads were dead straight and flat so I managed to keep at a nice steady 105klms an hour. Are total today was just over 550. I plugged into my iphone and sat back. As the morning went on the temperature just got higher and higher, it really was hot here. We were hoping Alfie wasn’t going to have more problems. By the time we got to Biv it was horrendous. This one was at some sort of old military parade ground, on tarmac, and it was just bouncing the heat back up again. There was a small queue to get into the gate and then once we were inside it turned into chaos. There were trucks trying to squeeze into small gaps everywhere, and a few heated conversation started happening as team were tying to protect there plot of ground while being very hot and bothered. Eventually agreements were made and everyone was happy’ish! Paplo, one of the team doing are scout job for the biv ahead, informed me it was 48 degrees. It felt like it. We put the portable shade up and everyone just chilled out. There was no point doing anything until the very last minute, when Alfie got in. I sat on the cab of the truck that was luckily in the shade of a tree, and was high enough to get a bit of the slight breeze that was there. Eventually Daniel came in first, another great day; he had come in the 20’s on stage and was now in the 50’s overall. Then Alfie came in; he had started the day 20^th, which was brilliant considering the day before. He was showing 9^th on stage, again fantastic. He gave us a low down of the day. The car was still running to hot, it just wasn’t getting enough cooling in this heat. And, he remarked that he had been driving like Miss Daisy most of the stage – that’s a very fast Miss Daisy then! The team had a good look over the car, made a plan on redirecting cool air and dispersing of hot air and starting drill and cutting all sorts of parts away. A new rad was fitted, holes in the bonnet were made and washer jets were extended to spray the rad too. This was not going to be a problem again! We also got news that there was going to be a quick down pour over night too, so time was of the essence. The evening wasn’t getting any cooler though. Then at about 11, a sudden wind blasted through the camp, something was coming. There wasn’t much left to do, a few small jobs on the car and pack everything away. First we wanted it all under protection, and secondly a truck that we were blocking had informed us that they were off at 4am – none of us really wanted to be woken for that. Luckily the rain never came, but everything got a bit of a hammering from the wind – personally I didn’t notice it, the beauty of being in a truck cab.

Andes stike again! S

I had told Jon from Rally Raid UK that I wanted him all ready for a 7 leave. And, for once we were up and ready ahead of schedule. We loaded up and went over where they were 10 mins before hand. I had in my mind a small Iveco for some reason, but it wasn’t. It was a 10 ton box body fully loaded! It really was going to me a long day. I reversed up to there truck and we started hitching the draw bar. I then realised a major flaw in the plan. When I had towed the T4, it was with out the box, this was the first time in had tried to tow with the box. The overhang was too much. Basically there windscreen was going to be about a foot away from my spare wheels on the rear! It would be lethal, and the first hairpin we get to, I would smash there cab up. It wasn’t going to work. Jon went of to see if he could sort anything else out, and I waited around for awhile, but when it got to 7.40 I said my goodbyes and left. I felt bad, as I knew that no ones else was going to say yes, but in worst case scenario they could use there own T4, even it would be very slow. I was also slightly happy that we couldn’t, it really was going to put us down to a crawl. We topped up at the last possible fuel station as I knew it was going to be tight on fuel, even with 5 jerry cans as back up. We climbed for a little while on normal roads, then on to the dirt road. I had done this route both ways last year, so I knew what to expect. First about 150klms of dirt road, lots of hairpins and the odd drainage ditch. Also a few down hills, with steep short cuts in a few places. I did make use of one, without telling the guys I was going to do so, they were very quiet on the way down it, and then thought it was pretty cool that we had just bypassed about 10 trucks and a good klm of pass once we had. The views where as stunning as ever. Same as before, it felt like you were on top of the world or suddenly in a Lord of the rings backdrop. With huge plains surrounded by mountain peaks, some with patches of snow here or there. It was on one of these plains that I decided to stop to put some more air in the tyre that slowly went down. I felt I hadn’t put enough air in it that morning, and with the conditions of the roads and corners I wanted to be safe rather than sorry. This is basically were the day started going wrong. First the geny was out of fuel, so we thought, Kevin opened a can and it exploded diesel everywhere due to the pressure, then I spilt even more after not taking the cap off the empty coke bottle funnel that we had made! Did the tyre, packed up and went to leave. The truck wouldn’t start. We were out of breath and I was not happy now. I spent about an hour going through relays and wired that I thought could be the problem, but nothing. Eventually I lifted the cab and shorted out the starter motor, it worked, we were off again, but we had been there two hours or so. I was now worried what was causing it? We spend a longer time at high altitude on this route, and you do feel it, I had a headache after a while, and we had all gone silent again. The dirt road stayed all the way to the border, which again, thankfully was a breeze. Then we started on the long easy flowing road down the other side. It is one of those roads that you just wanted be in a high powered sports car or a bike, near perfect for pure fun and amazing scenery. It goes on for about 200 klms and ends up winding through little valleys with mountain streams and out crops of rock. Eventually we were down again, and in a town were we stayed last year, which I remembered where a fuel station was, which wasn’t in the road book. We diverted, but they didn’t take card so we put are jerries in instead. We never turned the truck off though; I wasn’t going to do that until biv that evening. After this we followed the road along the base of the foothills. It was really hot now, hottest it been so far, around 40 degrees. We came through the next village and it had the stage end in it, which we didn’t know about. Just as we were going past we saw Alfie, we waved and he waved back, but we noticed that a Truck was right on the back of him, it had pushed him over the finish line, then we noticed the rest of the team was pulling up at the same time. There had obviously been a problem going on, that we didn’t know about! Alfie rolled to a stop behind us and everyone gathered round. Bizarre timing! The car had overheated in the stage and lost its water – not good. We heard a quick recap of events and Alfie had a joke that there he is at the finish line screaming for me to stop, and all were doing is waving back and smiling. We hooked the car up to the back off the truck and set off towing back to biv. Another 200klms. After a fuel stop and a couple of towns with big crowds we finally got back. Alfie unhitched and drove through time control so not to exceed any more penalties (there had missed 4 waypoints on stage so we weren’t sure how they were going to get penalised there). We found are spot and quickly set up. I turned the truck off, and went to start it again, It started perfectly! Everyone else jumped on the car. It was decided to strip down part of the engine and replace major cooling components. The guys burst into a major front end strip and about 45 mins later the engine was half gone. I helped out if I was needed until about 2 in the morning and then hit the sack. We had another 500 klms to do the next day, I had already been driving for 13 hours and there was only 4 hours left to sleep until I was back up again.

Overdrive and out!

I got up about 10 today – so good. The others were already back and had seen the car out and were doing a few tidying jobs. I had a nice shower, shave etc and felt great. I then set to giving the cab a clean, checking the truck over and stole a spare wheel from the T4 truck so I had another spare. It’s good to have two spares, one on a rim in case you have a rear wheel problem and one off a rim for the front. I had a wander around the biv and a look at the miner’s capsule. The one there used to bring them to the surface was on display next to the dinning area. It was pretty thin but I guess you would get into anything to get you out of what they had been through. Daniel and Alfie both came in about the same time just after lunch (which we finally got at last – a very nice quiche and tomato salad). Alfie had a great day and came in tenth. Daniel in the top 30. Sadly Nani hadn’t. He had damaged the rear axle and lost 4wd. Then started suffering with heat stroke while trying to get things fixed. He eventually left stage and came back the shortest possible route – he was out! There other Overdrive driver had gone out the day before with a piston problem so it wasn’t a very happy camp. This basically meant that there was only Alfie and Boris the Russian left running. The guys had a few small jobs to do on the car. A bit of front and rear bodywork damage from v gullies in the dunes and some welding for a broken fluid reservoir. We then all had a nice early dinner and watched the coverage for the day. Alfie and Jurgen had been interviewed earlier in the afternoon, so we all tried are hardest to get in shot. It wasn’t on the feed I saw but my mate Spike has sent me a message saying he saw me so I guess it worked! After that a few beers we headed off to bed for a pretty early night. It’s an up at 6, ready for 7 start tomorrow. We heading back over the Andes on the San Francisco pass tomorrow. Nearly 700 klms up and over. It’s going to be a very long day, plus just as I was about to go to bed, Jon from the Rally Raid UK team came over and asked if I would mind towing there Iveco over the mountain, the gearbox had gone and there T4 was also out and not well. That will make things very slow!

Alfie’s fighting back.

I’d spent the end of last night catching up on the last three days of the blog so it wasn’t really an early night, but I seemed to be felling fine. I’ve had a lot of problem’s getting on the internet. Gerard bought a dongle but it is forever running out of credit. So I just wrote everything I needed to and planned to do it at the end of today. Hopefully you’re all understanding the order of things. The Dakar map should help tell you where I am in order of which legs were doing. Today we left Antofagasta and headed to Copiapo (were the miners were trapped). We head back over the coastal hills and on to the mining plains again and pulled into the first fuel stop we came to. There were three stations in about 1klm of each other. Right in the heart of the mining area. The whole rally was pouring in. We actually drove straight up to free pump and were away – unbelievable! Quickest fuel stop yet, there didn’t seem to be a free water tap anywhere so we decided to do that towards the end of the liaison. The road was pretty flat with a few twists and basically there was nothing around. Chile is pretty empty between the coast and the Andes. Just a lot of dirt. About 150klms in I was really starting to suffer. I had managed the drive yesterday OK but today it had now caught up with me, I pulled over. It was time for Kevin’s baptism of fire for driving the truck. I gave a quick recap on gears and breaks and climbing into the bunk in the back. I watched him go up through the gears, take a few corners, told him that was perfect and turned around and went to sleep. It toke me a while to as I was just listening to gear changes and feeling the movement of the truck. I’m not a great passenger at the best of times, and always find it hard handing over control of the truck to someone else. Its part me and part taking the responsibility for something if it goes wrong. I would rather it be mine than someone else’s. He obviously did a good job though as I woke up just under two hours later. He said he had a few interesting moments, but all was fine, and Uwe had even given a thumbs up at one point after he recovered coming into a down hill corner too hot. We stopped for a pee stop and swapped back again. He’s keen to do more and he will but I’d prefer to drive in hills or coastal sections. Once we have crossed back over the Andes and into the flats of Argentina I’ll hand it back to him. It was a pretty straight drive after that. We came back along the coast for awhile then slightly in land. There was a lot of new motorways and road section’s on route, there seems to me a lot of money coming into the country and their improving the infrastructure. We finally got to the biv at Copiapo. We were here for one day last year and remembered what it was like. A giant natural amlytheater?, with strong winds and a lot of dust – not really a pleasant place but amazing to look at. We found are plot, dropped the box and headed off for lunch. We just missed it so had to settle for pasta – again! Daniel came in after a good day, he seems to have settled down now and got into a nice rhythm. Less crashes and he’s climbing the leader board nicely. Then Alfie was in, he had had a hard day. 3 punctures, one about 50 klms from the start and also headed the wrong direction for about 30klms too, but still came in 10^th! They would have been around 4^th with no problems. We heard the tails of Carlos and the fight for the lead, and how a strap on one of the rear wheels and flung up and giver Jurgen a black eye and the guys set to on the car. Everything is looking good. Then news of Ian, he had come off during the stage and hurt both wrists and his knee, he had left stage and returned back to biv – he was out. Were all gutted for him, he had done a brilliant job, first event, after only riding a bike for just over a year. That’s pretty hardcore. We had some dinner and then everyone prepped for another hotel. I decided to stay in the truck, sometimes it’s more hassle going to a hotel than not, and it meant I could have a lie in tomorrow as were staying here for two days while the rally does a loop stage. Tomorrow will actually be a bit of a rest day, and a catch up for me on a few small jobs I need to do. I finally uploaded the last few blogs and then Jurgen, Uwe and I went down to the Biv camp fire and had a few wines. It was the first chill out and enjoy of the atmosphere in about the last week – bliss.

Tyre’d and Tired!

It was 5 o’clock way to quickly this morning; I’d got to sleep about 1. I’d repacked the night before and showered, I had to, I was grey with dust. We all meet outside the front and found Gerard asleep in the car with the engine running. He’s doing a lot of ferrying around and isn’t getting the hours of sleep he needs too. He had already dropped the bikers off at biv for their 4 in the morning start, so all we needed to do was collect Alfie and Jurgen and head down. The guys packed up the few remaining bits from the day before; I blew out the cab with an airline and cleaned it out as much as possible, then blew up the flat tyre again! It seems to be fine during the day when its hot put goes down at night when cold. We went into town, did the usual refill and then set of on the dam canyon road again. I will admit I was very tired today. And the prospect of 750klms was not nice. Both Kevin and Uwe went in and out of there usual sleep patens that I’m starting to notice, and I went through my usual tricks of staying on the ball and concentrating on the road. Its easy when its technical or there’s lots of stuff going on, its just when your on the open flat straights and all you do is keep it at 100 to 110klms an hour, you tend to zone out. Especially when you’ve had 7 hours sleep in 3 days. All was good though, iphone was plugged in again and I ate and drank lots of sugar things. I got a call from Rocco about 200 klms in. They were on the verge of running out of fuel and were waiting at the side of the road; I was about 40klms away so they were going to wait for me instead of risking running out. We meet and obvious banter was had. The next station was only about 20klms away but they didn’t know if the Dodge had a self bleed system and it wasn’t worth the hassle if it didn’t. They stopped in there and we motored on. I wound it back up to 110 as the road was nice, and settled in to the run. Then there was a huge bang, all I could see in the side mirror was flailing rubber and smoke as the 2^nd to rear axle tyre on my side had completely blown out. It didn’t affect the handling at all, which surprised me.  I slowly pulled up on the verge which there wasn’t much of and we all got out to see the carnage. There was no side way left. We set to with all the tools, I got underneath and started with the jack and the Kevin and Uwe started on the wheel, then the 4×4 guys turned up and we all chipped in. An F1 truck tyre pit stop was achieved. About 20 min’s which is very good. From there it was pretty straight forward rest of day. Got to biv about 4ish, did the usual set up and had food. The rest of the team was all here; including the Overdrive truck which had now towed the T4 all the way back pasted where I had picked it up and to this Biv. The gearbox was the problem and not fixable. So there still figuring the best way to get back to BA and the dock back to Le Harve. For now it will get dragged wherever the rally goes though. So, 7 hours sleep in 3 days, over 1,300 klms in a day and a half with 3 and a half hours sleep and another 600 odd tomorrow. I’m a little bit tired and off to bed!

8×8 gets to play in the sand. Me? Even less sleep.

After some much loved whiskeys at the bar last night, I had a bit of an accidentally lie in, still 7.30 though. It wasn’t a problem though, the other guys had already gone, there were keen to get back to biv and carry on with a full strip of the car and rebuild with new parts. Rest day is a bit unfairly named for the assistance crews. It really means a day of full and even more work. At the level the team works, the whole underside is pretty much replaced, even the gearbox comes out, gets stripped down to gear and bearing and then rebuilt. All new swing arms, uprights, drive shafts the lot. I meet up with Gerard; we picked up Alfie from another hotel and headed down. I set to on a few jobs on the truck. First was the tyre that was still going down, I was all prepped to take it of the rim, when the first thing I found was that the larger valve end that was fitted wasn’t very tight. I decided to tighten it, inflate it and leave it for the time being. I did a check around the rest of the truck and redid all my horn wiring as it didn’t work anymore – not the problem though, seems to be either the horn itself or something to do with the air valve on the truck. At mid day I settled down to write this, and sort out photos and videos off my cameras. I gave home a ring first to catch up, when, while on the phone to Dad, Scott appeared at the door of the cab and asked if I would be up for recovering the T4 truck from stage. I knew it was still out on stage after having a roll, but now the clutch had gone and it was stranded. After two days out in the dunes the few days before, it had now been out there for another night again. These boys are having a very hard Dakar. I finished up talking with Fran and went over for more info. Basically they were out of the race but Scott had got permission for me to go into stage, recover it and bring it back. If it could be fixed before the next day’s stage, then they would let it run purely as a fast support vehicle but not in the race. I said of course I would be happy to do it, I knew it meant a major mission but that’s how it works. The guys were stuck out there and I was free with the perfect truck to do it. I disconnect the box, prepped it with anything I might need for any circumstance. Scott armed me with a Sat nav, map and best coordinates possible. One for the closest point on a tarmac road to there position and the other there position. I calculated that it would take around 10 hours. It was 200 klms back down the road we had come to in on, including all the canyons, then another around 40klms of off road into a point on the stage. The only other info I had was that they were south of a hill with a tower on it. I set off around 2ish. The drive there was great, I was on my own, but it was cool. I plugged into my iphone and listened to some tunes. I’d taken a load of ration pack food and water and was flying along with no box on the back. There was a bunch of bikers that were cruising along too, they kept over taking me, stopping for breaks and then coming past again so lots of thumbs up and nod’s were formed. The canyons were a breeze. I got to the first GPS coordinate in 2 hours. I set the next one and headed into the desert. I followed dirt tracks to begin with but wasn’t getting the right direction. The best info was actually the hill with the tower; I could see it so just went for it – off piste. It was aright to begin with, small rocks and a lot of dust, but then I hit fesh fesh. Its horrible stuff, it’s like talcum powder, it just explodes into the air and then hangs, covering everything in its path. I, stupidly enough had both windows open and the roof hatch, now me and the cab were both covered in a thick layer of it. This includes, cameras, GPS, bags, sleeping bags, basically all the stuff I keep in the cab. It was too late to worry about it, I closed everything up and b lined for a dirt track I could see winding up the hill. It was about 10klms away and I picked out the best route, locked centre and rear diffs in and went for it. The truck sank and wheel span in a few bits but coped brilliantly, even though I hadn’t let the tyres down from road pressures. When I got to the track it was a bit narrower than I though, it was the same width as the truck and had some tight corners on it, no real drops just steep down hill into un-driven terrain. I had done similar tracks on the Skycar expedition so I wasn’t too worried. I have done over 40,000 klms in this truck now so I know its turning pretty well. My planned worked. I got about half way up the pass, stopped and looked out of the hatch, I caught a reflection of light off something in the valley to the south and then the my phone rang, it was Anthony the driver saying he could see me on the hill. Now the trick was to turn around and go back down again! There was another path a bit higher to my left so I put all the difflocks in and low box and turned up towards it – perfect, no hassle at all. It’s still surprising me with its capability. Back down in the valley it was just pure fesh fesh, but I drove over no problem at all, I just couldn’t see much! At the same time Bernard had turned up too. He had left in a Nissan Patrol about a half an hour before me, and could go a lot faster. He needed parts off the truck to Fix Nani’s car back at camp so was playing fast delivery. Nani had lost a lot of time the day before with an alternator problem and had dropped back to 19^th. He would also have his car fully rebuilt and some of the parts needed were being carried on the T4. We meet up with the crew, who seemed quite happy to see me, and made a plan. We hooked up and set off back toward the road. Annoying I got my new camera out to take some photos and dropped straight into the fesh fesh. All it says now in lens error and won’t open, so I’ll try and keep the photo’s coming as good as they are with my old one! I towed the T4 back no problem at all and retraced my steps back to the road, there we swapped the rope over for a bar and started the long, slow trip back to biv. It went well but got a bit hairy on the hills at some points and this was also done in the dark now, not fun. We finally got back at ten to twelve. We were all very dirty, tired and ready for sleep. I got to go back to the hotel after Gerard came back and picked me up, the T4 guys didn’t, as the rest of the team were working on into the morning, so their camp was staying there. I had covered another 550klms and had to be up at 5 the next morning to do it again. Except 745 klms now to Antofagasta.