Another attempt at decent start time and yet another morning of repair work. The REME boys located the best mechanic in town - a rather stocky young lady who knew pretty much everything there was to know about motorbikes. Her initial aggression soon melted and she seemed to take quite a shine to s couple of the group. Whilst she was working her magic on Moira's carburettor, Paddy and Gaz wheeled Dreagle around the corner to get a worryingly high number of broken spokes replaced and the wheels trued up. We made a young friend called Luis who was about 9 years old and ended up doing most of the work as his dad brought him on in the family business. Unfortunately. Young Luis wasn't quite as organised or experienced as his Dad and proceeded to lose just about every bit of the bike wheel, including the new spokes, within 10 minutes. Lots of digging in the dirt and wandering around town looking for an open shop with the necessary replacements eventually led to the production of a perfectly trued and fully-spoked wheel. Whilst all this was going on, Jen was off shopping for food to carry us through our trek across the wilderness to come. The bulk of the supplies consisted of tins of nourishing Bolognese... or what she thought was Bolognese. Much to the Twins' fish-hating despair the Bolognese turned out to be tinned Pilchards...brilliant. Whilst the finishing touches were put to the bikes word began to filter through that the Crewkerne Argonauts and Team Monkey Wrench had failed to cross the Salt flats in epic style, reaching the snow line and burning out clutches in the process. This was a worrying development! The fuel situation was also getting drastic and so a few furballers set off into the poorest part of town armed with the trusty phrasebook and a few Jerry cans to beg borrow and buy...mostly buy, as much fuel as they could get there mitts on. With a little more petrol on board - but less than hoped for, the journey continued. Ellis and Charlie insisted on stopping for a Shura with the local shepherds every 5 miles to confirm that the isolated, straight road we were on was, in fact, taking us in the right direction for the salt flats but he convoy progressed onwards. The safety of tarmac soon ran out and we found ourselves in the thick of some Dakar Rally action; gunning the engines through deep sand traps on barely-distinguishable roads; all the while being teased by the build-in-progress next to us of a currently impassable new road. Inevitably, many a taxi got stuck and required a little gentle persuasion to move on down the route; whilst amused tourists in 4x4s shot by at speed... smug bastards. Paddy jumped on board for Jenny's first day of off road driving to offer a few tips and was very impressed by the improvement on such a short space of time... until she rolled the damn thing with him in the back! This was becoming a disturbing habit for Paddy. Ellis went rogue for a while and lost a crate of water before rejoining us and then a small town appeared in the distance on top of a steep hill - an oasis offering hope for our rapidly dwindling fuel stocks.
The team reached the top of the hill in reasonable style, all except for Jasco, who was pushed up half the hill after Valkor came to a halt in front of them, preventing a re-start. Craig and John were close to boiling point and an off-the-cuff remark from Gaz sent his identical sibling into apocalyptic meltdown. Good flash Craig. Fuel began to emerge from a small shop in plastic coke bottles and we socked up with enough to save our skin and continue the journey. Welcome additions were also hand made ice-creams, non-pilchard rations and a bottle of Gin: Huzzah! After a few more hours driving through a stunning landscape the huge volcano marking the northern edge of the salt flats loomed in to view and brought the realisation that we would not make the flats that night. The roads were enough of a struggle by day and Gilbey was coming down with something nasty in pretty short order. As the sun touched the western horizon we came to a stop in a meteor crater literally hundreds of kilometres from the nearest civilisation and soaked up the incredible panorama before us. Our attempts at pitching camp were hindered by almost solid ground as we positioned our tents between ancient volcanic fumeroles. The pegs were finally driven home using brute force and language not fit for publishing and we sat down for pilchards and spaghetti... the starchiest spaghetti in history, ever, fact. Note to future campers, don't keep reusing your water, the starch build-up is truly incredible. John and Craig eventually joined us after essential repairs to Jasco's wheels, which were now running on a less than comfortable number of spokes. This, however, was less of a worry than the loose exhaust on Dreagle which was causing him to drink fuel faster than Ellis can strawpedo a bottle of wine. Once the sun had gone down the temperature dropped to just above zero (surprisingly warm) and a beautifully clear starscape emerged as we hit the sack.