A Clear Sky and an End in Sight

Today has gone well enough that there are only 275 miles left to go until the teams reach Bamako. A beautiful sunrise helped to get them moving for seven o'clock, and another crazy day's travelling began. I covered the most bizarre events of the day in my previous post, and it won't surprise anybody to learn that after those escapades, all the cars are limping a little. By 1pm they were over the border into Mali (which means the mobile phones work again - hurrah!) and encountering a déjà-vu situation with four rounds of random stops by customs officials and guards, all of whom (much like the ones in Northern Mauritania) demanded a fee for safe passage. At the point where a conman who clearly wasn't even a border guard decided to try his luck and stop them to demand €10 per vehicle, they decided enough was enough, drove around him and right off the road. They have all covered their number plates so they can't be seen from the road and tonight they have stopped outside Nioro to camp under the stars. At seven o'clock when I last spoke to mum, they were enjoying the stillness and could see the nearest village about two miles away across the plain, and hear the singing from it.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Certainly not the weary travellers. They all want to do different things at the end of the trip so they are likely to part ways soon, which will be something of a wrench after they have bonded so well, I imagine. It doesn't seem like they are going to push on to Bamako in a hurry now though - after all, it isn't a race. Maybe things will calm down for a little while and they will take it easy, but I'm sure I remember writing something like that before and getting it dead wrong!