Cathy and I finally finished the rally in Douala, Cameroon, on 16 September, exactly one month after the official finish date.  We then celebrated in style down at Kribi beach with our final two-car convoy composed of us and Belle the Micra, containing Mad Mike (the Democratic Republic one man team) and Si (of the dead SuperNovas).

As you would have gathered from our SMS updates, the Panda (or 'Pandy Bear' as Cath would pleadingly call her when she started to play up) died 600 km before the finish in a town called Bertoa in eastern Cameroon.  Prior to that we had managed to deal with the broken leaf springs, stuffed radiator, dented rear section, non-existant windscreen wipers and leaking head gasket. But when the gear box literally exploded (while Si was driving), there was not much that could be done, my motto of 'just drive her till she drives no more' finally came true.  It was a brutal scene, the oil spilling out of the gear box was Pandy's blood, falling down to stain the road below.  Cath cleverly wondering whether all would be well if she just filled up the water one more time.  Funnily enough, it didn't help.  So the beautiful Micra Belle kindly towed us to the next town, despite an opportunistic policeman who suddenly decided towing was illegal in Cameroon (cost: one smelly old T-shirt 'present' for his wife, may she forever enjoy be smelling our sweat!).

Unfortunately, despite our amazing luck at finding Fiat Panda spares on the road to Timbuktu, a spare Panda gear box was not awaiting us in Bertoa.  The friendly mechanic just shook his head and commented 'Fiat ....... Italy.....' as though it was the other side of the moon.  It may have well have been.

So, sadly, that night we arranged for the Panda to travel quite precariously in a...[Read More]