Day 19 & 20
Wed 18th & Thur 19th
Mali
Manatali to Bamako
Today’s distance 336km
Sleeping Hotel
Mileage70394
Car no change
Punctures today 2 total 14
Onwards to Bamako, Bamako sweet home Bamako, as its described! And on to a very welcome rest day! All of the teams had told me how fun Bamako is so I was looking forward to these days for a while now. The hotel was nice and the 1st thing I done was have a shower, swim, eat and drink! The driving to Bamako was some dirt roads and some tarmac however the tarmac could be described as worse than the off road tracks! I’ve never seen so many pot holes, and so big! constantly swerving to avoid them takes a lot of concentration! There was also some good tarmac and its typical that it was on this part of the route that we experienced another puncture, we (along with the help from about 5 African girls) jacked the car up to change the wheel and I could hear a hissing sound which turned out to be the rear tyre going down too! We have inner tubes so you ma think, no problem? However a couple of days ago our pump had broken so we were stuck, Luckily it was the jump team to the rescue again! They came from behind us and stopped to help, unfortunately again they had no pump! But they had a spare wheel with a tyre on it, bad luck struck once more though as this was not pumped up! So they took their wheel to the next village and had it pumped up and delivered it back to us! Bamako is crazy! The traffic was mental, not as much as Nouakchott but still crazy, all I can say is it’s a good job we have good brakes and a working horn! As soon as ou stop or get out of the car here someone wants to sell you something! Outside the hotel was someone who seemed to take permanent residence there and introduced himself as Mr Goodprice! Nothing was a good enough price for us though! We did use the help of some of the people offering assistance, one showed us where we could get a new pump, and a oil change which was really needed as the oil we had was too thin for the heat here! We were able to get the internet at this hotel which is where I uploaded the previous posts. In the evening we went over to a bar and relaxed with a few drinks! The second day was actually when we had the oil change etc and also went to a restaurant for dinner and the organisation showed a slide show of pictures, It was amazing to see these images, its seems so long ago and it really began to sink in that the TT09 is very nearly all over! I studied the map this evening and cannot believe how far we have come, these cars are fantastic … complete respect to the 2cv!!