Launch Details

Location: Hyde Park, Central London
Local Temperature: 61 degrees Fahrenheit
Total Journey Mileage: 0

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Three days since we launched, and it all seems a blur. But before I get into the meat of things I’ll get to the first order of business: where are we at this very moment? Doug, Jessie and I are currently sitting under the shade of a beachside bar in Caleta de Velez, Spain, looking out at the Mediterranean. We are being hosted in a nearby flat for a couple of days by a very kind and gracious couple, Jo and Richard, who are the awesome parents of Jessie’s English friend Cath.

So, here we are recovering from 2 full days of hard driving, resting up before we head across the sea in two days. Those 48 hours driving from London to southern Spain were certainly exhausting, eventful and story-worthy, but there will be more on that in later posts. For the moment I am going to tell you of how we launched out of London, which seems to have set the tone of our adventure so far.

Launch day was on July 18, 2008, at Hyde Park in Central London. We rolled in at around 9:30 a.m. to register and meet our compatriots. We love our Suzi/Sammy/whatevs, but he was certainly not dressed for the occasion as were some of the other rally cars. Parked next to us were the Sandbox Warriors, whose lovely little steed was sporting a new paint job as Spiderman (click thumbnail for bigger image).

We were all prepared to treat the Sandbox Warriors as our nemeses – who did they think they were with that name? – unfortunately they were really nice guys and we’re thinking of traversing Western Sahara with them in the coming week.

Some other noteworthy vehicles belonged to the Great Balls of Fur, whose team of five will drive two VW buses, one covered (completely) in zebra print fur and the other in leopard/cheetah/some-sort-of-spotted-animal-print fur. We are very interested to see the shape of those vans after traveling through Saharan heat and sand followed by Subsaharan torrential rain.  Matted fur…yummy.

   

Of course, our own vehicle had a pretty snazzy decoration itself:

            

What’s that, you ask? Why, that’s our first place rosette – with your awesome assistance, we are currently the top fundraisers for charity in the Africa Rally! We were very nervous that the prize would be a position as the starting car in the rally. We in no way wanted that honor, given that we had no knowledge of London and the rally was scheduled to begin with a caravan of all the Africa Rally cars through London before we each set out on our individual routes to Cameroon. The paper rosette was a reassuring substitute. Unfortunately, our car was parked closest to the starting line, so we ended up heading up the caravan anyway.

Disaster.

We managed to get out of Hyde Park alright, but immediately took a wrong turn. Or so we thought. After making an impossible u-turn, we noted several of the rally cars going in the direction in which we had just been going. Making another impossible u-turn involving some sidewalk driving of which you will never see evidence, we pulled up to the first rally car we saw, rolled down the window, and yelled “is this where we’re supposed to be going?” The response? “No idea!” Hmm. Let’s pull up to that rally car up there. Lean out the window to ask, see the passenger in the car staring at the map while the driver looks over with very lost eyes, and realize they don’t know anything either. Great. We’ll just figure out how to get to the chunnel. Somehow.

And off we went.