I woke with a bad cold and feeling pretty rundown and crowded into the top corns of the truck with a sick Hawken for a long day of socialising, sand matting, teamwork - with our passengers and the Douglas family - and one-upmanship with the Encounter Overland (EO) truck.
We had two major sand matting challenges. The first was climbing a big hill, halfway up which we passed the EO truck bogged in deep soft sand (EO tows trailers which make getting bogged easier). We were determined to show EO how Exodus did it, and desperately hoped Stanley would show what he’s made of in front of our rivals. At first Kel rashly said we’d try for it without the mats at the ready but we thought that a bit too much to risk. Ron Douglas trail blazed for us, grinding his way up and over with us loudly encouraging him as we threw the metal sand mats under their track. Stanley then gave us a momentary worry but did us proud, following that line up the hill, watched by passengers off the still-bogged EO truck, and Kel was grinning madly when we reached the top without getting stuck. We then teamed up with the EO crew to mat them out of trouble.
During one sand matting episode, we dug up a weird burrowing creature that looked like a miniature dolphin, cream-coloured with dark stripes and an almost smiling mouth - it was the weirdest thing any of us had seen.
Lunch was a gathering of overlanders, with three Bedford trucks (Exodus, EO and the Douglas family) and a group of Dutch travellers in a Unimog parked under palms. The EO crowd were covered in dusty head to toe and made us look pristine in comparison. After a democratic vote of 11 to 9, we traded five packets of Angel Whirl (a disgusting powdered dessert made in the UK) for tinned baked beans - yeah!
We spent the afternoon grinding our way up hills, only to look down into another valley and across another hill. Stanley was a trooper, and our sand-matting tally from Bol finished at 13 - and with a damaged gearbox - while EO totalled 48! One matting session was frightening, with the Douglas truck and ours listing badly to one side and threatening to topple as we drove along an old lakebed. Stanley first and then the Douglas truck, we ran and threw mats under the truck while dodging the sliding rear wheels, finally making it after a strenuous heart in the mouth haul. And just in time to see the EO truck approach the lake and then bog too far out for us to help. Continuing on our way, we wondered how long it would take them to get free.
Bought delicious bread at a police check, while an enormous crane with a beak almost the size of a pelican's and a fleshy throat circled above us. Cow carcasses littered the dry creek bed here and I wondered why a good food source would be left like this for the vultures.
At another checkpoint, five men thundered up on handsome horses, two almost as big as Clydesdales and all of them with shining coats and rounded bellies. The men were demonstrably proud of their beasts and loved our reactions, standing in line for photographs. They had stirrups with flat almost shoe like metal pieces and galloped away from us using only knees and feet, the reigns loose, in an impressive display of horsemanship.
After a long, slow drive on sand, Kel turned Stanley into a huge figure eight on a patch of compact grey dust, all of us hoping this was a safe manoeuvre - it was - before stopping early to camp with the Douglas family. Only a few minutes after we set up, the EO truck rolled up, the passengers loud and dusty and very Okker (Aussie). Hope I don't come across that way.
So proud of my Exodus family today, what teamwork!
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