Home!
We arrived back safely on Saturday.
We left Mopti after a quick look round and drove back towards Bamako. We were stopped at a police checkpoint for not having a customs form stamped and asked to pay a fine of a little more than a pound.
We stopped in Segou for the night, in a nice hotel overlooking the mighty River Niger. The town was gearing up for its annual music festival, so there was quite an atmosphere in the evening.
The next day we drove back to Bamako and spent a nice evening downing a few celebratory beers. Then on Friday we visited the National Museum, went into the hills to see a spectacular view of the city from above and finished up at CRES, a government department and hotel agreed as the handover point for the cars and the official rally finish line. We had done it!
We spent a few hours sorting the car out and admiring the other transcontinental wrecks on display. They will be auctioned locally in aid of charity (I am led to believe they command quite a high price) We then got a taxi to the airport. We flew at 3:25am (after a hectic, drawn-out experience at check-in), stopped over in Casablanca for a few hours and then took off for London. We landed at Heathrow about 4:30pm.
The Carlton:
Who would have thought it? £120 from Ebay, almost certainly saved from the scrapyard that would follow its next MOT, yet still comfortably capable of driving 5697 miles across two mountain ranges, a desert and two continents with only minor ailments. I believe it was the oldest car on the run, having been registered 24 years to the day previous to being left in Bamako (and, therefore, comfortably beating the 22 year old Renault 5 of Team Zissou). I would also have thought that we were about the only team that stuck to the “rules” and paid under £100 (that’s the purchase price of £120 minus the two months’ tax it came with, at £30), with many people having opted for 4×4s that clearly cost thousands.
Job well done!
