Rainier’s co-driver, Sam Roach, reports from the car and updates us on their epic “Cape to Cape 2.0″ world record attempt to drive from Cape Agulhas to Nordkapp in Norway. (More details on the attempt here).
Metima, Sudan
“We enjoyed a very scenic and varied drive to the Sudanese border at Metima to put an end to our time in Ethiopia. Again, the Ethiopian landscape was stunning at every turn with mountains, valleys, waterfalls and at last some completely smooth roads. A great way to conclude our time in Ethiopia.
“All of us were exhausted from last night’s drive especially with the difficulties we had sleeping while the car was being bounced around on the rough roads. We left it to Rainer to complete the driving in Ethiopia. Rainer, as the Cape to Cape Challenge Manager has a huge amount of experience with driving on African roads which can make a difference to how we keep our average speeds up safely with the many challenges that these roads throw at us.
“We reached the Sudanese border slightly ahead of schedule only to be told that it was closed and had been for the last 2 weeks. We could not get any explanation why and this really looked like it could spell disaster for our World Record attempt right there and then. These things are never just left to chance and thankfully our Sudanese ‘fixer’ Midhat was waiting at the border to meet us. After some involved discussion with the officials, he somehow got our crossing approved and we were waved through the checkpoint into Sudan; the only vehicle to get through for two weeks.
“With disaster averted, Midhat will now be one of a team of four locals to escort us through the whole length of Sudan through the night in a high-speed convoy, with our Touareg, in a Volkswagen Amarok kindly supplied for this job by Volkswagen Sudan.
“We will update you tomorrow morning with our trip through Sudan to the capital Khartoum then North out into the empty Sudanese desert headed for the Egyptian border.
“As a quick further update, a couple of days ago we informed you that our route-logging tracker on the website had failed to capture the first part of our journey through South Africa. It has now been updated by manually inputting the correct GPS data collected from our other Inmarsat tracker so that it now accurately logs the whole route so far.”
– Sam Roach
